It’s refreshing to see a major news outlet discussing collateral damage and not just resistance. Over the past decade, 99% of the time antibiotic overuse is covered and warned about it’s always only in regards to resistance.
It’s a good article that also doesn’t spread the common misinformation of “just take some probiotics and fermented foods after antibiotics and you’re good to go”.
Swallowing an antibiotic is like carpet-bombing the trillions of microorganisms that live in the gut, killing not just the bad but the good too, said Dr. Martin Blaser, author of the book “Missing Microbes” and director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers University.
“I think the health profession in general has systematically overestimated the value of antibiotics and underestimated the cost,” Dr. Blaser said.
No shit. And it has spread like a virus to the general populace as well. The majority of people seem mentally addicted to antibiotics and think they’re going to die if they don’t get an antibiotic for every minor issue.
- Find out if you really need an antibiotic.
- Ask for the shortest course.
- Rethink probiotics.
I appreciate the NYT for finally helping spread this.
Just yesterday people on Lemmy were cheering about AI discovering new antibiotics. When I shared info about the concerns of collateral damage, the responses were more unintelligent and close-minded than on reddit. Extremely depressing.
For more info on this subject there’s a wiki and forum at https://humanmicrobiome.info.
IMO the future lies in replacing antibiotics with adding instead of subtracting: phages/phage cocktails, FMT, etc. There’s also a massive amount of antibiotic overuse for a variety of reasons, including public ignorance about their necessity (lack of) and harms, and emotional thinking and lack of consequences for people in the medical system.
Phages were given up on because antibiotics were an easier solution and the consequences aren’t always immediately obvious. But that decision has likely played a major role in getting to the current chronic disease crisis.
Sounds interesting.
I will say that having had two eye infections, one resulting in a surgery and the other being solved with antibiotics before it got to bad, give me all the antibiotics, I don’t care, before you make me get that surgery again. Straight outta Saw, that shit. But that’s an edge case of course.