Antibiotics are misunderstood as some form of drug for all illness from the common cold to the flu to an earache and more. And that is not what antibiotics should be prescribed for. Fortunately, doctors, parents, and patients are starting to realize that overprescribing antibiotics is causing antibiotic-resistant illnesses, illnesses that normal antibiotics cannot cure.
Antibiotics should only be used against a bacteria and not a virus. The common cold, flu (influenza), earache and bronchitis are caused by a virus and not bacterial. Antibiotics do nothing against viruses and the overprescribing of them creates antibiotic-resistant illnesses that affect all of this.
Why Antibiotics are Given for the Flu
Many times someone with the flu will get antibiotics, so you wonder why are they getting antibiotics if the flu is a virus. Because the flu can turn into pneumonia and pneumonia is usually caused by bacteria, that’s why it is treated with an antibiotic. The pneumonia is being treated with the antibiotic, not influenza.
An illness such as meningitis can be either. It can be viral caused by a virus or it can be bacterial caused by bacteria. Bed rest for viral and antibiotics for the bacteria. This is why you have to clean any cuts you get if bacteria gets in the cut, you can get a bacterial infection and for that, you would need an antibiotic like penicillin.
In a study done by Harvard Medical School “Health officials estimate that just between 15 percent and 36 percent of children with sore throats actually have strep. If the study's findings hold true for the entire population, that means between 1.3 million and 2.8 million children with sore throats are getting antibiotics unnecessarily each year.” [1]
How Does Over-Prescribing Antibiotics Affect Us All?
So how does this affect all of us? Think of your body as a corporation with its bosses and departments. When your body is invaded by a bacteria or virus your body takes note of this. Your immune system will look at it and decide how best to fight it and then it goes into fighting it.
Your body also keeps a record of this. It files what it saw, how it fought it and what it fought it with and puts this into your body’s computer database.
Each time someone tries to invade your company the boss yells out to look into the database and if it is something that has invaded before, they go to the warehouse and get what worked last time.
That is called the immune system. When you get sick your body will try and find a way to get rid of the invader and it will file away all the information for later use. That is what building up your immunity means.
This is how a vaccine works, it shows your body a possible invader and your body looks at it and decides how to fight it and stores the information into the database and the weapons to fight it go into the warehouse for possible use.
Now your body didn’t have to do much because vaccines are dead virus cells, but your body certainly took note and filed it away.
If later in the season this invader shows up full force, your boss is going to call out to look it up in the database and go to the warehouse and get out the proper ammunition so your body can fight this, because it had the information already filed away.
At some point, you get a cold or the flu and your body sees this invader as a threat. You as the owner demand a lawyer, Mr. Penicillin, to take care of this virus invader right now, the lawyer says he cannot do anything about it that you need to fight this yourself.
You tell him to get to work, but since this is a virus, penicillin is totally ineffective. Since you did get better, the next time you're sick, you call on Mr. Penicillin again.
What really made you better was that your white cell department went to work making more white cells, which fight infections and viruses so your body on its own fought back the viral cold or flu.
Every time you ask for penicillin when it’s not needed, you weaken your body’s ability to use penicillin the next time.
These bacterial invaders are not stupid either, every time they come across an antibiotic like penicillin they take note of this as well and store it in their own database, making themselves stronger and more resistant to penicillin the next time, and that’s why we are getting so-called superbugs today.
More of these super bacterial infections that the normal penicillin used to fight off don’t work anymore, because the bacteria have learned, adjusted and changed into more powerful bacterial infections.
An example is MRSA, which stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a staph infection that has become a serious antibiotic-resistant illness.
Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs
That is how the overuse of antibiotics has hurt all of us. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t taken a lot of antibiotics over the years; the bacterial bugs are changing into superbugs because everyone has taken so many antibiotics.
And if one of these superbugs tries to invade you, a normal antibiotic might not work. Superbugs now call for super antibiotics.
Not all bacteria are bad for us. Throughout human evolution, our bodies have come into contact with bacteria and our body’s have learned from this.
This has built our immune system, our body’s database. Getting rid of all bacteria is not a good thing and that is why the overuse of antibiotics and even the overuse of antibacterial soaps have not been healthy for us.
Overprescribing antibiotics drives up health care cost, limits antibiotics effectiveness and when overprescribing to kids it puts them at risk for any other side effects as well.
Antibiotics Damage Gut Bacteria
Sometimes we have to take antibiotics, but we should only take them when we absolutely need to. But society should not have antibiotics forced on us through the foods we eat.
The herbicide RoundUp has glyphosate in it, and this is used on mainly grain crops. It is used to help farmers with harvesting the grains, but it is not necessary.
Glyphosate is registered as an antibiotic. So not only are we getting this in non-organic meat, but we are also getting antibiotics in non-organic grains and oats we eat. Glyphosate is what is called an obesogen. It can disrupt our hormones, our endocrine system and cause us to gain weight.
In addition to causing antibiotic resistance diseases and superbugs, this overuse of antibiotics also destroy the good gut bacteria in our digestive system.
What Can We Do About Antibiotic Abuse?
First, we can learn as much as we can about the overprescribing of antibiotics. Listen to our doctors and do not demand that our doctors prescribe us antibiotics for every health issue we have.
Secondly, if you eat meat, you can buy only grass-fed beef that states they are antibiotic free. This will send a message to the ranchers and the feedlots that we are fed up with the misuse of antibiotics.
Note: The word antibiotic has been normally associated with antibacterial drugs such as the family of penicillin drugs. Recently there have been developments with antiviral antibiotics that treat some types of viral infections.
About the Author
Sam Montana is a certified Food Over Medicine instructor from the Wellness Forum Health Center and certified in optimal nutrition from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Copyright © 2009-2019 Sam Montana
Resources:
[1] Harvard paper on overprescribing antibiotics
