Archive for category: Live Blood Analysis

KATARZYNA MICKIEWICZ, THE CONVERSATION

Widespread antibiotic use is largely to blame for the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria, which is currently one of the biggest threats to global health. Not only does antibiotic resistance already cause an estimated 700,000 deaths a year, it’s also made numerous infections, including pneumonia, tuberculosis, and gonorrhoea, harder to treat.

Without knowing how to stop bacteria from developing antibiotic resistance, it’s predicted that preventable diseases could cause 10 million deaths a year by 2050.

Some of the ways that bacteria become resistant to antibiotics is through changes in the bacteria’s genome. For example, bacteria can pump the antibiotics out, or they can break the antibiotics down. They can also stop growing and divide, which makes them difficult to spot for the immune system.

However, our research has focused on another little known method that bacteria use to become antibiotic resistant. We have directly shown that bacteria can “change shape” in the human body to avoid being targeted by antibiotics – a process that requires no genetic changes for the bacteria to continue growing.

Virtually all bacteria are surrounded by a structure called the cell wall. The wall is like a thick jacket which protects against environmental stresses and prevents the cell from bursting. It gives bacteria a regular shape (for example, a rod or a sphere), and helps them divide efficiently.

Human cells don’t possess a cell wall (or “jacket”). Because of this, it’s easy for the human immune system to recognise bacteria as an enemy because its cell wall is noticeably different. And, because the cell wall exists in bacteria but not in humans, it’s an excellent target for some of our best and most commonly used antibiotics, such as penicillin. In other words, antibiotics targeting the wall can kill bacteria without harming us.

However, bacteria can occasionally survive without their cell wall. If the surrounding conditions are able to protect the bacteria from bursting, they can turn into so-called “L-forms”, which are bacteria that don’t have a cell wall. These bacteria were discovered in 1935 by Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel, who named them after the Lister Institute where she was working at the time.

In a lab, we often use sugar to create a suitably protective environment. In the human body, this change in form is typically triggered by antibiotics that target the bacteria’s cell wall, or certain immune molecules – such as lysozyme, a molecule that’s present in our tears which helps protect us from bacterial infections.

Bacteria without a cell wall often become fragile and lose their regular shape. However, they also become partially invisible to our immune system, and completely resistant to all types of antibiotics that specifically target the cell wall.

Scientists long suspected that L-form switching might contribute to recurrent infections by helping bacteria hide from the immune system and resist the antibiotics. However, it was difficult to find evidence for this theory due to the elusive nature of L-forms and lack of appropriate methods to detect them.

Watching bacteria change shape

Our study, published in Nature Communications, looked specifically at bacterial species associated with recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs). It found that many different bacterial species – including E. coli and Enterococcus – can indeed survive as L-forms in the human body.

This is something that has never been directly proven before. We were able to detect these sneaky bacteria using fluorescent probes that recognise bacterial DNA.

We tested urine samples from elderly patients with recurrent UTIs by growing them in a petri dish high in sugars. Not only did this environment help protect bacteria from bursting, it also isolated the L-form bacteria that were present in these samples.

In a separate experiment, we were able to see the whole process take place in living zebrafish embryos in the presence of antibiotics.

Importantly, our study shows that antibiotics need to be tested in conditions more reflective of the human body. The ones that are currently used in the medical laboratory don’t provide enough protection for delicate L-forms to survive.

Before we can fully understand how important L-form switching is compared to other forms of antibiotic resistance, further research using more patients will be needed. It will also be important to investigate what role L-forms may play in other recurrent infections, such as sepsis or pulmonary infections.

Until now, research into L-forms has been a controversial field, but our hope is that these findings will motivate more research into L-forms in disease situations. Our hope is that these findings will help find a way to clear these sneaky bacteria from our body.

Combining cell wall active antibiotics with ones that would kill L-forms might be one solution of fighting antibiotic resistant infections.

Our battle with bacteria is ongoing. As we come up with new strategies to fight them, they come up with ways to fight back. Our study highlights yet another way that bacteria adapt that we’ll need to take into account in our continuing battle with infectious disease.

https://theconversation.com/antibiotic-resistance-researchers-have-directly-proven-that-bacteria-can-change-shape-inside-humans-to-avoid-antibiotics-124296

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The September training course is coming up on Sept 24th and we are starting to get a lot of questions about live blood analysis and the online training course.

We invite you to a short live webinar to answer your questions on Tuesday Sept 27th at 7pm.

Join us live or send us your question to info@livebloodlondon.co.uk

Register for the webinar to receive a recording afterwards. 

Click here to register https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7585584996978856706

If you are curious about live & dry blood analysis or the oxidative stress test or are interested to know more about the procedure of live blood analysis & what it can do, the training course, equipment or if you have any other questions – please join us on the webinar with Dr Okker Botha our course tutor on Tuesday 24th August at 7pm.

If you can’t join us, please email us your questions to info@livebloodonline.com and register for the webinar to receive a copy of the recording with your question answered (subject to time limitations of course).

The latest online training course will begin Tuesday 24th Sept, you will find more info at www.livebloodonline.com

We hope to see you on the webinar.

Elizabeth & Dr Okker

We are now on week 4 of the Live Blood Analysis Training Course where we are continuing with red blood cell anomalies.

We are looking at Poikilocytes, Target cells, Simple Membrane Protrusion/Acanthocytes, Echinocytes, Keratocytes, Schistocytes and Anisocytes (below).

We are learning how to identify the anomalies and about why we are seeing them.

We study the causes of the anomalies and then the best way of treating them via dietary changes, lifestyle and natural supplementation if necessary.

We can always refer to the manual and the training site for further information and to find pictures & videos of the anomalies.

Anisocytes are often associated with B12 deficiency and a client showing anisocytes will often suffer from fatigue.

Our tutor explains that the fatigue is due to 2 factors, read more here

How many tests and procedures do you know of that are truly a part of preventative medicine? A regular blood sugar test? Yearly laboratory blood tests with your GP? CT or MRI scans?

For example, having a regular blood sugar test is not part of prevention. The reason for this is quite simple. High blood sugar means that the body has failed at all its attempts to regulate the blood sugar. An abnormally high blood sugar level is a process that takes a long time to develop, with many countermeasures used by the body in its attempts to manage the situation. If you were to prevent high blood sugar you would need to be able to identify imbalances many years before the blood sugar reads high on a standard sugar test.

Live blood analysis detects many imbalances that cannot be detected through conventional investigations. It is an invaluable tool in preventative medicine is it uncovers imbalances that, if left unchecked, will lead to a number of chronic diseases. Many of these imbalances are brought on by nutritional imbalances and poor dietary and lifestyle choices. It is a well-known fact that most chronic diseases are exacerbated by diet and lifestyle.

How do you motivate your clients to change their lifestyle?

With so many chronic diseases that have been proven to be caused by lifestyle, natural health practitioners spend much of their time telling their clients to change their diet and lifestyle. However, changing one’s diet might be one of the most difficult things to do. One of the greatest benefits of live blood analysis is being able to motivate clients to make the necessary changes, and to show them the positive impact of this. This visual impact is very important. It was shown in a study that people who were given the actual images of their damaged arteries after an angiogram were significantly more compliant in making changes to their diet and lifestyle than those who only saw the images once. Being able to see the impact of poor dietary and lifestyle choices and to refer back to those images has a very powerful effect on keeping people motivated.