Back in March, my 3 year old daughter got a staph infection on her leg. For any parent, or even if it’s yourself, this can be one of the most terrifying situations you can find yourself in.
It’s hard not to hit the panic button, and let’s be honest, some level of panic is appropriate because it demands immediate focused attention. This is what it looked like on day 2 ——>
(The ring is purple pen)
I went to pick her up from my mom’s after work, and while getting her pajamas on, noticed her calf had a HUGE swelling (like a golf ball) with an angry and large, deeply red head that looked like a very bad spider bite… except that I knew it wasn’t, because she had been picking at a small bump for months that our doctor had diagnosed as being from the virus Molluscum Contagiosum.
Apparently Molluscum Contagiosum is quite common in small children. She had two of these mysterious little bumps form within the first month at preschool, one on her calf, and one on her opposite thigh. and while they didn’t spread, or get worse, she is a picker, and was constantly making them bleed and scab, and than picking off the scab. Even keeping a band-aid on her was incredibly difficult.
I made several attempts to apply anti-viral tinctures and salves to treat them, but let’s be honest, I have 3 children and a lot going on, and remembering to consistently apply medicine to the areas (which was a stressful battle of will power between my daughter and myself every time) twice daily wasn’t happening. Our doctor had informed us that it would likely take up to a year for the Molluscum bumps to go away and that they were harmless, and even though she was constantly picking, they kept healing nicely and quickly as she picked, without any redness or cause for concern, aside from scarring.
It wasn’t until 6 months had went by with her picking and picking… that, for whatever reason, one of them did end up getting infected. Probably her immune system was working really hard already at that time, being that it was early spring and all the pre-school colds and things tend to ramp up around then.
I remember when I was in elementary school, a little boy in my brother’s grade had picked at a chicken pox scab, which resulted in him getting a flesh-eating infection and having his leg amputated. I can’t recall if it was staph or strep that was at the root of his infection, but the memory traumatized me. I vowed that I would learn everything I could to be able to try and prevent anything like that from ever happening to my children, or anyone else. That little boy had had access to the best antibiotics the hospital had, and yet, they were ineffective and unable to save his leg. I write this, not as a judgement or critique of those who cared for him, I know they did their best and that sometimes things are just beyond our control. However, the relevance or that boy’s story for me, is that bacterial antibiotic resistance has been on the rise and is an ever increasing problem. Bacteria have found numerous solutions to antibiotics. Here are some of the ones I know about:
They can choose to not metabolize the antibiotic, or they can even change how they do metabolize it, sometimes even learning to use it as food.
They learn how to degrade or destroy the antibiotics by creating chemicals that inactivate or disable them somehow.
They can alter their structure so that the intended internal target cannot be affected by the antibiotics.
They can remove the drugs from their cells as fast as it enters, or even prevent entry by altering membrane structure or permeability.
They can alter the rate of absorption into their cells and keep its presence below toxic thresholds.
Creating resistant or alternative metabolic pathways that aren’t susceptible to the antibiotics.
Plus, once a bacteria develops a method for countering an antibiotic, it shares instructions with how to do it with all other bacteria at an incredible speed. Basically, they can trade their DNA like children trade Pokémon cards, and even bacteria viruses called bacteriophages seem to be involved with the transfer of resistance information between different species of bacteria.
The writing is on the wall… and it has been for a long time. Penicillin was first used commercially in 1945. A year later 14% of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria were resistant. By 1950, 59%, by 1995, 95%.
Researchers studying bacterial antibiotic resistance placed a single bacterial species in a nutrient solution of sublethal doses of newly developed and rare antibiotic, and found that within a short period of time, the bacteria developed resistance to that antibiotic and at the same time, to seven other antibiotics that it had never before encountered— some of which were structurally dissimilar to the first. Scientist Stuart Levy observes that “it’s almost as if bacteria strategically anticipate the confrontation of other drugs when they resist one”.
Once in the presence of antibiotics, bacterial learning rate spontaneously increases by several orders of magnitude. Tetracycline, in even extremely low doses, stimulates by 100-fold the transfer, mobilization, and movement of transposons and plasmids. I want everyone to stop and think about the use of antibiotics in our agricultural practices, and in those being fed to animals and humans.
Antibiotics in their pure or metabolized states, form a significant part of hospital waste streams. Millions of pounds enter waste water streams every year, and millions of pounds more are simply thrown into the garbage when they expire, where they will eventually pollute the ground and ground-water too. Once they’re in our waste water systems, they travel to treatment plants and pass relatively unchanged into the world’s water supplies. Add on top of that millions of people take antibiotics each year and those end up being excreted into the environment too. Add to that millions of pounds used in agriculture, and the added antibacterial sops and disinfectants used that also make their way into our water systems… Basically, the bacteria (and every organism) on earth are constantly being subjected to sub-lethal doses of antibiotics, all of the time.
