Antibiotics

Antibiotics kill the germs that cause colds and the flu

Antibiotics kill bacteria or stop them from growing so that our bodies can be cleared of bacterial infections. They are, without a doubt, one of the best advances of modern medicine. Bacteria can cause infections in many different places in our bodies, and some of these infections can be serious. Antibiotics (you can think of the name as meaning “anti-bacteria”) help our bodies to fight off bacterial infections that the body might not be able to handle by itself. Different antibiotics work for different types of bacteria. When you are sick with an infection from a bacterium, your doctor has to think about what kinds of bacteria usually cause that kind of infection and then pick an antibiotic that should work to kill those particular bacteria. So, antibiotics CAN kill a lot of germs, if you think of germs as bacteria.

As great as antibiotics are for killing bacteria, antibiotics cannot kill viruses. Viruses and bacteria are not the same. While both are germs that can make us sick, they look and act in very different ways. Viruses are teeny-tiny little, special, small machines that can enter into the cells in your body and use your body’s own equipment to make you sick. You could imagine a virus like a special computer that has been programmed to take over the master controls of a big ship just by being hooked up to the control panel. In contrast, a bacterium would be more like an evil person who snuck inside the ship’s control room and is making decisions about what to sabotage and how to maneuver the ship. Bacteria are full-fledged organisms in a way that viruses are not; a virus is more like a nefariously programmed computer, whereas bacteria are more like evil villains. As you might imagine, the methods you would use to stop or kill that evil person are different from the methods you would use to deal with the computer. Antibiotics cannot kill the “computer” even if they work great against the “villain.”

Antibiotics cannot kill viruses. Antibiotics only kill infections caused by bacteria, fungi, and some parasites. Because antibiotics work for some infections (those caused by bacteria) and not for other infections (those cause by viruses), it is important to know what is causing your infection. Colds and the flu are caused by viruses, not by bacteria. Viruses also cause most coughs and sore throats.

Since colds and the flu are caused by viruses, antibiotics do not treat them. If you have a cold or the flu, an antibiotic will not help you feel any better. It will not make you better faster. It will not prevent you from spreading the cold or flu to anyone else. It will not kill your germs.

If you are infected with a virus, the only thing that an antibiotic might do is make you feel worse. Why is that? The antibiotic is not going to do a thing to help with your cough or cold symptoms, but it might cause some unpleasant side effects, such as diarrhea or rashes. It could also kill off the good bacteria that normally live inside your digestive tract or other parts of your body, leaving you with a yeast infection or an overgrowth of bad bacteria in the place of your body’s usual good bacteria.

When we use antibiotics when they are not needed, bacteria that are in your body but not causing disease can learn to be resistant to them. Bacteria that have not been killed off by an antibiotic may learn how to survive against it. If you think of the evil person trying to take control of your ship, it would be like that person saw your fighting style once, but you did not kill him, and so now he knows how to defend himself against you in the future. Using antibiotics when they are not needed or using them improperly, by not taking enough of them, or not taking them for as long as you are supposed to, allows resistant bacteria to develop. When you get infected by one of these resistant bacteria, it can cause serious problems because our usual antibiotics do not work.

So the bottom line here is that it really is important to use antibiotics properly. If your doctor says that you do not need an antibiotic, you shouldn’t demand one. You should not be taking an antibiotic for a viral infection like a cold or for most sore throats or coughs. If the doctor is not sure whether your infection is caused by a bacterium or a virus, this is something you can talk about together in order to decide on a plan.

Additionally, you should never take antibiotics that are prescribed for someone else. As we mentioned, antibiotics are not all the same. They work in very particular ways for particular bugs. An antibiotic prescribed for someone else might not work for your infection, even if your infection is caused by bacteria. It might also make your bacteria mutate into resistant bacteria. And it might make it difficult for your doctor to know what is infecting you.

Taking antibiotics properly also means taking an antibiotic for the entire prescribed period. Even if you or your child feels much better, you should take the antibiotic for the entire time that the doctor suggests. Do your very best not to skip any doses of the medicine. When you skip doses, the bacteria have a chance to grow and become resistant when less of the drug is present in your body.

Antibiotics are wonderful medicines. People used to die from simple infections that we can easily treat today. We should not expect antibiotics to work for things that they are not designed to kill, and we should not use antibiotics in ways that will ruin their usefulness by causing resistance. If you have a cold or the flu, antibiotics will not work! Never, ever, ever! Taking an antibiotic for a virus might even do more harm than good.

