Dangers of Antibiotics

I’d like to discuss antibiotics from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Image Medicine view point.  Now first of all I want to mention that TCM does not completely rejects the use of antibiotics. If a patient has pneumonia or some other serious bacterial infection – for all means, please take antibiotics that your doctor prescribed you. They may save your life after all.

Now the problem that is happening today all across the country (and really the globe) is that many doctors prescribe antibiotics for any issue, even for a minor cold. This does not give body a chance to use it’s internal healing abilities to fight disease and heal it for good, and develop resistance to this type of bacteria in the future. So many people end up taking antibiotics every fall because they get sick every fall and that’s what their doctor prescribes them.

Now not developing the resistance is only part of the problem actually. The other part – and it’s much worse actually – is that antibiotics leave, what TCM calls, a cold in the body. It’s not a flu-like cold what most people heard about, but cold is considered by TCM as one of the pathogens that block energy flow and cause diseases in the body. Please refer to Model Of Life article if you are new to energy flow idea.

Our body is not as solid as it looks, but contains pores that cold energy can use to enter into the body through, and attach itself to our organs and tissues. If this is just happened, a person may feel chills going through his/her body, and generally feel cold. One of the easiest ways to get rid of the cold in this case is go to sauna, if you catch cold within couple days – sauna will let you sweat it out and remove cold from the body. Now after a few days colds gets attached to the inner tissues and it’s not as easily removed, so saunas work best only if you take them at early onset of the cold. Once cold attaches itself to the tissues, it’s best to use warming herbal teas, fire cupping or methods of Image Therapy to remove it from the body.

Antibiotics, according to TCM, also leave cold energy in the body. I’m sure most people who are reading this article have taken antibiotics, and not once. I remember the feeling after going through the round of antibiotics that I do feel better, my infection is gone, but my energy levels are really low, and even as they get better with time, I never felt like I’m back to the level I was at before taking the antibiotics. That’s because antibiotics leave some cold energy in the body, it restricts/blocks energy flow in meridians, and your organs are just not getting as much energy as they used to, leaving you feeling with low energy and tired even after doing minor exercises or even some easy tasks like cooking or doing dishes. And when I complained about this to my family doctor – all I heard back is that we aren’t getting younger and it’s just age weighting on us, so just get used to this and live with it.

Now in my neighborhood, and I’m sure this is very similar in most neighborhoods out there, I see a lot of older Asian people walking on sidewalks every evening, and they move with ease. I also see some grand-parents coming to ice rinks to watch their grand sons play hockey. And I cannot help myself but notice that a lot of them aren’t moving with ease. The feeling I get is that they are moving like old robots that lost lubrication in their joints and now their joints are stiff and just not move as freely as they used to. And this leave me with a question – maybe Asian people, who often still use TCM doctors even after they moved to Canada, as they used to growing up in China or other countries of that side of the world, know something that we don’t? Why do they seem healthier vs the rest of general population of our country?

Now I’ve returned from China less than a month ago, and I was told the following story there. Now Western Medicine is allowed in China, there are hospitals that practice Western Medicine, and other hospitals that practice Traditional Chinese Medicine, and some hospitals practice both. Due to heavy advertisement a lot of Chinese people believe that Western Medicine is just as good, and sometimes even superior to TCM, and when they experience any health issues – they at first go to the hospital that practices Western Medicine. They get some treatment, and some feel a little better, and some feel no improvements even after months of different treatments. And when they get tired of seeing little to no progress, they decide to give TCM hospital a try, now it’s not as heavily advertised, but TCM with little changes was around for thousands of years. And in result they get their problems fixed, and go on with their lives feeling 100% back to normal and without any need to take any prescription drugs for any prolonged period of time, sometimes for the rest of their lives.

TCM believes that any medicine substance, like pills or herbal teas, is a poison. So it’s ok to take it for a few weeks to a month to get rid of more serious problem, but it never advises anybody to take any pills or even herbal teas for over a month. They always advice to take a break after a month and maybe come back for another month of treatment after 2 month break. So if you TCM doctor advises you to take herbal teas month after month – they may not be treating the cause of you problems but only symptoms, so it may be time to look for another doctor.