Herbal Antibiotics: Natural Alternatives for Treating Drug-Resistant Bacteria (13 page)

The three resistant nonbacterial variants are the candidas, malaria, and the aspergillus mold.

Candida species are a type of yeast that form a normal part of the human intestinal and urinary tracts and skin flora. The main species is usually
Candida albicans.
Antibiotic overuse has stimulated tremendous problems with this organism. Overgrowth in the intestinal and urinary tracts is common. Candida has traditionally been treated with antifungals and azoles, but the last 20 years have seen significant resistance emerge across the entire genus.

Resistant candida infections cause urinary tract infections, vaginal infections, mouth infections (thrush)—they love mucous membrane systems. Itching, burning, soreness, irritation, and whitish patches or discharge are common symptoms. In some instances candida can become systemic and affect multiple organs. Infections are much more serious in people whose immune systems are compromised.

The herbs to treat candida are sida, alchornea, bidens, cryptolepis (minimally),
Artemisia annua
, the berberines, juniper, honey, usnea, black pepper, lomatium, isatis, licorice, red root flowers, reishi, echinacea, chaparro amargosa (
Castela emoryi
), and desert willow (
Chilopsis linearis
).

Formulation
Berberine plant, alchornea, or sida tincture: 1 tsp, 3x daily; or juniper berry–bidens tincture (1 part juniper, 2 parts bidens): 30 drops, 3x daily; or lomatium, isatis, and echinacea (equal parts) tincture: 1 tsp, 3x daily

Formulation 1 (antibacterial)
Alchornea or sida tincture: 1 tsp, 3x daily

Formulation 2
Lomatium, isatis, and echinacea (equal parts) tincture: 1 tsp, 3x daily

Formulation 3
Berberine tincture diluted in water, used as a douche (see
page 162
): 2x daily, in the morning and again in the evening

Formulation 1 (antibacterial)
Lomatium, isatis, and echinacea (equal parts) tincture: 1 tsp, 3x daily

Formulation 2
One ounce berberine tincture diluted in 6 ounces water, take 1 tablespoon to wash mouth and gums thoroughly: 3x daily

Formulation 1 (antibacterial)
Alchornea or sida tincture: 1 tsp, 3x daily

Formulation 2
Licorice, reishi, and echinacea (equal parts) tincture: 1 tsp, 3x daily

Formulation 3
Desert willow and chaparro amargosa (equal parts) tincture: 1 tsp, 3x daily

There are some 200 or more species of plasmodia, parasitic protists that infect red blood cells. Eleven of the species infect people. The disease is transmitted by mosquito bites. The organisms grow in the liver, then infect the red blood cells. Fever, shivering, shaking, muscle pain, headache, anemia, enlarged spleen and liver, and malaise are typical symptoms. Vomiting is sometimes present. In severe infections brain damage, convulsions, and death can occur. Given their life cycle, latent parasites can emerge later. This is why treatment for
Plasmodium
is often repeated after 14 days.

Worldwide, there are some 250 million cases of malaria each year, resulting in nearly a million deaths, and 80 percent of them come from
Plasmodium falciparum
. The malarial organisms are often resistant to antibiotics, hence the development of artemisinin from
Artemisia annua
. However, the use of that isolated constituent is now provoking resistance worldwide, so the constituent is often combined with antibiotics to retard resistance development. In the treatment of malaria, the whole herb or mixtures of herbs are preferable for just that reason.

The herbs effective for malaria are cryptolepis, sida, alchornea, bidens,
Artemisia annua
, juniper, isatis, and licorice.

Formulation
Cryptolepis, sida, or alchornea tincture: 1 tbl, 3x daily for 7 days, repeat in 14 days; or artemisinin: 1,000 mg the first day, 500 mg daily for 4 more days, repeat in 14 days

Aspergillus
, especially
A. fumigatus
, is an increasing source of resistant infections. This rather common mold can cause bronchopulmonary infections and chronic sinusitis. In hospital settings or among the immunocompromised it usually causes pulmonary disease and to a lesser extent surgical wound infections. It is resistant to most available drugs—polyenes, azoles, and echinocandins. Mortality rates in hospitals run 50 percent to 60 percent on average and as high as 90 percent in some populations (such as leukemia patients).

The herbs effective for aspergillus are sida, alchornea, cryptolepis, juniper, lomatium, isatis, ginger, honey,
Artemisia giraldii
, and
Sechium edule
fluid extract.

Formulation 1 (antibacterial)
Cryptolepis, sida, or alchornea tincture, or a combination of the three: 1 tsp, 3x daily

Formulation 2 (immune support)
Ginger, licorice, and rhodiola (equal parts) tincture: 1 tsp, 3x daily

Formulation 3
Nasal spray formula for sinus infections (see
page 181
) prepared with
just
juniper essential oil; or juniper essential oil inhalation as aromatherapy: 3–6x daily

For sinusitis and bronchopulmonary conditions:
Formulations 1, 2, and 3

For systemic treatment in the immunocompromised, pulmonary infection, or pneumonia:
Formulations 1, 2, and 3; increase the dosage for formulations 1 and 2 to 1 tsp–1 tbl, up to 6x daily

For surgical wound infections:
Formulations 1 and 2, plus topical honey dressing daily (see monograph,
page 188
)

Facts are subversive of lies, half-truths, myths; of all those easy speeches that comfort cruel men.

—Timothy Garton Ash

In 1998, when I wrote the first edition of this book
, the Internet was very new; the world was a different place. A lot has changed.

