Antibiotics and Their Adverse Effects
Antibiotics are medications prescribed by doctors and other medical professionals in the medical industry to patients that are suffering from an illness or a disease that can be life threatening if not taken care of immediately and properly. One of the most incorrect myths about antibiotics is that they are not harmful at all to people who use them. Antibiotics can be overprescribed by doctors, which can lead to an overdose by the patient, which can cause death. Also, people taking prescribed antibiotics might take more than originally prescribed by their doctor because they feel like it and might overdose on the medication.
There are 10 major adverse effects of antibiotics. The 10 major adverse effects are a contribution to cancer, allergic reactions, destruction of beneficial bowel flora, development of resistant species of micro-organisms, immune suppression, overgrowth of Candida Albicans, chronic fatigue syndrome, nutrient loss and resulting deficiency states, treating effects not causes and high cost.
The risk of cancer has been linked to the continued use of antibiotics as a result of a variety of studies done by the National Cancer Institute. One study, which took place in 2008, found that people who took six antibiotic prescriptions for two years had a 37 percent increase in cancers developing in their body. People that took two to five antibiotic prescriptions for two years had a 27 percent increase in cancers. People that did not take any antibiotics for two years had no increase of cancers. Another study done by the National Cancer Institute found that breast cancer doubled in women who took more than 25 antibiotics or took antibiotics for more than 500 days over 17 years.
Many people across the country are allergic to certain antibiotics, which doesn’t give doctors that many choices when it comes to prescribing medication to a patient for their illness or disease. Many patients are allergic to penicillin, a drug commonly used to treat a throat infection. If it is prescribed to allergic patients then they have the risk of dying if not treated immediately.
Repeated antibiotic use can lead to chronic fatigue syndrome. There is no definite cause for chronic fatigue syndrome but is has been found that one of the six main causes of this problem is repeated antibiotic use. Even though antibiotics are supposed to help the immune system of people on them they can also harm the immune system and make people extremely tired and fatigued after a little bit of exercise. Antibiotics are also produced to only treat the effects of an illness and not the cause of an illness. By this we mean that they only treat the symptoms that a patient is suffering from when taking the antibiotics.
Another major effect of antibiotics is the toll that they take on a patient’s wallet. Antibiotics cost a lot of money to purchase, especially if the patient does not have a strong medical insurance plan from their employer or from another source. The most expensive antibiotics are the newer ones, being released in the 2000s.
