Antibiotics Side Effects: 5 Facts to Consider Before Taking Antibiotic

Antibiotics. Image belong to Science in Daily Life

I remember the day when i was still a working mother, a friend at my workplace offered me an antibiotics to cure my sore throat. She relate this with her own experience. She took antibiotics when she got flu and sore throat, and in less than 10 days she felt better. I don't like taking medicine. I used to drink a lot of water and preferred to apply eucalyptus oil for relief instead of taking antibiotics. So I just turn down her offer with thank you.

Taking antibiotics to get rid of flu, cough or sore throat. 

Is this sound common to you? Many people owed their lives to antibiotic. Bacteria are one-celled organisms that live on our skin, in our digestive system, and in our mouths and throats. This good bacteria serve a positive role in our body to promote health. But some are harmful and cause illness including ear infections, and strep throat. Antibiotics is a type of drugs which slow or kill the growth of bacteria from making important chemicals they need to survive. Some interfere with the genetic material in a bacterial cell and cause it to stop the bacterial cell dividing into two and multiplying.

Antibiotic is a powerful tool to fight illness cause by bacteria. But if it used with less respect antibiotics may do more harm than good. I found worth reading article on Healthier Talk written by Dr. Alan Inglis about the side effects of antibiotic when they're overused, or over-prescribed. The next time you think you need antibiotics to treat flu or other illness, do consider this harmful side effects that you may experience from overuse antibiotics.

cartoon from Jill Stanek

1. Antibiotics may cause breast cancer 
One study shows that over a 17-year period, women who took antibiotics for over 500 days or who had over 17 prescriptions had double the risk of developing breast cancer. That’s a 100 percent increase! One expert stated, “It’s as strong a risk factor as we have.”

2. Antibiotics destroy your immune system 
Three quarters of your immune system is located in your gut, where it protects against foreign toxic substances in your food. A healthy balance of gut material is essential to normal immune system functioning. But if you take too many antibiotics too often this natural function is disturbed. In addition to contributing to the risk for chronic degenerative diseases, overuse can be responsible for an increase in risk of both lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, where the immune system becomes confused and attacks one or more tissue types or organs in the body.

3. Antibiotics cause diarrhea 
You’ve probably read the warning label and maybe you’ve even experienced this side effect before. Antibiotics wreak havoc on your stomach. Patients on antibiotics develop diarrhea because the normal balance between good bacteria and bad bacteria in the gut is disturbed. To avoid diarrhea, I recommend a probiotic supplement (which is healthy bacteria) three times a day while taking an antibiotic.

4. Antibiotics cause colon disease 
Antibiotics kill good bacteria. And they can also cause a severe inflammatory disease of the colon called C. Diff colitis. C. Diff is short for clostridium difficile, a resident gut bacteria that causes trouble when not held in check by normal amounts of good bacteria. This results in severe diarrheal illness and can even lead to colon surgery––or in rare cases, death.

5. Antibiotics promotes the growth of hard-to-treat resistant bacteria
Overusing antibiotics will eventually lead to bacteria being resistant to the drug and eventually not working at all. The result can be anything from a urinary tract infection that doesn’t go away to death from a so-called “superbug” resistant to all antibiotics. These superbugs are a worry more for the elderly and chronically ill, whose immune systems are worn out.


Visit Healthier Talk for further reading. Other related resource is Antimicrobial Resistance.

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