Antibiotic resistant organisms are a big problem, especially in immunocompromised hosts (elderly, dialysis patients, cancer patients, HIV), but the above statement is not true. There are good drugs available to treat MRSA and most gram negatives. For those of you who are having recurrent skin and sinus infections from surfing, please go to a doctor and get treated. These bugs spread from person-to-person quite easily. From the look of the article re the man who died in Hawaii from bacterial infections, it seems that two factors that contributed to his death were i) he had open cuts when he was dumped into the canal, providing a nidus for infection and ii) he waited several days from the onset of infection to seek treatment. So don't be idiots. If you have open wounds, don't surf in dirty water and if you get skin infections that are getting worse, go to the hospital.
Unfortunately, my statement IS true Old Boy...with respect, I know of whence I speak. MRSA, if not caught early, is a nasty killer that morphs & can get worse once it is underway. By no means is it a slam dunk for doctors & drugs. There's def already strains of MRSA that are resistant to powerful juice like Vancomyicin. I caught MRSA from gym equipment in 2008. Freakn gym equipment....unreal. A boil that got worse & hurt like a witch. Had to get it lanced, tested, then off to the Infectious Disease Clinic. (just the name of the clinic alone....da f**k) Antibiotic pills didn't touch it. They sewed a PIC line into my arm, with the line just cm from my heart, the better to pump drugs into my heart & rapidly out into my bloodstream. 2x per day for 3 weeks I pumped 2 hours worth of Cubicin into my body through that PIC line into my heart. I got lucky. Beat it in 3 weeks. My health care provider (awesome) told me some horror stories of fact, though. Like the competitive runner who was in tremendous shape, 30 y.o. got it from a towel in a gym. She was still doing the 2x daily IV drug regimen ONE YEAR later &they couldn't beat this wily evil bacteria. Many other stories of soccer moms, HS kids, pro athletes who no matter what could not shake MRSA. So, you're incorrect, amigo. This stuff is nasty & it can def take a person out, any person, even with modern meds. If y'all recall, 2 Redskins players caught it. One had to retire, 'cause they cut so much of his foot & calf away in desperate attempts to beat MRSA. And Redskins Park practive facility had to be gutted, costing millions of dollars, 'cause they couldn't cleanse the place of MRSA. It was done quietly, but the Skins had huge problems with MRSA, just as many pro teams have had MRSA issues. MRSA & gram negatives are not just hanging around hospitals. They're everywhere that humans are. And that includes the ocean. As for gram negatives: evil, evil stuff. Modern meds have only a couple of sketchy, 1940's era drugs in the gun against those nasty critters, and nothing is on the horizon that will be the magic bullet. “For Gram-positives we need better drugs; for Gram-negatives we need any drugs,” said Dr. Brad Spellberg, an infectious-disease specialist at Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center in Torrance, Calif., and the author of “Rising Plague,” a book about drug-resistant pathogens. Dr. Spellberg is a consultant to some antibiotics companies and has co-founded two companies working on other anti-infective approaches. Dr. Rice of Cleveland has also been a consultant to some pharmaceutical companies. Doctors treating resistant strains of Gram-negative bacteria are often forced to rely on two similar antibiotics developed in the 1940s — colistin and polymyxin B. These drugs were largely abandoned decades ago because they can cause kidney and nerve damage, but because they have not been used much, bacteria have not had much chance to evolve resistance to them yet. “In many respects it’s far worse than MRSA,” said Dr. Louis B. Rice, an infectious-disease specialist at the Louis Stokes Cleveland V.A. Medical Center and at Case Western Reserve University. “There are strains out there, and they are becoming more and more common, that are resistant to virtually every antibiotic we have.” According to researchers at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, more than 20 percent of the Klebsiella infections in Brooklyn hospitals are now resistant to virtually all modern antibiotics. And those supergerms are now spreading worldwide. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/business/27germ.html
cleaner oceans...another reason why I support Surfrider Foundation... Alan Tice, M.D., an infectious disease specialist with the University of Hawaii, believes the answer might lie elsewhere. I think ocean water is definitely a potential source of MRSA, Tice said. We have found in Hawaii as many as 100 MRSA colonies per liter of sea water. We think it is human activity related. When people are on the beach, rates rise in the daytime and are lower at night. http://www.healthnews.com/alerts-outbreaks/beachgoers-increased-risk-mrsa-2643.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...n-be-caught-on-the-beach-warn-scientists.html http://www.mrsanotes.com/redskins-player-brandon-noble-battles-mrsa/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/26/AR2006012602171.html http://bleacherreport.com/articles/349550-professional-sports-prepare-game-plans-for-mrsa-superbug
every year I am guaranteed to get swimmers ear or an ear infection. ever since I remember I've been getting them. I got this year's after surfing right after the noreaster that came threw a few weeks ago, then acquired a sinus infection after surfing earl. I remember the water being a dark brownish green color with lots of gross stuff floating around. when I got back from surfing I felt like ****, my entire body felt like it was on fire. then the other day I was walking down the street when blood started pouring out of my nose. just non-stop for about an hour down my nose/throat. then when I went to blow my nose the next day, all that would come out was a mixture of snot and blood (I know disgusting). all day It kept building up in the back of my nose, then I'd blow it out just to find more blood. I dont know if this is just allergies, or a sinus infection, because after surfing my nose hurt really badly, and was constantly itching. I don't care which it is, I know I'm not surfing in gross water anymore
Yuck, even though we're usually surf in front of a refinery here in TX, I have never seen a line lurker. Eighth cleanest beaches in the nation we have, and every mile of the coastline is public beach up to the vegetation or four feet above sea level, no matter who lives there. Aint y'all got Surfrider Foundation up there? I did, however, grow up swimming in Long Island Sound (Soup), and know the immunological benefits of craptastical water quality.
