WebMD had this article a few weeks ago about people taking antibiotics for colds.

How many times have you asked your doctor for an antibiotic to treat a cold? A lot of people do that, even before the doctor has performed a physical exam or made a diagnosis, and doing so can create major problems. A recent study by the CDC found that many adults believe if they are sick enough to see a doctor for a cold, they should get antibiotic treatment.

How true that is. It’s pretty much commonplace that if you go to an Immediate Care Center, you walk out with a Z-Pak. Unfortunately, the common cold is viral, not bacteria, and therefore cannot be treated with an antibiotic. And taking unneeded antibiotics is a bad idea. Here’s why: antibiotics kill all bacteria, not just bad ones. Your gut is filled with good bacteria, bacteria that help you digest food and fight infections. In fact, there are more bacteria helping you digest your food than there are cells in your body, by a factor of about 10. Checking Wikipedia gives a quick glance at some of the benefits of all of this intestinal flora: “fermenting unused energy substrates, training the immune system, preventing growth of harmful species, regulating the development of the gut, producing vitamins for the host (such as biotin and vitamin K), and producing hormones to direct the host to store fats.”

You can see that using antibiotics can cause many more problems than the illness that they are treating. That doesn’t mean that there is no good use for antibiotics. When I had my shoulder operated on, they used antibiotics to ensure I didn’t get an infection at the cut site. Infections like pneumonia and strep throat can be effectively treated with antibiotics. But most people are getting them just so they’ll go away. That is, they go to the doctor’s office and the doctor knows they aren’t leaving without something, so he writes a prescription for an antibiotic.

Overuse of antibiotics is one of the reasons that we have so many antibiotic-resistant bacteria running around. We overuse antibiotics in human care and we overuse antibiotics in raising our feedlot animals. Between the two, we’ve forced evolution of these bacteria and created super strains, like methicillin-resistant staph. If only the bacteria that can survive the course of treatment are alive, those are obviously the strongest bacteria and they multiply very quickly.

Ok, so first of all, don’t take antibiotics unless you need to. Obviously if you are having surgery, antibiotics are a necessity. Knowing the function of antibiotics, I immediately started super-dosing on probiotics for a week after my surgery. I take probiotics on a daily basis anyway, but after killing them all off, it’s wise to “reinfest” your gut quickly. Other sources of bacteria are fermented vegetables like sauerkraut, kimchi, and kefir. I’ll be making my third batch of kraut here soon. Now that I know how to do it, I’ll take some pictures and write a post on it.

Bottom line: Take antibiotics only if needed, such as if you’re going under the knife or have a life-threatening bacterial infection. Viruses cannot be treated with an antibiotic. If you’re treating your body right and eating the right foods, you probably don’t get sick all that often anyway. Also, keep your intestinal flora happy by taking probiotics and/or eating probiotics in fermented foods.


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