New hospital danger to avoid....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 8-23-2012

One of the now most dangerous and little known problems in being hospitalized today is to get an infection there that is like a super diarrhea where the bacteria is very resistant to antibiotics.

It’s called C. Difficile  or C Diff. now.

My Dad a few years ago went to the hospital for a hip replacement and had it and was to come home.  But he had to stay something like 10 days longer because he contracted this bug.

He was able to recover and came home.  His doctors finally found an antibiotic that worked.  Even at that, it was a horrible experience to go through.  And, it wasn’t cheap!

But since then, the situation with C Diff has gotten worse!

Now C Diff is as likely to kill people as car accidents!

Here’s two recent web links about this:

http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Deadly-Bacteria-C--Diff-Runs-Rampant/story.xhtml?story_id=10000247R1RW

“c diff  now causes 30,000 US deaths a year compared with 32,000 for car accidents”

C. difficile - MayoClinic.com

www.mayoclinic.com/health/c-difficile/DS00736

In recent years, C. difficile infections have become more frequent, more severe and more difficult to treat.

The first one is the attention getter of course.

But there are 3 ways to protect yourself from this disease.

1.  Protect your health and stay safe while driving so you avoid being hospitalized!

Protecting your health is a big but doable job.  Driving safety is a lot easier and shorter to learn, so I’ll summarize the key points here because not driving safely is also most likely to cause you an unplanned hospital visit.

2.  Make getting C Diff less likely and recovering from it more likely in yourself even if you do go to the hospital for some reason. 

3.  Ask your doctor who practices at the hospital you are most likely to be in to help you be sure that hospital knows and is following the state of the art steps to prevent two thirds of the cases of this stuff in advance!

1.  Protect your health and stay safe while driving so you avoid being hospitalized.

If you use the information in our posts and similar information on eating right and exercising and avoiding tobacco smoke and taking key supplements, you may well avoid being hospitalized with heart attacks, strokes, and cancers, and other problems!

But for many of you, the most likely surprise visit you’ll make to a hospital will be if you are injured in a car accident.

So, here’s a couple of quick words about avoiding that since we’ve not covered that lately.

a) ALWAYS wear your seat belt if you are driving or in a moving car.   

Here’s why to wear your seat belt even for two block trips:

Most accidents happen in the short trips you make every day because the amount of them is so huge.  And, even at low speeds, an accident can injure you enough to send you to the hospital if you are foolish enough to not be wearing your seat belt.  If you ARE wearing your seat belt, you’ll likely walk away uninjured from the same accident.  That’s a huge difference indeed!

At higher speeds, even if you wear your seat belt, there is some chance an accident will kill you or sent you to the hospital.

So, why wear your seat belt?

Because you are only a third as likely to die or be injured enough to have to visit the hospital or have to stay there long if you are wearing your seat belt. 

By wearing your seat belt, even at high speeds you improve the odds in your favor by three to one!

As Jack London once said, when you can do that, “that’s the way to bet!”

b)  If you need to use your cell phone while driving, use a hands free set up; have a consistent way of using it that needs little attention; drive safely and pay your first attention to that; and let the person you are talking to know in advance or right at first that you are driving and may need to stop talking or listening at times; and for some conversations that are more demanding set  a time to talk instead of having that conversation while driving.

If you can’t do that, turn your cell phone off and don’t turn it on to make calls while you are driving.

c)  Absolutely refuse to text while driving even if you text a lot.  No excuses. 

If you text, you WILL take your attention off your driving at times for long enough that should you need to be driving at those times, you also WILL be in an accident.

Such accidents are often spectacularly horrible too. 

People have run over little kids who were holding hands with a parent.  People have literally driven into concrete posts and oncoming traffic. 

Such accidents often will send you to the hospital; and if that’s all that happens, you were very lucky.

Do yourself a favor and refuse to ever go there!  NEVER text and drive.

d)  Don’t drive after more than 3 drinks.  Yes, you are more likely to be in an accident after even one drink. 

But the accidents that are likely to send you to the hospital become much more likely after 4 or more drinks.  Have someone else drive. Spend the night.  Or wait several hours to recover first.  Or, of course stick to two or less drinks!  And if you know you’ll be driving, one is better at least until you get home.

e)  Tailgating is like playing Russian Roulette. 

Avoid pointing a loaded gun at your head and don’t tailgate.  And, if you are forced to which happens at times, realize the danger you are in and remove yourself from it as soon as you can.

When you stop, leave enough room to go around if the car you are behind dies and can’t move.  That will start you out with enough following distance at low speeds.  And, a side benefit is that you will often save yourself a lot of time going around other cars that for whatever reason didn’t start moving when the light changed, etc.

Then stay back enough that you can count thousand one slightly fast between when the back of the car in front goes by a point and when the front of your car does.

The slow count of thousand one, thousand two is safer but dramatically less practical. 

However, just the doable gap I just described, improves your odds by over five or ten to one compared with less which is dangerous tailgating!

ALWAYS maintain that minimum safety margin.

In fact, one Taxicab company owner bought a money losing taxi business and totally insisted his drivers follow this one rule.

Overnight, the drivers were in so many fewer accidents, the company became profitable.

2.  Make getting C Diff less likely and recovering from it more likely in yourself even if you do go to the hospital for some reason. 

This is particularly important to do if you are scheduled for surgery and you know days or weeks in advance when that will be.

And, it’s a good idea at all times too since these methods protect you from other illnesses and you can have something send you to the hospital by surprise.

Here’s the list and the first two are most important.

Take at least 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 every day.  And, 5,000 to 10,000 iu a day may be better and is likely to be if you haven’t already been taking enough vitamin D3.

a) Recent research has found that the killer cells in your immune system need and use vitamin D3 to arm themselves and become fully effective.  If they find no vitamin D or too little of it, they may fail to protect you when they otherwise would have succeeded.

b) Take probiotics once a day.  These bacteria are those in yogurt and similarly beneficial bacteria of other kinds.

If you do that, when the bacteria of C Diff show up, their potential turf in your gut is populated by good guy bacteria that will fight them off because that’s the probiotic bacteria’s home turf at that point!

Just doing these first two things is critical.  I’d not want to be hospitalized today without them!

Not only do they make you far less likely to get C Diff, doing them makes it more likely you’ll survive and recover if you do get C Diff!

But you can double that effect with these:

c)  The supplement astragalus is also good to take as it strongly strengthens your immune system.  In fact, this effect is so great taking astragalus helps make getting cancer initially less likely AND makes is it less likely a cancer you got rid of will come back.

d)  Taking an Agaricus Blazei supplement or other extracts of other mushrooms may be as helpful as taking astragalus but I’ve researched that less.

e) Take a good multivitamin and mineral supplement, some extra zinc, and at least 500 mg a day of extra vitamin C.  People who do this also have stronger immune systems.

f) Work hard to be easy to like and live with and be good to the people around you.  That boosts your immune system too.

g) Be prudent with your money.  Money problems can cause enough stress to lower your immune response.

3.  Ask your doctor who practices at the hospital you are most likely to be in to help you be sure that hospital knows and is following the state of the art steps to prevent two thirds of the cases of this stuff in advance!

You haven’t time and likely aren’t in a position to ask the hospital if they are doing these things or point out they should be now that C Diff has become so dangerous.

But your doctor goes to that hospital often and is at risk personally.

And your doctor knows his or her patients he or she has successfully treated could die anyway from C Diff if that hospital is not yet taking these preventive steps.

Those 3 steps can cut YOUR risk from C Diff by an enormous amount.

You can cut your risk from C Diff by using them.