Oregano Oil Fights Against Staph Infections And Other Drug-Resistant Bacteria

Staph and MRSA are infections none of us want to have.  These bacteria are dangerous and sometimes even drug resistant. One way to fight these nasty infections from home or when antibiotics stop working is, surprisingly enough,  Oregano Oil.

Oil from the common herb oregano has antiseptic, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, anti-parasitic, anti-oxidant, and pain relieving properties. It has been used for hundreds of years for many different health issues. It been successfully used to treat sinusitis, bronchitis, candida yeast infections, E. coli, salmonella,  Staph and MRSA infections. The ancient Greeks even used oregano oil to treat wounds, poisoning, bites and headaches.

“Oil pressed from oregano leaves that contain the active ingredient carvacrol may be an effective treatment against sometimes drug-resistant bacterial infection. Georgetown University researchers have found that oil of oregano appears to reduce infection “as effectively as traditional antibiotics. Oil of oregano at relatively low doses was found to be efficacious against Staphylococcus bacteria (the bacteria responsible for MRSA) and was comparable in its germ-killing properties to antibiotic drugs such as streptomycin, penicillin and vancomycin.” [Science Daily 10/11/2001]

“The antimicrobial strength of oregano oil comes from its natural thymol and carvacrol content. Thymol is a fungicide, antiseptic and can help support the immune system. Carvacrol is a powerful bacteria killer that’s strongly active against Staph and MRSA infections as well as yeasts and molds. A carvacrol content of 70% or more can be strongly therapeutic. However, natural carvacrol content this high is very uncommon and hard to find in most commercial oregano oil products.

Almost all oregano essential oils sold today are too dilute to be of help against MRSA or Staph (they are diluted in a carrier oil or base oil) and they typically contain artificial carvacrol and other unnatural ingredients to reduce their cost. Synthetic chemicals commonly found in essential oils are often cancer-causing, so you definitely want to avoid inferior products!” -[Michelle Moore]

A Sad Reality

Imagine:  You were hospitalized for some reason.  Hospitalization costs a lot, and so ‘guidelines’ tell your doctor you can only stay in the hospital so long for that problem. If they let you stay one day past the guideline, the hospital eats the cost.  So, whether you are medically stable or not, you go home or you get sent to a ‘skilled nursing facility’ for the rest of your recovery.  Ready or not, you go.

And, why?  It costs less to take care of a patient in a skilled nursing facility than a hospital.  Why does it cost less?  Because insurance don’t reimburse the facility as much.

We expect the ‘skilled nursing facility’ to have the funds to hire the staff and buy the monitoring equipment that is needed to provide ‘skilled nursing’ care despite low reimbursements paid to the facilities.

The inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reviewed records for 653 randomly selected Medicare patients who were in skilled nursing care – treatment in nursing homes for up to 35 days after a patient was discharged from an acute care hospital – in August, 2011.

The findings are scary:  33 percent had a medication error, infection or some other type of harm.  2/3rds of those suffered events that caused lasting harm, and 1/3rd were temporarily harmed. In 1.5 percent of cases a patient who had been expected to survive died because of poor care.

The injuries and deaths were caused by

• substandard treatment,
• inadequate monitoring,
• delays or the failure to provide needed care

The deaths involved problems such as

• preventable blood clots,
• fluid imbalances,
• excessive bleeding from blood-thinning medications
• kidney failure.

Doctors who reviewed the patients’ records determined that 59 percent of the errors and injuries were preventable. More than half of those harmed had to be readmitted to the hospital at an estimated cost of $208 million for the month studied — about 2 percent of Medicare’s total inpatient spending.

Projected nationally, the study estimated that 21,777 patients were harmed and 1,538 died due to substandard skilled nursing care in that one month period.

My opinion:  Something needs to change.  If we can’t afford to keep patients in the hospital long enough to be stable when they leave, then we need to reimburse skilled nursing facilities enough that they can truly provide skilled nursing.  Duh.

Read One Third of Skilled Nursing Patients Harmed in Treatment and follow their links to read the studies.