As one of my favorite authors and herbalists states, “Just because medicine is intended to alleviate human suffering does not mean we are exempt from the environmental consequences of using it”.
So back to my daughter’s Staph infection on her leg. I knew I wanted to try and avoid antibiotics. Firstly, the clock is ticking on whether or not any antibiotic will even work anymore. Soon there will be a day when no man-made antibiotic will work anymore. Like this BBC article shows, “No new classes of antibiotics have been invented for decades. In fact, all the antibiotics brought to the market in the past 30 years have been variations on existing drugs discovered by 1984”. Big-Pharma companies have all but entirely given up on creating new antibiotics. It just isn’t generating them any income. It takes years and years to find, create and test out a new antibiotic, and bacteria start producing resistance to it within 24 hours.
So if antibiotics may not work, or soon definitely won’t work, I didn’t want to rely on them now. Secondly, I didn’t want to wipe out my daughter’s microbiome. Because, not only are we living in a sea of bacteria, all the time, but we are home to thousands upon thousands of different species of bacteria that end up adding up to about 1.5 quadrillion bacteria that call us home (and probably 10x that in fungi).
To make it more complicated, there are scientists who believe and have strong evidence that since bacteria have such flexible genetics, that there may not be such thing as isolated species of bacteria, but rather, a continuum where genetics are constantly exchanged and changed and one species of bacteria can become another by choosing genetics based on their environment and needs. Further more, these researchers are showing how gene exchange can happen not only between bacteria, but between microbes in our own cells. The phenomena is called Pleomorphism. So, we may not necessarily have “pathogenic” microbes at all, but have merely forced bacteria to evolve into certain forms due to environmental pressure and as a result our health can be impacted further.
I believe in co-existing with these organisms in a way that ultimately leads to better health and vitality. That means not waging war on them with antibiotics, and not fearing “evil pathogens”, but instead, focusing on making sure my children and myself are well nourished and have a thriving and diverse population of microbes in our bodies, and that we support the environment of our bodies to be hospitable to species and/or forms of bacteria and other organisms that support our health in a mutually beneficial relationship.
When I think about the gut microbiome, I am aware and grateful that our ability to avoid cancer is most likely dependent on the biodiversity and integrity of our microbiome in the body because cell-to-cell communication in humans is the result of the microbiome and the tiny little redox-signaling molecules they create that act like a wireless network.
I was also aware of the research that shows a female taking a single course of antibiotics for a UTI increases the chances of a major clinical depression by 25% within the following 12 months, as well as a 19% increase in the likely hood of anxiety attacks and panic disorders. I believe that has a lot to do with disrupting the microbiome which produces most of our serotonin, dopamine and GABA.
Some of our immune cells even look and behave like microbes (it is quite possible that they evolved from them, like our mitochondria) and antibiotics are known to kill immune cells too. So when factoring the risk/benefits for treating my daughter, I wanted to take care not to ignore the real risks to her body that antibiotics present. There is immediate impact on the immune system, but also on the microbiome, which undermines nutrient absorption, waste removal, production of neurotransmitters, effects on hormones, and all kinds of things. I wanted to use the information I have collected over the years, and try it out. Mainly, because if it didn’t work, I knew we could still resort to trying Pharmaceuticals, but if it did work, this would be just another example of first hand experience in successfully using plant medicine to treat illness in our family. This list is steadily growing, and as it does, my confidence, love and gratitude for herbal medicine, grows all the more.
So what is a “Staph” infection, and how did I know she had one?
Staph refers to Staphylococcus aureus and there are many species that are now multi-drug resistant (MRSA). Most MRSA infections in the general community initially present as small red bumps that are similar to pimples or perhaps spider bites or boils. They become larger and more painful and can continue to spread and go deeper, sometimes making it necessary to amputate affected limbs. Many people all over the world die from it each year. It’s not something to take lightly.
To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure if this was staph or strep (streptococcus) which can more rarely also cause a necrotizing fasciitis. From the research I had done, it appears the strep is far more rare, and doesn’t usually start or appear quite the way my daughter’s did, which seems more common in staph infections. Luckily, the herbs I would use to treat either one are the same.
So What Did I Do?
First, I established my boundaries and comfort zone. I took a pen and drew a circle around the outline of the redness on her wound. I told myself, that if the next day, the infection spread past the line and got worse, I would seek help. But, if it began receding, and looked better, and my daughter did not develop a high fever or any other worrying symptoms, that I would continue with my treatment and reassess daily.
The next morning, it had not gotten worse. It already was dramatically less swollen and had seemed to have calmed down. I have an acquaintance who is a doctor, so I flagged her down at pick-up time at our school to take a look and confirm that we were in fact dealing with likely staph. She took one look at it, made a face no mother wants to see and said, “yes, that doesn’t look good at all”. We chatted about what I was doing and she agreed that if it was working and healing, to keep it up, but if started getting worse, to seek help. So two things were confirmed. I knew my instincts to keep on it and take it seriously were correct, and I knew I was doing the right thing by setting that boundary and drawing that literal line.
