still more antibiotic over-prescription?  absolutely!

In this study, 500 random individuals that had been selected at random from a larger random pool had their records pulled for review.  Four board-certified internists with specialties in infectious disease looked at said records to determine accuracy of the diagnosis, as well as the “appropriateness” of the Antibiotics that were prescribed.  “Based on data available to providers at the time, infectious disease literature, guidelines, textbooks, and reviewer professional judgment, reviewers independently classified these provider diagnoses as correct, indeterminate, incorrect, or a sign or consistent with an infectious disease.  Cases were classified as indeterminate when the evidence supporting the diagnosis was unclear or lacking.  In contrast, diagnoses were classified as incorrect when the evidence disproved the diagnosis or clearly supported an alternative diagnosis.“   Here is what they found.

• INDETERMINATE:  22% of the time the diagnosis was too vague to determine much of anything about the case.  For example, a diagnosis of “FEVER” doesn’t provide much meaningful information about what’s wrong with someone.

• INCORRECT:  For some of the most common diagnostic categories, the agreement between physician and reviewer was just over one in four (27%).   For instance, in 76 cases of cystitis that were reviewed, the reviewers agreed with the treating physicians only 13% of the time (10 cases).

• INAPPROPRIATE:  Even when the diagnosis was correct, almost 40% of the Antibiotics prescribed were, by definition, inappropriate.  That number went to 95% (ninety five percent) when the diagnosis was incorrect, which, as you’ve already seen, was a great deal of the time.   “In 166 of 198 cases (84%) with diagnoses that were incorrect or indeterminate or when providers were treating a sign or symptom rather than a syndrome or disease, antimicrobial therapy was not indicated at all.“

Treating symptoms instead of dealing with underlying causes of said symptoms.  For the most part, this is what our modern medical system is all about.  The problem is, it leads to the sorts of zany conclusions like the ones found in this study.  For instance, the authors stated that, “Diagnostic errors were more common in this study than in previous studies unrelated to antimicrobial use.”  I cannot tell you why this was with any degree of certainty, but I can tell you that when it comes to drug reactions; they are almost UNIVERSALLY UNDER-REPORTED —- severely under-reported.

And when it comes to amazing statements, this one takes the cake.  “Antimicrobial use is heavily shaped by cultural and economic factors related to deeply held beliefs about bodily integrity and invasion.”  This is why I truly believe that many of you will never get healthy or LOSE THE WEIGHT you need to without understanding the HYGIENE HYPOTHESIS.  Viewing germs as “invaders” produces “CLEAN FREAKS” and bacteriophobes.   “Antimicrobials have been labeled drugs of fear in that fear of bad outcomes, however unlikely, leads to antimicrobial overuse despite associated risks, including adverse effects in individual patients and relentless increases in antimicrobial resistance generally.”  We know that not only are Antibiotics killing off our collective MICROBIOMES and causing an array of problems associated with DYSBIOSIS (too many “bad” bacteria, and not enough “good”), but are actually causing certain strains of bacteria to BECOME EXTINCT as well.   Once you have an understanding of GUT HEALTH, all of this will begin to make sense.