Americans have entered into a new type of competition with the Chinese - who will produce the next bacterial superbug plague first?  This is no laughing matter.

Earlier this year researchers reported that 48,000 Americans are killed each year by hospital-acquired infections.  This atrocity costs the health care system 8.1 billion per year.  Half of that is spent on superbug MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infections.  MRSA is caused by a strain of staph bacteria that's become resistant to antibiotics.  Even the most powerful antibiotics may not be able to kill some of the new MRSA flesh-eating superbugs.  This problem has been caused by the medical profession's overuse of antibiotics and is spreading into the general community with those on athletic teams (especially wrestlers), child care workers, and those living in crowded conditions most at risk.

An alarming report coming out of Europe warns that China now threatens the world health by unleashing waves of MRSA superbugs on every other country.  Blatant overuse of antibiotics has caused a recent doubling of untreatable MRSA infections in Chinese hospitals.  Similarly, overuse of antibiotics in farm animals is causing superstrains of MRSA to be shipped around the world.

"We have a lot of data from Chinese hospitals and it shows a very frightening picture of high-level antibiotic resistance," said Dr Andreas Heddini of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control. "Doctors are daily finding there is nothing they can do, even third and fourth-line antibiotics are not working.  There is a real risk that globally we will return to a pre-antibiotic era of medicine, where we face a situation where a number of medical treatment options would no longer be there. What happens in China matters for the rest of the world."

A new study by the U.S. National Institutes of Health helps us understand the extreme nature of this problem.  Researchers identified that MRSA produces new types of toxins that enter immune cells and kill them. 

During any plague in history there have always been survivors.  Surviving any highly aggressive pandemic infection, whether viral or bacterial, will depend on how efficiently your immune system can function as well as how well your detoxification systems work; i.e., your ability to bind and excrete the bacterial toxins.

Your toxin-clearing ability will rely on liver function.  In cases of overweight individuals, liver function is handicapped and congested by surplus fat accumulation.  This means individuals wanting to be prepared must improve not only detoxification function but also metabolism.

It is somewhat ironic but will no doubt be proven to be the case that those on statin drugs will have little ability to fight MRSA infections.  One of the primary defense functions of LDL cholesterol (mistakenly labeled as "bad" cholesterol) is that it binds up bacterial toxins such as LPS and removes them from the body.  Those with drug-induced abnormally low levels of LDL will be sitting ducks when any high powered bacterial infection makes it way through the general community.

Also ironically, the very people who caused this problem will be turned to as the so-called experts to help treat a population.  I am one person that will not be turning to them for advice.