{"id":5153,"date":"2018-07-16T12:01:04","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T16:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.naturalwellness.com\/nwupdate\/?p=5153"},"modified":"2023-10-12T16:45:44","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T20:45:44","slug":"tea-tree-oil-may-save-over-550000-lives-a-year-in-the-u-s-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.naturalwellness.com\/nwupdate\/tea-tree-oil-may-save-over-550000-lives-a-year-in-the-u-s-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Tea Tree Oil May Save Over 550,000 Lives a Year in the U.S. Alone"},"content":{"rendered":"

The First Antibiotic<\/h3>\n

With the discovery of penicillin<\/a> in 1928, the first antibiotic, the medical world was catapulted into the future. Until that point, doctors were powerless to stop the spread of bacterial infection. The best a patient could hope for was a strong immune system and physicians that washed their hands. When Alexander Fleming<\/a> introduced penicillin to the populace, he provided the world with the first successful antibiotic and paved the way for future antibiotics, which could slow the growth of bacteria or even kill them altogether.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this modern miracle is not bulletproof. Overuse of antibiotics has triggered the growth of resistant bacteria, which render antibiotics useless. Upon accepting his Nobel Prize in 1945, Fleming warned of this precise problem: \u201c[T]here is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug, make them resistant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Less than a century later, Fleming\u2019s fear has been realized. In the United States, at least two million people are infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria every year<\/em>. Of those, at least 23,000 die as a direct result of their infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Across the Atlantic, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control estimates another 25,000 people die from superbugs in the EU each year.<\/p>\n

How Tea Tree Oil Might Save Lives<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For all the good they do, hospitals have become a breeding ground for super-bacteria. \u201cHospitals can be hot spots for infections and can sometimes amplify spread,\u201d says Tom Frieden, M.D., former director of the CDC<\/a>. \u201cPatients with serious infections are near other sick and vulnerable patients\u2014all cared for by the same health care workers sometimes using shared equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Medical devices can become coated in a \u201cbiofilm\u201d of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Infections caused by this biofilm lead to approximately 550,000 fatalities each year in the U.S., according to Mohan Jacob, the head of the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department at James Cook University (JCU) in Queensland, Australia. A September 2017 report from the United Nations places that figure even higher, estimating 700,000 global deaths per year due to antimicrobial resistance.<\/p>\n

This antimicrobial menace outweighs the current opioid epidemic, which took the lives of more than 63,000 Americans in 2016. It even outdistances the number of deaths from heart disease, which claims 610,000 U.S. lives each year.<\/p>\n

What Does All This Have to Do with Tea Tree Oil?<\/h3>\n

Because the superbugs that breed in hospitals are resistant to antibiotics, doctors have been searching for a way to destroy this biofilm without them. Tea tree oil may be the answer.<\/p>\n

Used as traditional medicine for centuries, tea tree oil contains several compounds that kill bacteria, viruses and fungi \u2013 including terpinen-4-ol \u2013 which increases the activity of white blood cells. Because it effectively eliminates E. coli<\/em><\/a>, S. pneumoniae<\/em> and H. influenzae<\/em> bacteria (three common causes of illness), it\u2019s a natural hand sanitizer.<\/p>\n

Tea tree oil also works as an insect repellent. It can be used as an alternative to chemical deodorants (not because it stops sweat but because it kills the bacteria that create foul body odor). And its natural benefits don\u2019t end there<\/a>.<\/p>\n

7 More Benefits Linked to Tea Tree Oil<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Treating infections for minor cuts and scrapes<\/li>\n
  2. Reducing inflammation<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Reducing acne<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Eliminating nail fungus<\/li>\n
  5. Controlling dandruff<\/li>\n
  6. Treating athlete\u2019s foot<\/li>\n
  7. Relieving psoriasis<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Our Secret Weapon Against Antibiotic Resistance<\/h3>\n

    Professor Jacobs and other researchers are studying a type of plant compound called plant secondary metabolites (PSMs). These PSMs exhibit a \u201crelatively powerful broad-spectrum of antibacterial activities,\u201d Prof. Jacobs explains. Scientists have been searching for a way to use this natural antibiotic as a coating for medical tools. Now, Jacobs\u2019 team of researchers may have cracked the code \u2013 by using the PSMs of tea tree oil (Melaleuca alternifolia<\/em>).<\/p>\n

    By exposing tea tree oil vapors to high heat, the molecules settle on the surface of a tool as a \u201csolid biologically active coating.\u201d This coating requires no solvent, which eliminates potentially harmful chemicals from being retained inside it, and is also environmentally friendly.<\/p>\n

    If this technique proves viable, it may help to pull modern medicine back from our medieval, pre-antibiotic past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Tea tree and other essential oils may be the key to fighting \u201csuperbugs,\u201d or \u201cantibiotic-resistant bacteria\u201d discovered on medical equipment in hospitals that are responsible for over 550,000 deaths in the U.S. and 700,000 deaths worldwide each year. By isolating the natural antibacterial properties of these oils, researchers have developed a special coating, for medical equipment, that could prevent the inadvertent spread of these lethal illnesses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antibiotics","category-general-health"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.naturalwellness.com\/nwupdate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.naturalwellness.com\/nwupdate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.naturalwellness.com\/nwupdate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.naturalwellness.com\/nwupdate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.naturalwellness.com\/nwupdate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5153"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.naturalwellness.com\/nwupdate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8241,"href":"https:\/\/www.naturalwellness.com\/nwupdate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5153\/revisions\/8241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.naturalwellness.com\/nwupdate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.naturalwellness.com\/nwupdate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.naturalwellness.com\/nwupdate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.naturalwellness.com\/nwupdate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}