What Are You Sick And Tired Of?
Get The NEWSS, And Cool It With Antibiotics
by Michael D. Hume, M.S.
I know so many people who're sick these days. Me, my wife, our best friends... the kids... the grandkids... it seems to be high times for the bugs out there, and a tough time for us humans. The change of seasons from winter to spring has brought some need for adjustment to our bodies; and the budding trees and plants, while beautiful, are busy filling the air with allergens which are particularly troublesome to many of us. Add a flu bug here or there, and you've got a lot of dry coughing going on.
Like my friends and family members, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired! Fortunately, I'm finally getting over one of the most stubborn flus I've had for years. Others I know are still in the midst of battle with the bugs. How about you? If you're in business for yourself, or if you have a particularly demanding leadership mission, you might feel like you don't have time to be sick... and you're probably right. Of course, the bugs don't know (or care) anything about your mission.
When we were kids, we went to the doctor (my small town doctor was known for pacing his waiting room during times of slow business and muttering, "c'mon, bugs. Get 'em"), and he or she wrote us a prescription for antibiotics. Those wonder drugs made you better faster, and we're lucky to have them. But here's the sad fact of life these days: the bugs have adjusted, too. Resistance to antibiotics is a major problem today.
Seventy years after the start of their widespread use, antibiotics are still the main go-to treatment for bacterial infections. However - and here's another instance in which your big-government health system is not too helpful - drugs aren't being discovered and approved fast enough to keep up with the bugs' ability to adjust and develop resistance (and that's very likely to become far worse after Obamacare takes full effect in America). So while the health threat is huge, so is the economic threat... as market incentives to develop new drugs decline in proportion to the increase in government control and regulation, we could eventually lose our ability to ever beat the bugs.
The World Health Organization (WHO) dedicated their big event late last year, World Health Day, to focus global attention on antibiotic resistance. But that big-government organization's primary push was to draw attention to the antibiotics which are routinely sprayed on crops and fed to livestock. Those practices are part of the problem, to be sure, but the answer may lie more in creating better agricultural treatments than in discontinuing them (recall the similar world-wide alarm in the 1960s over malaria spraying which resulted in discontinuing the practice - and killing thousands of people with malaria). But it's a problem when these antibiotics find their way into our food supply in large quantities, and are then able to create drug-resistant bugs in humans.
WHO reported in October on a particularly nasty bug, Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P.a.), which is a tough little customer and resistant to a wide array of antibiotics. P.a. causes infections in people with compromised immune systems, such as HIV and cancer patients, and it's also responsible for hospital infections like those of the urinary tract, pneumonia, and burn infections. It kills about half its victims! And for the economists out there, those urinary tract infections people get in the hospital cost more than $3.5 billion in the U.S. alone, according to WHO.
Bottom line: when you pick up a routine bug, see if you can ride it out without antibiotics. It'll keep the tougher bugs from building up in your system, even though it makes the current illness a rougher ride. That's the approach I took with my recent flu; I'm pretty sure I could've scored some antibiotics from the doc, but I went the run-its-course route instead. That's why it took a month to get over the dang thing... but, hopefully, I'll be able to kick the bugs with drugs when I really need them.
Another great idea is to stay in shape, so you're less vulnerable to illness. Start with Nutrition, Exercise, Water, Sleep, and Supplements - the five key daily health habits I call "The NEWSS." Cut the garbage from your diet, work out 3-6 times a week, get two liters of water every day and eight hours of sleep every night, and take at least one good supplement. The better your overall vitality, the less often you'll have to be sick and tired.
Do what you can to keep your body healthy, and your energy high enough to drive your business mission. When your body is the battlefield between the bugs and the drugs, try to make sure you give the drugs the best chance they can have to help you win.
by Michael D. Hume, M.S.
I know so many people who're sick these days. Me, my wife, our best friends... the kids... the grandkids... it seems to be high times for the bugs out there, and a tough time for us humans. The change of seasons from winter to spring has brought some need for adjustment to our bodies; and the budding trees and plants, while beautiful, are busy filling the air with allergens which are particularly troublesome to many of us. Add a flu bug here or there, and you've got a lot of dry coughing going on.
Like my friends and family members, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired! Fortunately, I'm finally getting over one of the most stubborn flus I've had for years. Others I know are still in the midst of battle with the bugs. How about you? If you're in business for yourself, or if you have a particularly demanding leadership mission, you might feel like you don't have time to be sick... and you're probably right. Of course, the bugs don't know (or care) anything about your mission.
When we were kids, we went to the doctor (my small town doctor was known for pacing his waiting room during times of slow business and muttering, "c'mon, bugs. Get 'em"), and he or she wrote us a prescription for antibiotics. Those wonder drugs made you better faster, and we're lucky to have them. But here's the sad fact of life these days: the bugs have adjusted, too. Resistance to antibiotics is a major problem today.
Seventy years after the start of their widespread use, antibiotics are still the main go-to treatment for bacterial infections. However - and here's another instance in which your big-government health system is not too helpful - drugs aren't being discovered and approved fast enough to keep up with the bugs' ability to adjust and develop resistance (and that's very likely to become far worse after Obamacare takes full effect in America). So while the health threat is huge, so is the economic threat... as market incentives to develop new drugs decline in proportion to the increase in government control and regulation, we could eventually lose our ability to ever beat the bugs.
The World Health Organization (WHO) dedicated their big event late last year, World Health Day, to focus global attention on antibiotic resistance. But that big-government organization's primary push was to draw attention to the antibiotics which are routinely sprayed on crops and fed to livestock. Those practices are part of the problem, to be sure, but the answer may lie more in creating better agricultural treatments than in discontinuing them (recall the similar world-wide alarm in the 1960s over malaria spraying which resulted in discontinuing the practice - and killing thousands of people with malaria). But it's a problem when these antibiotics find their way into our food supply in large quantities, and are then able to create drug-resistant bugs in humans.
WHO reported in October on a particularly nasty bug, Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P.a.), which is a tough little customer and resistant to a wide array of antibiotics. P.a. causes infections in people with compromised immune systems, such as HIV and cancer patients, and it's also responsible for hospital infections like those of the urinary tract, pneumonia, and burn infections. It kills about half its victims! And for the economists out there, those urinary tract infections people get in the hospital cost more than $3.5 billion in the U.S. alone, according to WHO.
Bottom line: when you pick up a routine bug, see if you can ride it out without antibiotics. It'll keep the tougher bugs from building up in your system, even though it makes the current illness a rougher ride. That's the approach I took with my recent flu; I'm pretty sure I could've scored some antibiotics from the doc, but I went the run-its-course route instead. That's why it took a month to get over the dang thing... but, hopefully, I'll be able to kick the bugs with drugs when I really need them.
Another great idea is to stay in shape, so you're less vulnerable to illness. Start with Nutrition, Exercise, Water, Sleep, and Supplements - the five key daily health habits I call "The NEWSS." Cut the garbage from your diet, work out 3-6 times a week, get two liters of water every day and eight hours of sleep every night, and take at least one good supplement. The better your overall vitality, the less often you'll have to be sick and tired.
Do what you can to keep your body healthy, and your energy high enough to drive your business mission. When your body is the battlefield between the bugs and the drugs, try to make sure you give the drugs the best chance they can have to help you win.
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