Hello MotherofCFboy11yrs. Great that mupirocin is working for your son. I used the water pik when I was a kid, and I agree, it is the best. In response to the comment on improved GI symptoms on IV antibiotics, that may be the case in a minority of situations, but they would only benefit while on the antibiotics - their GI symptoms would return once off the antibiotics. It is a very complicated issue, the GI microbiome, something I am doing a lot of research in. The answer to your comment is complex and cannot be addressed thoroughly in a post here. But the main issue is that all IV antibiotics (like all broad-spectrum antibiotics, usually the ones CFers are on) except vancomycin are non-specific killers of all bacteria in the guts, good and bad. Beneficial bacteria are absolutely critical to the proper functioning of digestion, immune regulation, neurotransmitter secretion, hormone regulation, and many other interconnected body systems. Modern medicine is only just beginning to learn about the importance of a healthy gut microbiome to one's health as a whole. When a broad-spectrum antibiotic, IV or oral, wipes out bad bacteria in the gut, it also wipes out the good bacteria, and then after the course of antibiotics are through, the "bad" bacteria, which are opportunists, recover their populations much more quickly than the beneficial bacteria, such as lactobacillus and bifidobacteria. This causes an imbalance in the species, called dysbiosis, favoring the harmful bacteria. Every time we take antibiotics we make permanent and irreversible changes to our fragile gut ecosystem, often for the worse. That is why eating probiotic foods like sauerkraut and taking probiotic supplements during and after antibiotic use are so incredibly critical to our health. I could say much, much more about this, but I've already written a lot on my website if you're interested:
www.cfnaturalhealth.weebly.com.
The CF gut microbiome is often very disturbed due to the regular courses of oral/IV antibiotics we have to be on, and this leads to many other issues like worsened food malabsorption, GI issues, GERD/heartburn, autoimmune issues (joint pains in particular), psychological symptoms like depression, and gut infections like SIBO and C. difficile. The solution is to eat foods that favor the growth of beneficial bacteria and inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria, plus taking in a lot of probiotic foods and supplements to replace the beneficial bacteria we are killing with the antibiotics.
There is an incredible amount of research in this field right now, and the issue of the gut microbiome's effect on the entirety of human health is such a hot topic right now. It's super exciting to be on top of it, but at the same time so frustrating because all my docs know how to do is prescribe antibiotics - they know next to nothing about the gut microbiome and how it impacts health (it was not and is still not taught in mainstream medical schools), and only recently have my docs embraced supplementing with probiotics (thought they still don't regularly recommend it in their treatment plans, UGH!). They'll catch on... in a few decades or so.
