This month's article by...Kathy Gould, Herbalist.

Herbal Help for Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

Sitting in the hospital for two weeks at his dieing father’s bedside in 1996, Mike could not know that a potentially fatal hospital breed bacteria was working its way into his body.

When Mike returned home after his long vigil, a small rash began to appear around his groin area.  Within a week this rash had spread over his entire body at an alarming rate.  The sores began to grow and become unsightly, to the point he was embarrassed to go out in public.  His naturopathic and medical doctors both looked at him and being unsure just what was happening in Mike’s body decided to take a swab from one of the sores and have a lab test run.  In the meantime, they prescribed both antibiotics and anti-fungals while they waited for the results of the lab test.  Once on these medications the rash grew stronger, became more inflamed and the wounds under his arms and between his legs began to weep.

When the results came back from the lab test, it showed Staphylococcus aureus which appeared to be drug resistant.  The only options the doctors had to offer were more antibiotics.  Although Mike knew he had to do something quick to help rid his body of the staph bacteria, he also realized that at this point his immune system, as well as his entire body was highly over stressed and needed to be built up.  To do all of this at the same time, he made the personal choice to do an herbal program instead of using more antibiotics.  Both his doctors agreed and worked with him and were there to monitor if necessary during the process.

As it had been almost a month and he was getting worse by the day, he was very aggressive with this program.  The program consisted of fresh whole herb tinctures and supplements to combat the bacteria, an inter-mixing of herbs in teas (teas to keep his body well hydrated and help flush out toxins) to support and build his various organs & systems i.e. dandelion, burdock, red root, cleavers etc. for liver and lymphatic, lemon balm, oatstraw, chamomile etc. for the nervous system and so forth, as well as fresh herbs and honey used externally to kill bacteria.

It took a few days to begin to see improvement and then over a month to completely clear the bacteria out of his body but it did work wonderfully to say the least. Once the program was completed, his doctors re-tested him and were delighted to find not only the staph infection completely healed but Mike in an over all state of exuberant health.