I've recently started buying organic milk because it keeps so much longer. Great for me, since I never know how much I'll use. Wish I could claim a health-concious reason, but it's really all about the expiration date.

Now, I'd love to find a grocery store to buy organic buttermilk at, as well. I generally only buy it when I'm making corn bread, but then I end up pouring out fair amount of it.

I know grocery store stocks vary by individual store, of course, but does anyone know of a chain that you always see carrying it?

I bet Whole Foods carries it.

I'm curious, what is anorganic milk? If there's organic milk (which I expected to be the default for milk, seeing how it's produced by animals and plants), there got to be anorganic, shouldn't it?

Thanks, I bet you're right, from what I've heard of Whole Foods. I didn't even think of them to be honest - the nearest one is about two and a half hours away and I've never seen one in person. No big cities near me.

Bet they wouldn't like marketing it as anorganic, would they? The organic milk is from cows that are fed organic (no pesticide used in growing?) feed, and don't get hormones for increased milk or antibiotics or anything like that, as I understand it. I just like it because it has like a six-week span of time to use it before it goes bad.

Tzigone is right. Organic food is grown without pesticides, artificial fertilizers, added hormones or antibiotics. Non-organic food is grown with one or more of those additives.

Personally, I think it is particularly scary the way antibiotics is routinely used among many of those who produce meat in a non-organic way. The animals are given antibiotics with their food all the time. You may be aware that the more we use antibiotics, the faster bacteria become resistant to them. Actually the situation is right now beginning to slip out of control, as more and more strains of bacteria are getting resistant to more and more kinds of antibiotics. Do you realize what it will mean if we can't stop this downward slide? People get an infection and go to the doctor, and he can't help them. The infected person's body defeats the infection on its own, or it doesn't and the patient dies.

You may get pneumonia. Well, unless your own immune system can fight off the pneumonia, it's bye-bye to you.

Or how about you need an operation? Well, unless your condition is life-threatening the doctors won't operate on you, because the operation itself may kill you. Forget knee operations, for example. If your condition is life-threatening the doctors may operate on you, and then you may live or die depending on whether or not you get a massive infection afterwards. So can't the doctors give you antibiotics to combat the infection? Well, duh. The antibiotics don't work anymore in the scenario I have described here.

If bacteria become restistant to all the antibiotics that are currently available, average life spans in the West may plunge from about 80 years to about 40 years.

A really scary thing is that the big companies that produce drugs, vaccines etcetera aren't even trying to come up with new, improved antibiotics. Why is that? It's because the companies won't be able to make a lot of money on new antibiotics. The new antibiotics would have to be used judiciously and sparingly, so that the bacteria wouldn't get resistant to them right away. Therefore the companies wouldn't be able to sell a lot of them. They couldn't even market them aggressively to tell people to buy a lot of them, because that would be the whole point, that people couldn't buy a lot of them. There are so many other kinds of drugs that the companies could sell so much more of, and that's the kind of drugs they are trying to come up with.

Personally I always buy organic milk, which comes from cows that haven't been given antibiotics. I also buy organic meat if I can.

Ann

Ah, thanks for the explanation.

If there's a Trader Joe's around you, I bet they'd have it too.

Otherwise I'm sure you could probably buy it online and have it delivered to you.

The problem is it is not just the antibiotics used in producing food. There was a time when people would run to the doctor for every little thing to get an antbiotic when they really didn't need them but the doctor would give them any way. In fact I'm sure it is still happening. So of course all the bacteria started building up reistance.

Worse than doctors pescribing not needed drugs to make patients happy there are lots of people that are too stupid (IMO) to understand what they read. I've know people who said that they would take the antibiotics until they felt better and save the rest for the next time they were sick. Or with their kids if one was sick and was prescribe an antibiotic they would give it until the kid was "well" and if one of the other kids got sick they would use the rest for that kid.

