New evidence coming from the New University of British Columbia found that early antibiotic treatments (negatively) affect the health of our immune system and its ability to fight specific diseases later on. You may want to reconsider utilizing antibiotics offered by your health care practitioner.

This research corroborates with what other scientists have found – that gut bacteria is responsible for 80% of our immunity to disease. The problem with antibiotic treatments is that they do not discriminate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bacteria in the gut, thus compromising the necessary ratio of bacteria in the gut.

While over-using or misusing antibiotics at any age can have negative long and short term effects, altering our gut bacteria when we are young can be especially damaging. The early use of antibiotics has even been shown to cause obesity later in life. Giving an antibiotic to a toddler for an ear infection, a sore throat, or a host of other ailments may be the last thing parents should do.

The study, published recently in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, explains how different antibiotics affect good bacteria. Continue reading →