Winter is coming, and good news, even the official health insurance company tells us that the less antibiotics we use, the more effective they will be when they are needed.

This idea seems difficult to accept, since 41% of French adults believe that antibiotics cure "everything, and right away" and 2 out of 5 doctors say they are pressured by their patients to prescribe them, even if they are not necessary. It remains to be seen whether it is the pressure of patients or that of the antibiotic laboratories that is stronger...

A common idea is that if you use antibiotics incorrectly, they will become less potent. In fact, it is not the antibiotics that lose their effectiveness but rather the bacteria that become resistant to their action.

In any case, it seems that antibiotics administered without good reason are the main cause of nosocomial infections, infections caused by resistant germs, and contracted in hospitals by many patients.

Every year in Europe, 25,000 patients die from this type of infection which could not be overcome due to lack of effective treatment, i.e. bacterial resistance. For example, you have probably already heard about the famous staphylococcus aureus, which is causing havoc in hospitals and belongs to the group of multi-resistant bacteria.

Our organism is naturally home to millions of bacteria, some of which are useful for organic functioning, but we are also all carriers of pathogenic or even resistant germs, and fortunately many of us remain healthy despite everything.

It is obviously people whose health is altered and whose immune system is deficient, who are the first victims of infections and pathogenic germs. But these are probably the same people who were previously bombarded with excessive antibiotics.

Antibiotics destroy all the bacteria in the body, including those that are useful for physiological functioning, such as those in our intestinal flora, which form an immune barrier that is essential to our natural defenses and to the construction of our entire immune system and cells.

Since it is probably the over-prescription of chemical antibiotics that is at the origin of this immune weakening and bacterial resistance, let's prefer "natural" antibiotics that will preserve and reinforce our immunity.

Especially since many infections and illnesses, such as colds and flu, are caused by viruses that are not affected by antibiotics.

Natural antibiotics include essential oils, concentrated extracts of grapefruit or lemon seeds and propolis. Let's also think about strengthening our intestinal flora and regulating or stimulating our immune defenses with pro- and prebiotics, or fatty acids such as sterols, sterolins or omega-3.