Get Smart About Antibiotics Week, Oct 5-11
October 5, 2009 by Marijke Durning, RN
Filed under Medicine
No – you shouldn’t take antibiotics because you have a cold. And no, you don’t automatically need antibiotics for a sore throat either. No, antibiotics aren’t harmless. What do you need antibiotics for? Bacterial infections and bacterial infections only.
Seriously folks – use of antibiotics today has gotten so out of control that now we have super-bugs that are stronger than us. They can beat us because we don’t have a medicine that can beat them. And, if other bacteria end up mutating to the point that they can’t be killed by our antibiotics either, then we’re in big trouble. And that’s no joke.
Most people have heard about how antibiotics were invented. Penicillin, the first antibiotic, was discovered by scientist Alexander Fleming, although it had been noticed about 50 years earlier, in the 1890s, by Ernest Duchesne, in 1896. It took quite a while for scientists to figure out how to make and distribute the antibiotics safely and effectively, but once this happened, the world hasn’t looked back. Illnesses that took lives from simple infections to sexually transmitted diseases, could now be cured. Unfortunately though, antibiotics may have been the victim of their own success.
Generations now don’t remember what it was like before antibiotics. All they know is that these magic pills help infection go away and they feel better. So, if they feel sick, they must need the magic pills, right? And that’s where lies the problem.
Antibiotics haven’t been used properly in many ways. They’ve been over prescribed to people who don’t need them and given to people who don’t use them properly.
Antibiotics do you no good whatsoever if you have a viral infection. These are colds and flus, for example. A sore throat doesn’t mean you have an infection; it may just be a sore throat.
Antibiotics need their full time to work. If you’ve been given a 10-day course of antibiotics and you stop taking them after five days because you feel better, you’ve just contributed to the problem. The bacteria you were treating are likely not all gone and may now mutate and develop into a bacteria will resist that antibiotic the next time.
Do you think you know enough about antibiotics? If so, take this quiz and see how well you do. Just click on the checkmark below.
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Image: PhotoXpress.com
