Look, let me make one thing clear: I’m not a crank about this stuff. If I’m ill, I do go to the doctor. There are times when antibiotics are absolutely a life-saver, and I’m very grateful to have access to them. Lung infections and bladder infections spring to mind.
The problem is that these days, it seems that pretty much all doctors have to offer is some variation of steroid or antibiotics. Doctors hand these these two types of medication out like candy, and they’re becoming less effective over time, creating dangerous resistant superbugs. 1
Antibiotics are a “subtraction stew” solutions. They damage your microbiome, which leaves you more susceptible to infection. So you go back to the doctor, get more antibiotics, which further damage the microbiome…and so on. 2
You get into a vicious spiral of infection and antibiotics, which simply gets worse over time. 3 And the real problem is most of the time, that the damage done by the antibiotics is never fixed. The gut is just left in its damaged condition.
The same thing happens with steroids; you apply steroids to the skin, the skin is thinned and damaged by the steroids, the skin issue remains, you go back for stronger steroids…back into the vicious spiral. 4
This can actually create a condition called Topical Steroid Addiction, with horrific consequence. 5 And the underlying skin issue remains untouched. Because, as we now know, it’s actually a gut issue! Creams alone will never clear it.
So what’s going on here? Why are doctors, who are clearly well intentioned and trying to help us, constantly handing out solutions that only seem to make things worse?
The problem is the modern medicine is all based on something called “The Germ Theory,” which was developed by Louis Pasteur back in the 1870s. 6
The Germ Theory basically says that your body is sterile, and that problems begin when a “germ” gets into your body and causes an infection.
Pasteur’s solution to this was to find the germ, and kill it, thus restoring your body to its previous “sterile” state. He created antibiotics to do just this – it’s a “point-and-shoot” technology. Find a germ, kill a germ.
What’s wrong with this?
Just about everything.
Pasteur was a smart guy. But he was working in the 19th century, with 19th century optical lenses.
He simply couldn’t see then, what we can see now. He didn’t know what we know.
And what can we see? What do we know now, that Louis Pasteur didn’t know in 1860?
Well, we now know for a fact that there’s nothing sterile about you!
In fact, you are the furthest thing from sterile that can be imagined.
You are the planet, remember? You are the Amazon rain forest.
You are a living ecosystem, not a sterile environment.
And what happens when you pour bleach into the Amazon River?
You knock it out of balance.
You may well kill what’s causing the infection, yes. But you will kill other things as well. Your inner ecosystem will be knocked out of balance. 7 And you will pay the price for years to come.
You are not a blank slate. YOUR SYSTEM IS NOT STERILE. Your microbiome is a living, changing, adjusting, interactive system.
Doctors operating on the “germ theory” are operating on out-dated science. They can’t help you with your skin condition, because all of their answers are based on a thought system that is obsolete.
We know better now.
“Bacteria and viruses are not a ‘virulent other.’ They are, instead, intimately interwoven into the underpinnings of life on this planet. They cannot be killed off without killing off every form of life on Earth. This is the great error of the nineteenth/early-twentieth century view of nature that continues to plague us.” – Stephen Harrod Buhner 8
We are the bugs – and they are us!
We need to become good stewards of our internal ecosystems – not point-and-shoot destroyers.
It’s all about balance, about interacting with the critters inside you – and restoring health and balance in there.
