Since it has been demonstrated that disease is the reflection of the state of health of the body, or lack thereof, and not that of invading germs, it should be noted that what most people consider to be sickness or disease, is in fact the body attempting to heal itself. God created our bodies to be self healing. It is no small irony that what meets today’s definition of sickness or disease, is actually the body attempting to do what it was designed by God to do.
If a person has not been taking care of his or her body and has the conditions favorable for normal bacteria to turn into “bad” germs and flourish, at some point the body will raise its temperature to a point that kills off the problem germs and brings the situation back under its control. But how many people see fever as the sickness and feel that they have solved the problem if they take a pill that stops the fever? Almost everyone. And the sad part is that by overriding the body’s defense mechanisms, people leave themselves open to more severe sickness in the future.
At every point, if something is wrong with the body, what people see as sickness is actually the body’s cure. And some of these symptoms are critical to proper healing. The beginning of healing for any wound is swelling. Swelling is a must for healing, yet the first thing a doctor will do for an injury is to prescribe something to keep the swelling down. If something hurts, pain medication is prescribed to cover up the pain, but pain is the body’s way to let you know something is wrong.
If the problem is bacterial in nature, antibiotics are prescribed. But once again, the problem was part of the cure. When given the conditions that let normal bacteria turn into “bad” bacteria or germs, what is actually happening is the body attempting to heal and repair itself. Bacteria, or what we consider “bad” bacteria, is scavenger-like in nature, which means that, like scavenger birds only feed off of dead animals, this bacteria only feeds off of dead or decaying matter in the body. It is there to clean out the body, just like scavenger birds are there to clean up the environment. Once the bacteria accomplish the clean up of the dead or decaying matter in the body, it will die off, because this bacteria cannot live in an environment of health and life. If antibiotics are used to kill off the bacteria, it leaves the body with the waste material it was trying to get rid of, and without removing this condition, a recurrence of the problem, or worse, in the future is almost certain. (It should be noted that a bacterial overgrowth does give off toxins, and that, given the condition of the individual, under certain extreme circumstances, it may be appropriate to stop the overgrowth.)
Dr. Robert Mendelsohn noted this in his book, How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor, that the unnecessary use of antibiotics may actually work to stop an infection, but will then leave the person susceptible to multiple infections until the body develops its own resistance to the bacteria (or more correctly, the conditions that allowed the bad bacteria to thrive in the first place are removed):
Your Doctor almost certainly won’t tell you that, although the use of penicillin may shorten the course of the strep symptoms by three or four days, it may also cause recurrences of the infection all winter long. Antibiotics, while knocking out the strep bacilli, also prevent the development of the antibodies that are the body’s natural defense against the disease. If the strep infection is not treated, but allowed to run its course, the body will produce antibodies to fight it that can continue to protect the child against reinfection during the remainder of the winter season.
What Mendelsohn — like so many medical doctors — failed to note, however, is that bacteria in the body is completely normal, and antibiotics indiscriminately kill off all bacteria, whether normal or “bad.” A person with a poor diet and poor health and in need of antibiotics for one reason or another is already set up for having yeast and fungal problems, because yeast and fungus are what normal bacteria degenerate into as health deteriorates. Having the conditions for disease in your body and then indiscriminately killing off all bacteria is a recipe for disaster.
Antibiotics were developed to be used in situations of life and death, which is certainly not the way they are being used at this time. When antibiotics are used for non-life threatening illnesses, it may very well appear that they solve the problem, but in reality, all they do is buy someone some time; any appearance of health in these instances is illusionary at best.