Day 3, March 12, 2021
Day 4, March 13, 2021 (Note: I started by applying a large rectangular band-aid to cover her leg, pulling this off twice a day, created damage to her skin, which also got mildly infected. That’s when I switched to gauze.
I enlisted the help of two of the best topical antibiotics I know of. Usnea and Raw Wild Honey and/or Manuka Honey. There are other herbs you can use to treat Staph or Strep infections, which are: Cryptolepis, Sida, Alchornea, Bidens, the Berberines, Usnea, Juniper berry, Isatis and honey. This is an incomplete list, as depending on severity, there are also many herbs you would be well advised to take internally as immune modulators and supports.
Now, Usnea is easily collected around here and I had some strong, duel-extract tincture I had made last year. Usnea has been found in clinical trials to be effective primarily against gram-positive bacteria including staph and strep are. I washed the wound twice, daily with the tincture of Usnea, once in the morning and once at bedtime and than applied the raw honey poultice.
March 15, this is how much honey to use. It is a GENEROUS application.
Enough gauze wrapped around that it didn’t let honey ooze through.
Honey (raw) is a potent antibiotic for all resistant bacteria, including staph and strep, that could infect the skin and/or wounds. It also promotes the healing of wounds, keeps them moist, soothes inflamed tissues and stimulates skin and muscle regeneration. It’s even effective for bacterial biofilms. To use it, you just need to apply it, directly and without dilution and cover it with a sterile bandage. Change it once or twice a day. In my experience, there is nothing that compares the the effectiveness of using raw honey on wounds. There have been over 30 clinical trials conducted on its use.
March 17, 2021 (Note now I’m also treating the infection that spread from the wounds that were created by pealing off a sticky band-aid twice a day on her sensitive skin for the first couple of days before I switched to gauze)
March 18, 2021 This is what it looks like 8 days after the initial acute onset of infection.
At around day 4 or 5, I also started making a giant pot of a strong herbal decoction of white oak bark, witch hazel bark, some comfrey leaves and Myrrh Resin. I would pour that into the bathtub and have her soak in the tub. We did this daily until around Day 8 or 9 or so and I felt we were really on the winning side of this thing. I used a generous handful of each of those dried herbs in the biggest pot I have (which must be 3 gallons).
This was March 18 before an herb bath
This was March 18 two hours later, after the herb bath.
March 22nd. Mostly just those two spots, almost healed, and the large one especially looking so much better. At this point we just apply Usnea tincture 2x per day and the honey only at night.
And this is what that leg looked like all healed up about a month later. You can barely see the little scar.
Here is the leg all healed up in a larger photo for context. I’m confident that scar will be non-existent eventually too.
So, to reiterate. I was really grateful to be able to apply my theoretical knowledge of what “should” work and actually be able to see that yes, it did work, it worked really well. We were able to treat what started out as a pretty bad skin infection, completely with the use of honey and herbal medicines. We got to keep our daughter’s microbiome strong and work with her body in ways that supported her immune system, not against it.
Important things to keep in mind:
If I had needed to, I would have added in internal doses of tinctures too. Luckily (because she is 3 and giving yucky tinctures is tricky) we didn’t need to do that, the topical applications were effective on their own.
I really want to reiterate though, at no point did we put our daughter in any danger. We assessed daily, made sure things were going in the directly of healing, looked out for any symptoms of concern, and we were extremely diligent with consistency for applying medicines, bandaging and helping her rest while she was healing. Infections are nothing to be laissez-faire about. This is not a case of “do-nothing-and-see-what-happens” because what can happen is literally losing a limb or even your life.
But my goal is to help take herbalism from a “hey, try this yummy tea” to a place of “hey, this can save your life”. If our days of relying on antibiotics are numbered (and they are)… than we may as well get comfortable treating anything we can, without them, to prepare for the days where we will quite factually, be without them. I would personally rather prepare myself now, while back up is a phone call or a car-ride away, rather than only learning when it’s our only option.
There are a lot of ways that over-use of antibiotics has contributed to our health crisis, and I don’t want to ascribe to that model of health-care (or rather, disease management) any longer. I will not live in fear of microbes, I would rather live in awe and gratitude towards them, and work towards cooperation with Nature, accepting and honoring our part of it, instead of trying to live in a false-hood of being separate from it.
That being said, I do appreciate where Western Medicine shines, like in emergency accident situations, and I am not saying that there isn’t a need for, or an important place for it… obviously there is. But there are more ways to heal than one, and we have more information than we have ever previously had… and our current procedures have simply not caught up with current knowledge yet. It’s high-time we integrate holistic healing and herbal medicine into our toolbox for dealing with sickness and injury, for the best outcomes for all.
Thanks for reading, let me know what you think in a comment!