The ultimate guide to antibiotics: how to take them correctly and when they’re not needed

Antibiotics, or, as they are now commonly called, antimicrobials, are able to destroy bacteria and suppress the development of the inflammatory process in the body. After doctors started using antibiotics, the death rate from infections was drastically reduced – many illnesses and injuries were no longer fatal.

Doctors now have dozens of different antibiotics in their arsenal to help fight infections. But due to the fact that many take these drugs incorrectly, the era of antibiotics may soon end – they will no longer help (and some have already stopped working), and we will return to a situation where there is nothing to treat bacterial infections. We find out when antibiotics are indispensable, how to drink antibiotics correctly and when these drugs are completely unnecessary.

Let’s start with the most important thing – antibiotics can only fight bacterial infections. This means that for viral infections, such as the flu or the coronavirus, they will certainly not be useful.

But wait, you might say, because antibiotics are also prescribed for viral illnesses. Yes, it really does happen. In some cases, such an appointment is due to the incompetence of the doctor, but in most cases, antibiotics for a viral infection are needed to suppress the attached bacterial infection so that complications do not develop.

Antibiotics act on bacterial cells in different ways – some completely destroy the bacteria, while others leave them intact, but prevent them from dividing. Regardless of exactly how the antibiotic works, its intervention causes the spread of the infection to slow down or completely stop.

There are antibiotics that work against one type of bacteria and others that can kill different types of bacteria – these drugs are called broad-spectrum antibiotics.

A doctor should prescribe an antibiotic, and it should be sold in pharmacies on prescription – unfortunately, this is not always the case, and we can easily buy a drug without a prescription, having prescribed it ourselves.

Simply taking and starting to take the pills that you or someone in your family took is fundamentally wrong – an antibiotic can be completely useless. For example, the bacteria that caused the infection may not respond to the antimicrobial drug at all, and a stronger drug is needed to fight them. Often, in order to select the right drug, sensitivity to antibiotics is sown, in which it turns out whether this or that drug kills bacteria – the causative agents of infection, or whether they do not react to it at all .

They may not work because the bacteria have developed resistance to antibiotics. This is a serious problem that now worries the experts of the World Health Organization. Since many patients decide for themselves how much to drink, stop taking antibiotics at the slightest improvement, drink the same medicine for many years, bacteria can be resistant to antibiotics.

They develop mutations that allow bacteria to survive despite the action of antimicrobial drugs. Uncontrolled use of antibiotics leads to the emergence of superbugs – microorganisms that are not affected by any antibiotics. These bacteria already exist and have caused more than one death. Patients simply could not be cured, as no antibiotics helped.

The WHO believes that antibiotics are not sufficiently developed in the world and fears that bacteria evolve faster than the appearance of new antimicrobial drugs. This means the day is not far off when there will simply be nothing left to treat a bacterial infection.

Antibiotics are produced in different forms – the doctor can prescribe antibiotic tablets or injections. At home, drinking pills is much more convenient than giving injections. Injections are primarily a hospital treatment and are rarely prescribed for home use. In injections, usually “stronger” drugs are released than in tablets – they are prescribed when you have to deal with a particularly serious infection.

In order for the treatment to be effective and the antibiotics to be used as long as possible, you need to drink these drugs according to the rules.

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