• Question: What are the negative effects of anti-biotics?

    Asked by Triya to Daniela ?, ☣ Danna, Jonny, Juan, Lindsay on 10 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by Heather, SamKD.
    • Photo: Danna Gifford

      Danna Gifford answered on 10 Jun 2016:

      The problem with antibiotics is that they can kill both the good and the bad bacteria in our body. For example, our intestines are filled with billions of bacteria that help us break down the food we eat. When we take an antibiotic dose, those bacteria can be killed off too. Sometimes you can get an upset tummy after taking antibiotics, or worse, an infection due to an overgrowth of bad bacteria that take over when the good guys are killed.

      Some people think taking probiotics (a dose of good bacteria), or eating yoghurt, along with antibiotics can stop this from happening—but the research isn’t 100% clear yet.

    • Photo: Lindsay Robinson

      Lindsay Robinson answered on 10 Jun 2016:

      Some people can also be allergic to antibiotics, especially penicillin. Although for most people, penicillin is very safe although you can get the side effects that Danna mentioned.

    • Photo: Jonathan Hunter

      Jonathan Hunter answered on 10 Jun 2016:

      On Danna’s point about probiotics there is an interesting thing happening at the moment related to that.
      There is research into repopulating people’s guts with good, health bacteria after a course of antibiotics to prevent further infections.
      They does this, broadly speaking, with a poo transplant.
      One company in America will even pay you to donate health poo samples for them to give to hospitals!

    • Photo: Juan Ortiz

      Juan Ortiz answered on 11 Jun 2016:

      In addition to what Dana, Lindsay and Jonathan have said I would say ANTIBIOTIC RESISTENCE. The general use of antibiotics by a lot of people leads to the release of antibiotics to the environment through the urine for example. Bacteria exposed to antibiotics can become resistant to them and if this happens antibiotics will become completely powerless!!!

    • Photo: Daniela Lobo

      Daniela Lobo answered on 16 Jun 2016:

      I know from personal experience the upset tummy is a side effect.
      And I did the real life experiment: yogurt and probiotics didn’t seem to work for me!

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