The New England Journal of Medicine has reported that the popular antibiotic azithromycin, often given as a five-day treatment regimen known as the Z-Pak, increases the risk of sudden cardiac death in adults by 250 percent or any cause of death by 200 percent. In 2011 U.S. doctors wrote 55. 3 million prescriptions for this antibiotic, with sales of $464.6 million.

I often ask people, “What is the first word that comes into your mind when you think of the word, 'antibiotic?'” The correct answer should be poison. If an antibiotic actually gets the job done, it works by poisoning bacteria to death. Due to decades-long overuse of antibiotics by the medical profession, it now requires 50 times the dose of poison to kill bacteria compared to when antibiotics first came on the market.

The Z-Pak is popular because it is given as a five-day treatment, compared to 10 days for many other antibiotics. Obviously, it has to be more poisonous.

“We use azithromycin for an awful lot of things, and we abuse it terribly,” said Dr. John G. Bartlett, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “It’s very convenient. Patients love it. ‘Give me the Z-Pak.’ For most of where we use it, probably the best option is not to give an antibiotic, quite frankly.”

The side effects of the increasing toxicity of antibiotics make them a remedy of last resort. It is now proven that even one or two rounds of antibiotics can disturb the balance of digestive flora in such a way as to set a person on a life-long struggle with compromised health. The benefits do not outweigh the risks for many common infection situations that are often viral in nature and do not respond to antibiotics.

General fitness, a healthy diet, getting enough sleep, and good stress management skills are your basic strategies for healthy immunity. Many nutrients help your immune system work better. They can be used to boost you up when you are around sick people, at the onset of any symptoms, and to help out your immune system during a prolonged battle. If you do get into a situation when you truly need to take an antibiotic then you need to protect both your digestive tract and cardiovascular system. 

The new study points out that those at the greatest risk for a problem are those with preexisting cardiovascular health problems. However, even children are at risk for antibiotic injury, which in my experience is often damage to their brains and learning ability, in addition to serious digestive disruption. Thus, these suggestions apply to people of any age should they need to use antibiotics.