Antibiotics - To Take or Not To Take?

Often times, doctors prescribe medicine to their patients. The most over prescribed type of medicine are antibiotics. Antibiotics are constantly prescribed to patients, but can do more harm then good.

Antibiotics kill and inhibit the growth of bacteria. Antibiotics treat infections caused by protozoa, viruses and fungi. Antibiotics are often over prescribed for common colds. Antibiotics are a form of medicine that shouldn't be prescribed often. When people get a cold, it usually lasts for about 7 days. But many people can't afford to be sick. They have jobs, children and enormous responsibilities.

This is why doctors may prescribe medicine, like antibiotics, to people with cold symptoms. But antibiotics don't kill viruses, like the common cold, they kill bacteria. Bacteria and viruses are completely different and taking an antibiotic to kill the common cold is a waste of time. Patients may go to a doctor thinking they have strep throat or a bacterial infection when they don't. The doctor will usually prescribe a medicine, like antibiotics in the meantime of the test results coming back. People also confuse their common head colds with sinus infections. Some sinus infections do need to be taken care of with medicine, but it usually takes up to 10 days to figure out if it is a viral or bacterial sinus infection. Doctors tend to prescribe medicine, like antibiotics, for patients with dark mucous, toothache, one-sided facial pain and headaches, which are the symptoms of a sinus infection.

Patients may also think that antibiotics have helped their common cold in the past. But the truth is, common colds last a good 7-10 days, with or without medicine, so the antibiotics probably had nothing to do with the recovery process. But doctors continue to over prescribe medicines, like antibiotics, to patients. Perhaps it's the fear of the patient leaving them for another doctor. A patient may tell their doctor that they received all types of medicine when they saw their previous doctor. To avoid conflict many doctors succumb to their patients demands. But one of the downfalls of over prescribing medicine, like antibiotics, is that people can form antibiotic resistance. This means that if a person keeps taking the same antibiotic medicine too much their body will get used to it, and be able to withstand the effects of the medicine.

The increased prevalence of antibiotic resistance is an outcome of evolution. Any organism, bacteria included, can naturally have unusual traits, in this case, the ability to withstand an antibiotic's attack on a microbe.

Patients and doctors both have to take control and realize that prescription medicine can't always help fight something, like a cold. The only time antibiotics should be prescribed is when there have been tests, like throat cultures, done to show that there actually is a bacterial infection present. Doctors must inform their patients that medicine is not always helpful for certain problems, like the common cold.

Thanks to technological advances in medicine, there have been many cures and medicines that can be used to treat a variety of illnesses. Medicine should only be prescribed when completely necessary because it can cause end up doing more harm than good.