You cant protect yourself with antibiotics. Misuse of these "wonder" drugs, which used to be very effective in their proper place of health crisis intervention, likely caused the plethora of new bugs and diseases that plague our country now. Our physicians are unwittingly engaging in biological warfare against the American public, far worse than anything done by Sadaam Hussein.
It happens by selective breeding. Each unnecessary prescription of an antibiotic kills off the weak members of any bacterial colony that happens to be present (including the beneficial bacteria in your intestines). Only the strongest bacteria survive. With the competition for space and food removed, these resistant bugs multiply rapidly. Repeated misuse of different antibiotics against a particular bacterial strain, quickly breeds bugs that are resistant to all of them.
Worse, wrongful use of antibiotics against self-limiting infections, hitting the flea sledgehammer, never allows your immune system to develop its own powerful resistance. Most children in America today have their immunity compromised by antibiotics wrongfully prescribed for every scratch and sniffle. Its a shameful indictment of medicine, to see multitudes of our offspring with ear drains and repeated ear, nose and throat infections, against which they have never been allowed to develop resistance, because of massive use of unnecessary drugs.
Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, told us many years ago about these potential problems. In 1982, when the crisis first loomed, a group of 150 scientists led by microbiologist Dr. Stuart Levy of Tufts University, warned that unless we apply antibiotics correctly, "we may find a time when they are no longer useful to combat disease." Well Dr. Levy we didn't heed the warning, and the crisis had been upon us for over a decade. In 1995 alone, physicians wrote over 4,000,000 useless antibiotic prescriptions for the common cold and 'flu viruses. They continue this malpractice year in and year out, despite clear instructions in the PHYSICIANS DESK REFERENCE that the drugs are effective only against bacteria.
That's nothing compared with hospitals. Recent studies show that up to half of all antibiotic use in American hospitals is improper. This criminal malpractice, which I have seen myself in hospitals, has bred hundreds of man-made, antibiotic resistant bugs, including new strains of tuberculosis, pneumonia, E coli, salmonella, and meningitis. They make hospitals very dangerous places to be.