Everyday Antimicrobals May Not Be Good
When you see two items on the store shelf — one with antibiotics and one that is without, which are you going to buy? Most people would say that they would buy the one that has antibiotics. Why? Because we consider this to be safer and more effective.
However, that is quite the opposite. The more we use antibiotics for the everyday little things, the worse off we will be. When we use antibiotics in such small quantities, we are allowing the bacteria that is not destroyed to evolve and become resistant to that type of antibiotic.
MRSA infections can range from boils to more severe infections of the bloodstream, lungs and surgical sites. Most cases are associated with hospitals, nursing homes or other health care facilities.
The superbug can cause life-threatening and disfiguring infections and can often only be treated with expensive, intravenous antibiotics.
Link: Reuters
MRSA, or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is one of the few things that should scare the crap out of you. This is one of the types of bacteria that are becoming more and more difficult to treat — eventually we will be unable to treat it at all. Currently, there are already some types of bacteria that are untreatable. For example, there is a strain of tuberculosis that has a 100% mortality rate, because it is resistant to every type of antibiotic known to man kind.
Luckily, this type of TB is not in the United States, it is in Africa, where those infected are unable to get the three or four different types of antibiotics needed to successfully treat TB. This results in the bacteria evolving and reproducing strains that are resistant to the types of antibiotics that the infected was able to take.
Next time you see something that has antibiotics in it ask yourself if it is something that you really need to have. Chances are, there is a product without antibiotics that will do exactly the same.
Justin
Tags: antibiotics, antimicrobials, Health, Immunity, Medicine, resistance
Get SkypePro for free local calls
Here are some other related posted by this author...
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Leave a Reply