Once an individual has started a course of antibiotics, he is no longer contagious

When one child in the playgroup is sick with something, the other parents often go into hyperalert mode. They want to make sure their children stay far away from a contagious child or anything that he or she might touch. Once that child is on an antibiotic, though, the vigilance relaxes. Once the antibiotic starts, schools and day cares and colleagues relax. Just the words “I’m on an antibiotic” are enough to make most of the hypochondriacs around you relax.

Being contagious means that you are able to spread your disease to other people. Unfortunately for people trying hard to avoid getting sick, it is not always simple to determine when someone is contagious and when they are not. Antibiotics might help, but they often don’t.

First of all, for viral infections, especially the viruses that cause most of our colds and the flu, antibiotics will never, ever make you less contagious. Antibiotics only work against bacteria; they do not work against viruses. If a person is sick with a virus, an antibiotic will do nothing to make them less contagious. Another problem is that the time period when you are contagious varies according to what type of sickness you have. An ill person can be contagious before they show any symptoms. When you are infected with a virus, you typically shed or spread the virus for at least a day or two before you have any idea you’re sick. The virus is in anything coming out of your mouth or nose during this time, even before you are coughing and sneezing. Then, when your nose first starts running or you have any other symptoms, you shed even more of the virus. Even as you start feeling better, you might still be contagious and spreading the virus eight or ten days after your sickness starts.

This type of spread is true for both the viruses that cause coughs and colds, as well as viruses that cause infections like herpes. The virus can spread before you have any signs of the infection. Infections such as chickenpox, fifth disease, and some forms of meningitis may all be contagious before you have any symptoms. On the other hand, other viral infections, such as the main virus that causes pinkeye, do not spread before the person actually develops symptoms.

Don’t vow to stay in your house and shun other people forever! Even though antibiotics are not going to protect you from their coughs, colds, and crud, it is also important to realize that many illnesses are not contagious at all—even some very serious infections. Ear infections, sinus infections, and urinary tract infections happen as a result of a passageway or tube being blocked by an overgrowth of bacteria. These types of infections are usually not contagious. You need antibiotics to kill off the bacteria growing in your ear or in your bladder for you to feel better, but you are not going to pass this infection to someone else if you do not have an antibiotic. Other serious infections, such as infections of your bloodstream or pneumonias, are not very contagious to other people. Most often, these infections come about because of something else that was going on in your body first, and so healthy people around you are unlikely to get infected by the same thing. For other infections, like most sexually transmitted diseases, you will not get infected unless you have sexual contact with the person infected or have some other very close contact with them.

Clearly, though, there are bacterial infections that can spread from one person to another. In these cases, you do want the sick person to be on an antibiotic so that they do not infect you. One of the bacteria that causes meningitis, Neisseria meningitidis, is contagious, and if one person becomes sick with infection from this bug, that sick person needs an antibiotic, plus close family members exposed to that person need to take antibiotics themselves to prevent infection. In the case of Neisseria, it is very good news to know that the infected person is on an antibiotic. Strep throat is another example where having the person on antibiotics may or may not help you. Strep throat is caused by a bacterium, Streptococcus pyogenes, and it is contagious. This bug rapidly colonizes the family members and close contacts of the person who has the first infection. When one person in the family has strep throat, the risk that someone else in the family will get strep throat is at least 10 percent. Using an antibiotic may help decrease how the bacteria colonize your throat and thus prevent other people from getting infected. The real reason we use antibiotics for strep throat is to prevent other complications to your heart or kidneys that can result without treatment. In contrast to strep throat, another form of the strep bug, Streptococcus pneumoniae, which can cause bad pneumonias, is not as contagious as the bug that causes strep throat. While you would certainly need antibiotics to help with one of these strep infections, the antibiotics would not have much of an effect on how contagious you were.

You may have noticed that we said antibiotics “might” make you less contagious, even with contagious bacterial infections like strep throat. The truth is that there are very few scientific studies giving clear data about just how long you remain contagious. Parents are typically told that their child is no longer contagious after they have been on antibiotics for twenty-four hours or sometimes after forty-eight hours. These figures are very roughly based on how fast the antibiotics decrease the load of bacteria within the body. For some conditions, a person might still be contagious with only a small amount of the bacteria around and after they have been on an antibiotic for a while. For other conditions, the person may never have been very contagious or the period of being contagious might have passed even before you started the antibiotic. Some infections are still contagious as long as you have a rash or have a cough, whereas others are not. Often, doctors really do not know just how long you will be contagious. While it is important to take antibiotics for certain medical problems and to take them as directed by your physician, this is not a guaranteed way to know whether someone is contagious.

Whenever you have an infection, you should talk with your doctor about how contagious this infection is, how long it will be contagious, and what, if anything, you need to do to prevent other people from being infected.