Hey people it says right on the bottles TAKE ALL OF THE PRESCRIPTION. The reason is if you don't then the bacteria doesn't get completely killed and eventually you get sick again only now it has probably mutated right your own prviate bacteria factory -- your own body. So even though I don't think that they should use so much of it in food production I think the biggest problem comes from peoples improper use of the drugs on themselves.

You know, just this morning, I was talking with two of my co-workers who had sick children. Viral. So the doctors did not give them antibiotics. But they had still had high fevers the next day and both parents called the doctors to try and get antibiotics. One said okay, and one didn't. Now, I don't know much about medicine, but antibiotics don't work against viruses - so how can they help for the fever?

Also, a bit a separate note, but has anyone else read about the medication that ends up in our drinking water?

A fever is your body's way of starving off infection whether viral or bacterial. The the last time I had a fever I was given anitbiotics because the infection was a bacterial throat infection.

There are anti viral medications, but I'm not too sure how they work as my studies in microbiology dealt with bacterial infections, but I do know that fevers left untreated in children (well anyone really) is extremely dangerous.

But wouldn't you treat fevers with rotating motrin/tylenol? That's what we did with DS last year when he was 103.5 [mostly 104+] for 4 days. brought it down some... finally ended up in the ER because that wasn't bringing it down enough. It was a virus, no antibiotics... Fortunately, he snapped out of it right after that - the ONLY time he was under 103.5 was that slight time when the two meds overlapped and even then he was lethargic and not really responsive. That's how we've always treated fevers with all our kids but that one was the worst in length/temp.

None of our docs will give them if it's a virus [though i have had a couple 'proactive' rounds for one of us - like when it was borderline bronchitis for me - which i get 2-3xs per year - right before admitting DS to the hospital for surgery - and it worked, Mom needed to be healthy but normally we would have waited a bit longer to see if I could fight it off myself or if it was something else...]

Of course, I know antibiotics don't work on viruses so as soon as I know it's a virus, I know it's not an option and don't push for them...

Yes, I know. I should have clarified that their fevers spiked every few hours when the Motrin wore off. More Motrin and the fevers went down again until it wore off again. For the one who didn't get antibiotics - his fever went away the evening he was refused the second time. He and his sister are still coughing, though (she had strep throat and got antibiotics for that immediately).

But what I was trying to figure out was whether antibiotics would do any good for a fever caused by a virus. I didn't think they would, but not my area of expertise.

They wouldn't. Antibiotics don't help a patient with a viral infection.

But giving antibiotics to a patients with a viral infection sure helps building the resistance of the bacteria.

Your son or daughter who is prescribed antibiotics because of a viral infection will get well on his or her own. But your grandson or granddaughter who gets a bacterial infection may die because antibiotics no longer help, due to reckless over-presciption of antibiotics in the past - that is, now.

Ann

Quote:

"A fever is your body's way of starving off infection whether viral or bacterial. The the last time I had a fever I was given anitbiotics because the infection was a bacterial throat infection."

I read somewhere (and I can't remember where) a theory that since fevers help to fight off infection, it's not necessary to treat a fever unless it's high enough to cause brain damage (and I think that was somewhere above 104 F). The danger exists when a fever is caused by a bacterial infection, so that is why they give antibiotics. If it's viral, the fever may help to destroy the virus. But fever-reducing medicine is OK to use when the fever is making the patient extremely uncomfortable. So I never worry about a fever, except that it is a symptom that something else is wrong. (And when my daughter is sick, her temperature seems to fluctuate like crazy.)

I never really understood the danger of bacterial infections until a couple of my goldfish (don't laugh, these were BIG fish that I'd had for about 5 years) went "septic," meaning that they had a bacterial infection that spread throughout their body. I did not treat them with the correct antibiotics in time and they died. That is what used to happen to people before the days of antibiotics. But in my household we try to get by without antibiotics whenever possible. Unfortunately, the darn allergies make me prone to sinus infections, and sometimes those won't go away without help.