i remember a thread a few months back that stated the ranks of all the coastline states and their beach cleanliness. if i remember correctly NJ was like 4th or something. too lazy to look tho
all politics, all the time, everywhere one goes...USA Today reporting The Clean Beaches Council, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., today awards 53 stretches of sand with a spot on its fifth annual list of "Clean and Healthy Beaches." The designations come just four days after a competing non-profit group, the National Healthy Beaches Campaign, based at Florida International University, unveiled its third annual list of "2004 Certified Healthy Beaches." It cited 80 beaches in 17 states and one in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Only nine beaches are on both lists. How can the two groups come up with such widely divergent picks? Part of the difference is because of the criteria used by the two organizations, both of them relative newcomers that are jockeying to become the pre-eminent beach-ratings outfit. The Healthy Beaches Campaign lists 60 criteria that emphasize environmental health (nhbc.fiu.edu). The Clean Beaches Council has its own, slightly different, checklist (cleanbeaches.org/bluewave). But there's another reason for the difference between the lists. "It's partly a factor of who applies," says Walter McLoud, the head of the Clean Beaches Council. Not every beach in the USA, it turns out, is considered for the lists. To win either award, beaches must fill out pages of paperwork and pay a fee. Florida International University charges $500; the Clean Beaches Council, $1,200. Stephen Leatherman, who runs the Laboratory for Coastal Research at FIU and often appears on morning talk shows as "Dr. Beach," says the charge is "just to cover administrative costs. We're not a moneymaking operation." But he and McLoud both say that there are many clean beaches that don't make the list because they don't fill out the forms and pay the fees. In fact, few beaches in the USA apply to both programs, and many don't apply to either.
it's all smoke & mirrors & surfers keep getting sicker http://hamptonroads.com/2010/07/virginia-beach-gets-high-ranking-national-beach-report OBX flunks, VB scores like the blue lagoon. Of course, this article is from 'The Virginian-Pilot' & they're known for flogging the VB tourism horse ever-forward. Who do you believe....? What do you believe ...?
Your absolutely right. Most of this antibiotic resistance is caused by feeding livestock antibiotics non stop to make them grow quicker thus exposing bacteria constantly to antibiotics and giving them a chance to adapt to the antibiotics, thus making them resistant. You always hear about over prescription of meds and how people are prescribed antibiotics even when they don't need them. While this is true and a problem, the major cause is livestock. Your talking about billions of animals being given an antibiotic non stop for years. Only a matter of time before resistant strains of bacteria evolve and adapt to the environment. Antibiotics truly are a magic bullet that we basically discovered by accident. Bubonic plague killed half of Europe. You can't begin to imagine how many lives have been saved by antibiotics. It truly is one of the few miracle drugs and unfortunately we are working steadfastly to help make them ineffective by over prescribing them to people and using them in livestock operations. Their use in livestock should be banned immediately. I'm not talking animal rights here. It's about people.
Filthy For the best couple of weeks the water has been the worst I have seen it. Two weeks ago, the white water in deal was brown. Surfed Friday night in LB and Sat morning in Asbury and now have the worst sinus infection. I have been spitting blood from my sinuses for the past week. Stuff is gnarley. Fished all day Sunday from the Hook to NYC, the river was filled with trash and what looked like red tide. I havent seen the water this dirty in years.
I agree that the water has been pretty dirty. Gosh, I remember the time I had a real bad ear infection because of something that had been in the water. I had this purple goo come out of my ear. Anyway, aside from neti pots, are there any nutritional supplements out there that build up a high immune system against all this crap in the water? Im a big fan of natural organic but for some reason I'm that into ayuverdic stuff.
Its all about boosting the immune system. Stay up on the vitamines a, b, c, d, e, f..... etc. and drink a ton of water. I love this time of year, i dont get sick until i start duckdiving 40 degree waves.
Agricultural runoff is the number one water pollutant in the U.S. and surprisingly it is completely unregulated by the EPA. Why? Because the farm lobby is huge and powerful. Agricultural subsidies are the single largest pay out of federal tax dollars to private individuals. Now if they could just stand up to Monstersanto! Or we could all clean up the water and our bodies by going organic veggie. . .(but don't tell a Texan that). Another thing to support in the cause of cleaner water is a moratorium on building over or otherwise removing wetlands. All farming creates some sort of bacterial water pollutant (livestock being the worst), but wetlands very effectively filter it out.
I feel like dog **** too. Started in my ears, now it's my sinuses and throat. Really really tired too. I thought it was from going to the casino and being around a lot of people. But it definitely started with the surf. The whole situation is extremely disturbing. Any thoughts on doing something about it?
