Food Poisoning: Was it the Potato Salad or Your Antibiotic?

Bacterial food poisoning is a serious issue that can make you extremely sick and even land you in the hospital, if it’s serious enough. Some people even end up having long-term problems and just ‘never feel right’ after having a run-in with salmonella food poisoning or one of the other bacteria than can end up in the digestive tract and cause this uncomfortable and potentially dangerous condition.

Antibiotics Can be One of the Food Poisoning Causes

While everyone believes that they got food poisoning from a meal out or the potato salad that had sat in the sun too long at a picnic, another one of the food poisoning causes that is almost never considered, even by doctors, is antibiotic therapy.

Antibiotics work by killing off bacteria in the body that are causing illness. We like to believe that each antibiotic is targeted to the individual bacteria that is making us sick, however, that is not the case. Antibiotics might kill some bacteria than others, but by their very nature they will kill any bacteria that is susceptible to their method of action. But humans don’t just have ‘bad’ bacteria; we also have ‘good’ bacteria, most of which reside in the digestive tract. Every day, science is learning more and more about the critical functions these Good Bacteria have on our health, including regulating:

• Mood
• Nutrient Absorption
• The actual creation of many nutrients
• Immunity
• Intestinal Permeability
• Gene Expression
• Weight Setpoint

This is literally just the tip of the iceberg of the functions of the bacteria that live in our digestive tract. And they are so numerous and have so much genetic material that their genetic material contributes orders of magnitude more genetic material to the functioning of our body than our own does. It makes one wonder if our bacteria actually make us who we are, in many ways, even more than our own genetic material does.

How Does This Contribute to Bacterial Food Poisoning?

When you take antibiotics, these drugs indiscriminately kill bacteria in the gut. The death of these bacteria can lead to dysfunction on their own by limiting any of the beneficial functions they do, such as when Antibiotics Help to Create Autoimmune Disease, but they also pave the way for bacteria that are detrimental to health to take over where these good bacteria used to be.

Most people are familiar with the phenomenon of Candida infection in women where candida yeast take over where good bacteria used to be after antibiotics are taken. More serious, but less well-known problems, are those of an Intestinal Infection Called C-Difficile and bacterial food poisoning.

But Isn’t Bacterial Food Poisoning from Food?

Yes, and I’m certainly taking a liberty calling it ‘bacterial food poisoning‘ when it’s not actually from food, however, the problem and the effects are the same for you. Food poisoning comes from the overgrowth of specific bacteria, usually bacteria such as different types of Salmonella¹ or a lesser known bacteria called Clostridicum perfringens, or C. perfringins, for short.

We all have these bacteria in small amounts in our digestive tract, and when antibiotics are taken these bacteria can flourish, leading to an illness equivalent to C. perfringens or Salmonella food poisoning ²! I wonder how many people have mistaken Antibiotic Associated Diarrhea for bacterial food poisoning and blamed their Aunt Tilly’s potato salad or the local restaurant!

It Could Have Been Prevented

While most cases of antibiotic associated diarrhea from these bacteria have only caused illness lasting a day or two, unfortunately, the disruption in gut bacteria can last years, maybe even a lifetime. Even worse, Half of All Antibiotic Use is Unnecessary, and so most of these serious disruptions in gut bacteria,that could cause a lifetime of health problems, were not even given in response to a serious health crisis, but were given for situations where an antibiotic wasn’t even necessary or wouldn’t have worked at all!  Even giving just a simple probiotic designed to work with antibiotics, such as Prescript Assist, could have prevented many of these unnecessary intestinal overgrowth infections.

Be safe and always do your own research regarding your health and any medications that are given to you. Too often, we put our health into the hands of people that claim to be the experts, but really don’t know much about the drugs they are giving to you. A class of antibiotics called the Fluoroquinolone drugs, the major topic of this website, are extremely dangerous and are given indiscriminately without any regard to the serious and even deadly health problems they might cause and, even worse, they are Unnecessary Half of the Time. Bacterial overgrowth in the gut is only the tip of the iceberg of health problems one can get from taking Fluoroquinolone and other antibiotics. If you are not familiar with this class of antibiotics, please read the Introduction to Fluoquinolone Drugs so you are well-informed about the dangers of these drugs.