I am cross posting all of this to newsgroups that can give you more of a
definitive answer to these inquiries. If you don't take an adequate dose of
antibiotics to do the first time, the resistant bacteria will survive to come at
you again. You can't just take a "weak dose" of antibiotic and expect it to
work. All you're doing is setting yourself up for bacterial resistance.
I'm not sure that antibiotics "weaken" the immune system as much as they change
the symbiotic relationship of different strains of bacteria in the body. For
example, if you take a broad spectrum antibiotic, it can kill off a lot of your
gram negative bacteria in your gut, allowing yeasts and bacteria like
Clostridium difficile, which causes pseudomembranous colitis, can overgrow. The
levels of each kind of bacteria rearrange into a different balance depending on
what are affecting their growth.
If anyone from the other NG's have comments, please feel free to jump right in
here.
Judy Dilworth, M.T. (ASCP)
Microbiology
musashi_x wrote:
> The bacteria has adapted itself into a different form. Different abilities.
> Thicker cell walls that most antibiotics can't penetrate. Therefore if you
> go into a doctor's office, pick up this new and improved strep bacteria from
> someone who takes antibiotics for a little while and then quits, letting the
> strong ones live ... you are now stuck with a much tougher bacteria than
> existed 10 years ago in the general population. It doesn't care if it's
> living in Steve or Julie, it just wants to reproduce. You are right. Of
> course, if you never take antibiotics, and have lived to this point, your
> immune system is naturally much stronger than someone who's system has been
> continually "helped".
>> <natejax at my-deja.com> wrote in message news:8n0l9l$ae1$1 at nnrp1.deja.com...> > anyone care to comment
> > > I had a disagreement with my gf this morning over antibiotic
> > > resistance. she was telling me that individual people can develop a
> > > tolerance to antibiotics and that they will need to take stronger ones
> > > for all there infections. I told her that I understood people to be
> > > merely the environment in which the antibiotics fight the infections.
> > > and that it is the infections (or bacterial strains) themselves that
> > > become resistant to the medications. so with my reasoning. an
> > > individual who takes antibiotics frequently could recover from an
> > > infection with a very weak dosage (depending on the infection) and
> > > conversely, an individual who never has taken them, could find them to
> > > be ineffective if they are infected with a particularly resistant
> > > strain..
