I am going to take this frankly terrifying article as an excuse to say this :FINISH YOUR GOD DAMNED ANTIBIOTICS. If you are prescribed antibiotics and you start a course of them, you MUST finish them unless recommended otherwise (such as an unexpected adverse reaction) by a medical professional, not your mom or dad or spouse (unless they happen to be medical professionals, and then carry on).
ALSO do not ASK for antibiotics or use them if your provider tells you you have a virus, because do you know what antibiotics will do to a virus? Jack shit.
Drug resistance is on the rise, do not pussy out half way though taking antibiotics because you 'feel better' idgaf, FINISH them there is a reason you were prescribed that. Finishing halfway is like the allies gong "The Battle of Bulge went pretty well and the tide is turning in our favor, maybe we should just chill here Belgium because I'm sure the war is over and Nazis are defeated and won't do give us any more trouble." FALSE. You pursue them until they surrender and the war is over. That metaphor MAY'VE gotten out of hand.
Everyone probably knows this but I think it bares repeating as often as possible sort of like "Get you and your partner tested for STIS"
This. Sometimes anti-biotic soap can actually make things worse for people to prone to infection. Like oral antibiotics (which kill "good" bacteria in the stomach and intestine that helps to digest food), strong anti-biotic soaps also kill the "good" bacteria on the skin that help fight infection.
I have immune system problems as well as super-delicated skin (prone to being damaged and wounded) and was warned against using alcohol or anti-biotic soaps to clean my skin or wounds. Regular soap and water are what I was told to use (and to put iodine on the wound).
I did an experiment in college about antibiotic handsoap vs. regular handsoap and I noticed that the normally antibiotic soaps in the store had recently stopped adding the antibiotic. I am glad for this trend.
AS YOU SHOULD. Jk, shit happens but the vast majority of people who don't finish their antibiotics don't really have an excuse besides "I felt better so I stopped."
I went to the dentist a couple days ago and the hygienist had a cough and told me that she was told it was a virus but she is taking some left over antibiotics she had to make sure. I was like "This is wrong on a lot of levels." negl I scolded her about it but she scolds me about how I should floss better so we even out.
Oh you're not dumb at all! But yes it is very much related to immunity issue. Drug resistant bugs (like Malaria, MRSA, MDR-TB, XDR-TB, and now TR-TB) have their roots in improper use of antibiotics. Bacteria, parasites (like in P. falciprum of malaria fame) are like all living things constantly evolving and mutating. They can mutate to be drug resistant and the more common antibiotics are (such as in meat) the more the microbes need to mutate and evolve to survive. A good example is chloroquinine resistance and malaria. Malaria is a huge burden in a large part of the world and chloroquinine for was good cure for it, it wipes out the parasite wham bam. However people started giving people subtheraputic levels and putting it in things like salt so you were constantly getting doses of it. Well it knocked out the parasites that weren't resistant but the ones that have evolved that were resistant had no competation and could flourish and spread with impunity and chloroquinine could do nothing about. This lead to a new line of anti-malarials and the same thing happend,
I'm not a doctor or an expert or anything, but from what I've read/seen/heard, yes. When someone doesn't finish their antibiotic treatment, some of the disease might still be there.. but only the stronger bits of it (as the weaker would have been killed off by the time someone stops their antibiotics because they "feel better".. leaving only the parts more resistant to antibiotics). Basically they still have the disease, but they have it meaner and nastier, and now the meaner and nastier parts are gonna multiply, and it's gonna get spread around because the person isn't really better, they just feel better.
I remember seeing something about this being a huge problem in.. I want to say Russian prisons, because they wouldn't give the inmates enough antibiotics to actually finish their course, or something like that. It scared the life out of me when I was a kid. Needless to say, I always, always, always finish any course of antibiotics I have to take (which I've had to do a couple of times... tooth infections suck :( ), no matter what.
In addition to what curseangel said, you only 'feel' ill if there's a certain number of infectious agents in your body (the incubation stage -- the time between you becoming infected and the infection multiplying enough to have an effect, and with some agents your illness is actually your body recognising the infection and starting up efforts to get rid of it). If people stop taking antibiotics when they feel well as opposed to following through with the whole treatment schedule, then they've still got the infectious agents in their body, just at a much lower number. Once the antibiotics stop being taken, those remaining agents can start to multiply and, in cases like MDR-TB/XDR-TB and MRSA, its usually the ones immune to most antibiotics that remain.
(Then of course you get in to issues where bacteria can swap genetic code, analogous to everyone in the world having the same body size and shape and swapping clothes whenever they wanted to. A mutation which allows one bacterium to become immune to a specific antibiotic doesn't just mean that its descendants will become immune, but also that any other bacteria it swaps genetic code with can also become immune.)
ALSO do not ASK for antibiotics or use them if your provider tells you you have a virus, because do you know what antibiotics will do to a virus? Jack shit.
I totally love my doctor because they will not write you antibiotics if it's a virus, and they even say, "it won't do anything for you and just a waste of money, you can take this to alleviate some of the symptoms"
ALSO do not ASK for antibiotics or use them if your provider tells you you have a virus, because do you know what antibiotics will do to a virus? Jack shit.
Drug resistance is on the rise, do not pussy out half way though taking antibiotics because you 'feel better' idgaf, FINISH them there is a reason you were prescribed that. Finishing halfway is like the allies gong "The Battle of Bulge went pretty well and the tide is turning in our favor, maybe we should just chill here Belgium because I'm sure the war is over and Nazis are defeated and won't do give us any more trouble." FALSE. You pursue them until they surrender and the war is over. That metaphor MAY'VE gotten out of hand.
Everyone probably knows this but I think it bares repeating as often as possible sort of like "Get you and your partner tested for STIS"
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I have immune system problems as well as super-delicated skin (prone to being damaged and wounded) and was warned against using alcohol or anti-biotic soaps to clean my skin or wounds. Regular soap and water are what I was told to use (and to put iodine on the wound).
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I went to the dentist a couple days ago and the hygienist had a cough and told me that she was told it was a virus but she is taking some left over antibiotics she had to make sure. I was like "This is wrong on a lot of levels." negl I scolded her about it but she scolds me about how I should floss better so we even out.
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Drugs resistance will happen no matter what but the ubiquity of antibitoics have caused it to happen faster than expected and faster than we can keep up with. I'm probably not doing a good job so I'll leave you with a link to two wikipedia entries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_misuse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_resistance#Mechanisms and this picture that I find amusing:
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I remember seeing something about this being a huge problem in.. I want to say Russian prisons, because they wouldn't give the inmates enough antibiotics to actually finish their course, or something like that. It scared the life out of me when I was a kid. Needless to say, I always, always, always finish any course of antibiotics I have to take (which I've had to do a couple of times... tooth infections suck :( ), no matter what.
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(Then of course you get in to issues where bacteria can swap genetic code, analogous to everyone in the world having the same body size and shape and swapping clothes whenever they wanted to. A mutation which allows one bacterium to become immune to a specific antibiotic doesn't just mean that its descendants will become immune, but also that any other bacteria it swaps genetic code with can also become immune.)
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I totally love my doctor because they will not write you antibiotics if it's a virus, and they even say, "it won't do anything for you and just a waste of money, you can take this to alleviate some of the symptoms"
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