Benefits and harm of antibiotics for the body. How to take antibiotics without harm to health: features and recommendations

A global discovery and a true panacea for mankind are antibiotic- based antibiotics. Their appearance helped to significantly reduce the death rate from many diseases, including those that were severe and incurable. Today, the opinions of experts are divided: the benefit or harm of antibiotics should be placed at the center of the choice of the therapeutic scheme.

Effects of antibacterial drugs

The fact that a person lives in a world of bacteria has become known for a long time. Many microorganisms have a beneficial effect on people's lives, but they can also harm, especially those. Which can penetrate into the body. Strong blow to pathogenic bacteria can cause antibiotics. These strains of microorganisms have been identified precisely for this purpose and have proved their effectiveness in practice.

With the help of antimicrobial drugs, complex, practically fatal pathologies are successfully cured, including sepsis, pneumonia, meningococcal infections. But along with the undisputed benefit, the harm of antibiotics for the body is also evident and manifests itself in aggressive intervention not only in the life activity of pathogenic microbes, but also in the total elimination of useful microflora, primarily the intestine.

Experts consider especially difficult consequences:

• Irritation of the mucous membranes of the stomach and intestines;
• Complex disorders of the balance of the gastrointestinal microflora;
• Disorders in the work of the kidneys, liver, gall bladder;
• Severe allergic reactions;
• Disorders of the nervous system, manifested in vestibular disorders.

Uncontrolled use of antibacterial drugs

The wide popularity of antibacterial drugs and their undeniable effectiveness led to the fact that many patients began to practice uncontrolled reception of antibiotics. Especially often self-medication cases were recorded among people who successfully make a career and do not have time for a full-fledged examination and correction of the treatment regimen. To quickly get rid of the symptoms of the disease, the patient starts taking antibiotics on his own, harm and benefit are not taken into account at all.

Pathological conditions that are caused by viruses, treatment with antibacterial drugs are not amenable, so the doctor should decide on the therapy with antibiotics based on the nature of the pathological process. An uncontrolled intake of antibiotics in such cases will not only not be beneficial, but can cause irreparable harm to the body.

Indications for antibiotic treatment

Antibiotic therapy is considered appropriate in the following diseases:

• Bacterial pathological processes of the nasopharynx: sinusitis, sinusitis, tonsillitis, diphtheria.
• Infectious pathologies of skin and mucous membranes.
• Complicated diseases of the respiratory system: deep and protracted bronchitis, pneumonia.
• Infections of the genitourinary system caused by different pathogens and bacterial agents.
• Renal pathological processes.
• Intestinal dysfunctions of bacterial nature.

In the treatment of viral infections, antibiotics are prescribed only if the disease is complicated by an attached bacterial infection, and the harm of antibiotics is comparable to the benefit for the body as a whole.

Safe reception rules

To ensure that the treatment with antibacterial drugs was the most effective and did not provoke complications, the specialists developed a number of recommendations on how to take antibiotics without harm to health:

1. Taking an antibacterial drug, you should strictly follow the dosage prescribed by your doctor. In the pharmacy network, the range of drugs is quite wide, so when purchasing an antibiotic, it is worth following its dosage.
2. Before taking, you should additionally carefully study the instructions, as in the list of contraindications may be available in the history of pathology, which the treating doctor did not take into account.
3. Do not practice taking antibacterial drugs on an empty stomach, since the harm of antibiotics for the mucous membrane of the stomach and intestines is a long-established fact.
4. The medicine should be washed down with a sufficient amount of water - this will minimize the destructive effect of agents on the mucosa.

Exceptions and additions to the rules of treatment

In order that therapy with antibacterial drugs is effective and does not cause damage to health, experts recommend taking into account a number of exceptions and additives to treatment.

1. Alcohol is excluded, the intake of sorbents and medications that dilute blood, for the period of antibiotic therapy.
2. Against the background of the improvement of the condition and the removal of the symptoms of the pathology, one should not arbitrarily stop taking the method, since the bacteria, not suppressed until the end, will quickly develop resistance to the drug, and further treatment will be ineffective.
3. Minimizing the harm of taking antibiotics with the use of probiotics, drugs with lactobacilli. Doctors prescribe to their patients a scheme according to which these drugs should be taken throughout the treatment period and some time after the end of therapy.
4. Since antibacterial drugs can inhibit the immune system, antibiotic treatment should not forget about the use of immunomodulators and vitamin complexes.

Antibiotics for children

Children's diseases and infections frighten parents, so they are ready to get rid of them as quickly and efficiently as possible, and therefore ask doctors to prescribe antibacterial drugs, despite the known harm to children's antibiotics.

Some childhood diseases, indeed, can be treated only with antibacterial effects. Doctors practice antibiotic therapy in the treatment of childhood diseases in the following cases:

• With angina;
• Otitis;
• Pneumonia and severe bronchitis;
• Inflammatory pathologies of the urinary system.

Rules for the treatment of babies

The pediatrician accepts the question of treating the baby with antibiotics, he also selects a therapeutic drug and dosage for a small patient, discusses with his parents the question of how to correctly take antibiotics without harm to the child's body.

1. It is important to strictly adhere to the dosage and frequency of taking the drug prescribed by the doctor.
2. The recommended duration of antibiotic use should be observed.
3. The baby is not given antibiotics at the same time as antihistamines.
4. It is necessary to strictly follow the diet and the principles of feeding the child, recommended by the doctor at the time of treatment.

Risk of side effects

Do not ignore the side effects that antibiotics cause. Harm to the body manifests itself on the background of the fact that preparations of the antimicrobial series are called upon to impact on pathogenic bacteria, and their effect on useful microflora is not excluded.

By appointing antibiotics to their patients, doctors take into account the possible negative consequences of their intake for the body, which can manifest themselves:

• In severe malformations of the fetus in pregnant women, especially in the first two trimester of pregnancy;
• In problems with health and intestinal microflora in infants whose mothers are taking antibiotics;
• In severe allergic reactions in the form of rash, itching, puffiness;
• In cerebral disorders, dysfunctions of the vestibular apparatus;
• In the malfunction of the liver, gall bladder, bile excretory dysfunction.

Diagnose the doctor in their patients also endocrine disruptions against the background of simultaneous use of antibiotics and steroid drugs. Complex malfunctions of the immune system are also capable of provoking antibiotics. The harm and benefit of treatment with such medications are necessarily taken into account by the treating doctor, so the decision about the tactics of therapy should be entrusted to specialists, not allowing self-medication.

Conditions for the effective administration of antibiotics

Despite the cautious attitude towards antibiotic-based drugs, it is very difficult to argue about their undoubted benefits. Those pathologies that are difficult to cure, are amenable to therapeutic correction with antibiotics. Modern drugs, created on a synthetic basis, are relatively safe when observing the rules for their reception.

You can take antibiotics without harm to the body if you follow a number of simple rules:

1. Before deciding on treatment with antibiotics, you should always consult a doctor and strictly follow his prescription for dosage and duration of admission.
2. Strictly observe the time of taking the drug, thereby ensuring its constant level in the body.
3. Independently do not interrupt the intake of the drug, even against the background of better health.

It should also be taken into account that the same antibiotics can be sold by the pharmacy network under different commercial names. Before acquiring prescribed drugs, it is worthwhile to find out whether they are medicines of a single therapeutic series.