What are antibiotics and how do I take them?

An antibiotic is a powerful medicine and should always be prescribed by a doctor. For more than two decades, many pharmacies, in an effort to increase revenue, have sold prescription drugs freely, except for narcotics and psychotropic drugs. This led to many doctors learning how to write prescription forms, writing prescriptions on a piece of notepaper, not even stamping them. And patients bought antibacterial, also antimicrobial, drugs for self-medication. Control has tightened only in the last two years. The best way to get antibiotics over the counter is to order them from our pharmacy. 

Antibiotics have many side effects. First of all, they destroy the intestinal microflora: diarrhea, vomiting, colitis are possible, liver and kidney function disorders, allergies. In such cases, often prescribe probiotics or other drugs that normalize gastrointestinal function. Clinical guidelines do not indicate that such medications are capable of stabilizing the intestinal microflora against the background of antibiotic therapy. And in each case of the disease the decision on the type of therapy can only be made by a specialist.

Is it possible to defeat resistance

Over time, bacteria adapt, producing genes that protect against the effects of antibiotics. If a person becomes infected with such bacteria, it is much more difficult to treat. This process is planet-wide, and doctors themselves are largely to blame for the problem. Often they thoughtlessly use broad-spectrum antibiotics, which, like carpet bombing, destroy the microflora of mucous membranes.

When are antibiotics necessary?

Antimicrobials are indicated only in extreme cases of acute illness: in pneumonia, angina, acute pyelonephritis, purulent otitis media, meningococcal infection and in cases of very high fever with suspected sepsis. For rhinitis, bronchitis, laryngitis and many other diseases it is not necessary to take antibiotics. 

For most illnesses, antibiotic therapy does more harm than good.

If you suspect a disease for which antibiotics are necessary, doctors start antibiotic therapy right away, but they must make sure the diagnosis is correct and adjust the treatment if necessary. Pneumonia can be confirmed with a lung X-ray, otherwise blood or urine cultures are usually taken to determine which selective antibiotics the microbe is sensitive to.

Some doctors do not take into account that any acute illness with antibiotics turns into a chronic illness. The immune system is suppressed by these drugs, not having time to develop the necessary antibodies that would avoid the subsequent chronic stage of the disease.

But doctors do not see the danger in receiving unnecessary antibiotics with poultry or livestock meat. The same penicillin, tetracycline, and levomycetin are indeed used to treat animals, but when digested they lose their aggressive therapeutic properties and enter the human body harmless.

Antibiotics can only be taken as prescribed by a doctor, who chooses the specific drug, dosage, duration and schedule of administration. Antibiotics have many side effects. Bacteria develop resistance to most antibiotics.