For one thing, the Internet has become the greatest reference library human beings have ever known. A tiny part of that library, though enormously huge compared to what was available in the past, has to do with medicinal plants and the vast amount of research now being conducted on them. This facilitated the revision of this book enormously. During my research for the first edition, despite the size of my personal library (huge) and my access to a great university library at the University of Colorado in Boulder, I had access to only a tiny portion of the research and other material on medicinal plants that existed in the world. Now I have access to a great deal more; it's as close as my office computer.

But that is only a small part of the changes that have taken place over the past 15 years; something a great deal more interesting has been happening. As I spent weeks on the Web, following the scent of medicinal plants through the Internet forest, what struck home the most was a deep and visceral impact of just how much the human world itself has changed.

It is a new world out there. And it is a world with which the United States has an increasingly tenuous connection. The rest of the
Western nations are nearly as lost. During the past 15 years nations on the African continent, in Asia and South America, within the Russian sphere, and in most of the old Eastern bloc have realized that the medical model used by the West is unworkable, and to a great extent, they have begun abandoning it as the dominant approach to their people's health care.

Nations in those regions, especially in Africa, Asia, and South America, have realized they can't afford a pharmaceutical/technological medical model as their primary approach to health care. They know that the problems of antibiotic resistance, petroleum depletion (most pharmaceuticals and all medical technology are made from or highly dependent on petroleum products), population expansion, top-down care models, and most especially cost and cost inflation cannot be solved and are only going to worsen over time. With that realization, they have begun abandoning industrialized medicine as a legitimate model for providing health care to their populations. (Industrialized medicine will still play a part but a much smaller, more affordable, and considerably less dangerous one.)

Unlike in the United States, researchers in those nations aren't exploring
whether
plant medicines work (nor are they spending their time and money trying to discredit what they feel is “primitive” medicine or unscientific quackery); they are exploring which herbal medicines work best and in what form and at what dosage. Their research and their journal papers are looking for the herbs that can treat malaria most successfully (for example) and how those plants, once identified, can be grown by the people who need them so they can be used when, and where, and by whom they are needed.

Many non-Western researchers are actively addressing the health problems of their populations with little if any profit motive. They have simply realized that corporate profit making and human health are not compatible. Shorthand: they are tired of seeing their cultures get screwed by international corporations that make billions out of the misery of others. They want to solve the problems facing them, simply, repeatedly, cheaply, ecologically, and with a great deal of personal
empowerment for the people who are most directly affected. Reading the journal articles of U.S. researchers and comparing them with those of other nations and cultures is an illuminating and sobering experience.

The African and Asian journal articles tend to have titles like this: “Antibacterial activity of guava (
Psidium guajava
L.) and neem (
Azadirachta indica
A. Juss.) extracts against foodborne pathogens and spoilage bacteria” or “Evaluation of antimicrobial activities of extracts of five plants used in traditional medicine in Nigeria” or “Antimicrobial activity of ethanolic and aqueous extracts of
Sida acuta
on microorganisms from skin infections.”

The U.S. journal articles are more along these lines: “Severe hypernatremia and hyperosmolality exacerbated by an herbal preparation in a patient with diabetic ketoacidosis” or “Metal content of ephedra-containing dietary supplements and select botanicals” or “Hypereosinophilia associated with echinacea use.”

The abstract for that last study contains the kind of commentary common to many Western researchers, especially in the United States:

Echinacea, believed by herbal practitioners to enhance the immune system, is one of the most widely used herbal supplements in the United States. Like most herbal products, it lacks strict FDA regulation and more information is needed about its potential adverse reactions. Here, we report the case of a patient with eosinophilia of unclear etiology whose condition resolved after cessation of this supplement. We feel this likely represents an IgE-mediated allergic process to echinacea.
¹

The article ignores the in-depth research on echinacea done in Germany over decades and the fact that it is a part of primary care medicine in that country. It uses words and phrases such as “believed by” and “we feel” and “likely.” Its writers
assume
that the echinacea is the cause of the eosinophilia even though they have conducted no research to make sure of it. It's not science, not research, but rather guesswork and opinion that reflect the orientation, and bias, of the technologically focused, pharmaceutically dominated medical world, especially in the United States.

Now compare that with this abstract from an article by Nigerian researchers, “Antimicrobial activity of ethanolic and aqueous extracts of
Sida acuta
of microorganisms from skin infections.”

The antimicrobial effect of the ethanolic and aqueous extracts of
Sida acuta
was investigated. Phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of saponins, tannins, cardiac glycosides, alkaloids and anthraquinones. The test isolates from human skin infections were
Staphylococcus aureus
,
Bacillus subtilis
,
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
,
Escherichia coli
,
Scopulariopsis candida
,
Aspergillus niger
and
Aspergillus fumigatus.
The zone of inhibition for the ethanolic extract varied from 10 mm for
P. aeruginosa
to 43 mm for
S. aureus
and from 4 mm for
P. aeruginosa
to 29 mm for
S. aureus
in the aqueous extract. Though the zone of inhibition increased with increase in the concentration of the extract, the highest concentration of the ethanolic extract revealed a higher significant (P. 0.05) inhibition against
S. aureus
and
B. subtilis
compared to the inhibition effect on these organisms by gentamicin used as control. The aqueous extract had no significant effect on the test organisms. The extracts had no inhibitory effect on the fungi isolates. This study has shown that the extract of
S. acuta
if properly harnessed medically will enhance our health care delivery system.
²

This herb “will enhance our health care delivery system.” I have never seen that sentiment in a research article in the United States and I've read thousands of them. (Gentamicin, by the way, is what is called an aminoglycoside antibiotic, often used to treat Gram-negative bacteria.
Sida acuta
at higher doses was more active against the test organisms than the antibiotic was.)