Beyond Antibiotics ─ Strategies for Living in a World of Emerging Infections and Antibiotic- Resistant Bacteria

At a time when the numbers of emerging infections and antibiotic-resistant bacteria are rising sharply, the supply of new antibiotic drugs has been steadily decreasing. In addition, many health providers have failed to consider that our bodies are cloaked in a blanket of bacteria so pervasive that the bacterial cells outnumber our “human” cells by a factor of ten. In short, we are living in a microbe’s world and cannot ignore the very real potential for untreatable serious infections.

In this timely book, Dr. Michael Schmidt proposes we focus on strengthening ourselves by thinking of our bodies as a “human-microbe hybrid.” This requires taking action to raise our defenses, while preserving the integrity of the microbial elements that live on and within us. Drawing on the latest research from several scientific fields, Schmidt presents a strategy of medicine that can be used to build and balance our system of immune defense and repair. He offers a set of general recommendations that can easily be used to tailor programs to individuals seeking to support health maintenance, prevent illness, fight active acute or chronic infections, and foster faster recovery from infections.

Dr. Michael A. Schmidt is the author of Beyond Antibiotics, Brain-Building Nutrition, Childhood Ear Infections, and Tired of Being Tired. He did his Ph.D. research in molecular medicine and biochemistry within the Life Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center, with studies in neuroscience and metabolomics at Lancaster University. He teaches in the Metabolomics Training Program at the University of Colorado, and he works closely with the human disease modeling laboratory (3-D tissue analogues group) and with the human space flight initiative of the suborbital research group at NASA. He has applied his work in functional genomics and metabolomics to human disease states, as well as to methods to enhance human performance. Dr. Schmidt co-founded Sovaris Aerospace, which addresses problems of complexity in space biomedicine, along with Cyvia Neurosystems, which develops EEG-based neurophysiology tools. He is a gifted communicator, who has spent his career translating complex topics in science and medicine to general audiences.