LifeCare Chiropractic

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Drug Research

Do I Need Antibiotics When Hacking Up Discolored Sputum?

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You’re hacking up a lung and coworkers won’t come within 5 feet of you without a mask and a pump sprayer of Lysol.

Worse, you’re now coughing up sputum that has become the color of something out of the Exorcist.  It’s no longer time to mess around-you need antibiotics.  Stat.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard this statement.  Somehow, when your sputum gets some type of yellow or greenish color to it, you think it’s a sign of something sinister that’s going to need antibiotics.  Something you need to understand first–sputum is essentially sterile.  It is the end result of your white blood cells attacking and destroying an invader.  The color is usually a result of dead cells of the airway as well as inflammatory cells.  While bacteria can be present in the sputum, this is not always the case.

All of this brings me to this particular study.  In it, researchers looked at the effect of the use of either anti-inflammatories (600 mg ibuprofen 3x / day), antibiotics (amoxicillin-clavulanic acid 500 mg/125 mg 3x / day) or a placebo had on the time it took to resolve an infection that included discolored sputum.  The results may surprise you.  Here’s what the researchers found:

  1. The number of days with frequent cough was slightly lower among patients assigned to ibuprofen (9 days compared to 11 days with antibiotics and placebo)
  2. Neither antibiotics nor ibuprofen increased cough resolution compared with placebo.
  3. Side effects were most common in the antibiotic group (12%) than ibuprofen (5%) or placebo (3%).

Overall, this should blow the myth that discolored sputum is a sign that it is time to run to the doctor and get on antibiotics.  Regular readers of the Rantings should have a very good idea of how much this single course of, arguably uneeded, antibiotics will destroy the healthy balance of the bacteria in your gut.

Instead, opt for immune boosting activities like light exercise, vitamin D and A (although hopefully, you have already been taking these and did not get sick in the first place), no refined carbs and high doses of vitamin C (8-10 grams per day).  The healthy bacteria in your gut and the balance they confer to your immune system will thank you.

Drugs can contaminate the environment – (06-28-00)

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Drugs can contaminate the environment

Doing your best to avoid taking drugs? Well, recent studies suggest that you need to be drinking filtered water then. Pharmaceutical drugs are leaking out in the water supply, and may approach therapeutic levels in some cases. Imagine having a drug-drug interaction just from drinking water…

Read entire article here

Drug Firms Fail to Conduct Post-Marketing Studies – (05-20-00)

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Drug Firms Fail to Conduct Post-Marketing Studies

Sometimes it seems that the government has less and less control over the pharmaceutical companies. This is a perfect example of the drug companies ignoring mandates from the FDA. Apr 17 (Reuters) – Most of the studies that federal health officials require drug companies to perform on new medicines after they hit the market are never done, a US consumer group charged on Thursday. Often when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves a drug, it orders the manufacturer to conduct further studies of side effects or how well it works for certain patients. But only 13% of the 88 follow-up studies required for drugs launched in the early 1990s were completed, according to a report by consumer group Public Citizen. No studies were finished for 107 drugs that went on the market between January 1995 and last December, the group said.

The tightening grip of big pharma – (05-10-01)

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The tightening grip of big pharma

This is a very important article to read for those of you living life with blinders on. The most disturbing news article appeared last Sunday in the AZ Republic as the front page story. The Valley of the Sun is experiencing a severe shortage of pharmacists. It was made out to be a serious situation. To me, the story was sickening to the effect that we as a population are not getting the message. Pharmaceuticals are dangerous. The drug companies control the research and many doctors are unwilling to report obvious side effects as what they are. You are a guinea pig each and every time you take a pharmaceutical drug. Remember that. And, please, read this commentary.

The Journal : Back Issues

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University accused of violating academic freedom to safeguard funding from drug companies – (09-17-01)

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University accused of violating academic freedom to safeguard funding from drug companies

This is really a sad commentary on how much of an influence money has on the playing field. This also puts a taint on all academy-derived research, no matter whether this is an isolated event or widespread.

bmj.com Dyer 323 (7313): 591a

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Is that study really necessary? – (09-06-01)

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Is that study really necessary?

This is an topic that I joke about on occasion. There are things that those of us in the natural field have been talking about for years (avoiding refined carbs, increase fruits and veggies…) that come out in research studies and come to incredibly obvious solutions. Personally, I feel that the money spent on these studies would be better off spent on other, less obvious conclusions. This is a nice commentary on this topic.

Read entire article here