Antibiotics are always a double-edged sword, in my opinion. They not only kill the disease causing bacteria, but the beneficial bacteria that normally live in your body as well. Antibiotics are like terrorists in an airport armed with machine guns; they kill everything in sight and don't really care *who* they're mowing down...

The hard part is knowing how much will be harmful. Everyone's body has a certain toxic load that it's capable of carrying, but there's no way of knowing when you're approaching that level or when you might go tipping over into the danger zone.

All I can tell you from my own experiences is that I nearly died about nine years ago from taking repeated courses of antibiotics for recurrent respiratory infections. Since the beneficial bacteria in the body manufacture chemicals necessary for maintaining a healthy immune system (something no traditional doctor will *ever* tell you), my immune system literally collapsed and I could barely even make it out of bed for nearly a year. It took several years trying to rebuild my body and repair the damage, but working in a health food store for several years helped tremendously.

Then another round of EP hit again this past January, and I had to swallow my pride and go on antibiotics again. After only two courses over a three week period, I experienced another sort of collapse, proving my suspicions that the damage that antibiotics do to your body can definitely be permanent; I can no longer tolerate them nearly as well as I once did. That was five months ago and I'm still struggling to make it back up to normal functioning again.

I realize I may be an extreme case, just a weak individual, but like I said, how can you tell exactly how strong your constitution is and how many chemicals your body can tolerate before something snaps and breaks down? Everyone always told me I had a cast iron stomach, but one day it simply broke down and refused to take any more chemical abuse.

To me, antibiotics are definitely like playing Russian rhoulette...