M6.6 Use of Antibiotics



Antibiotics Resistant 101: It's a simple concept, when an antibiotic is used, a percentage of the bacteria present is killed. The surviving bacteria is obviously resistant to it. Since they are left alive, they are able to reproduce and produce more bacteria resistant to that antibiotic. Eventually, there will be less antibiotics that will be effective. These bacteria found in food, will make its way into our bodies and potentially cause great harm.
Lifestock "Superbug": Already, evidence is being studied of a type of bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Slowly, this "superbug" is making its way into people, as is the case in the Netherlands. The FDA should act fast in order to prevent this. Ideally, this would've been prevented earlier by regulating the use of antibiotics in agriculture and farming.
Antimicrobial wipes and soaps making you sick: It's interesting to learn about a study that has evidence about this. It seems common sense that an antimicrobial or antibiotic product will make your hands (or any other surface) cleaner and thus healthier, but the evidence says otherwise. This makes me think twice about using products like these again, and will probably just stick to regular water and soap!
Antimicrobials in Hospital Furnishings: Knowing what I know now from the previous articles, it seems like a bad idea to incorporate antimicrobial chemicals in the furniture in hospitals. Intuitively, it may seem like we are keeping a more sterile environment, but really, we're just selecting the bacteria resistant to each chemical to become the next "superbug".
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Comments

  1. Sandy TanOctober 5, 2018 at 11:07 AM

    Hi Hugo,
    Learning that antimicrobial products are not healthy for us also made me not want to use those products, and instead just use water and regular soap.

    ReplyDelete

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