Overuse of Antibiotics Causes Backfire

The invention of antibiotics was a major breakthrough. It allowed for the vaccination for protection against otherwise fatal disease, and it saved millions of lives while preventing and eradicating diseases. But is it really 100% beneficial? Recent studies argue not.

As the world became increasingly dependent on antibiotics, the resistance that humans have gained towards bacteria and viruses slowly began to crumble as antibiotic-resistant bacteria and viruses emerged and took over.

With doctors prescribing antibiotics for incurable illnesses such as the flu, many people are falling prey to taking unnecessary antibiotics that don’t help in curing them, and are instead being projected to overexposure.

Overexposure means that the viruses and bacteria that survive unnecessary dosages of antibiotics will be able to reproduce their immunity to the antibiotics, rendering these antibiotics useless. As these super-viruses and bacteria are growing in number, scientists have not been able to find counter-medicines that are able to fight against these super-viruses.

Some speculate that this phenomenon has occured due to the overuse of not only antibiotics, but hand sanitizers and soap.

Soap is widely known to cleanse our hands – but in reality, they only make the water molecules smaller so they can more easily enter the skin. Hand sanitizers claim to “kill 99.9% of germs” – but the germs they are killing are not the harmful ones – they are the harmless one that are more beneficial to our bodies.  

So think twice before taking too many of those antibiotic pills – otherwise, you might suffer greater consequences than just an infection.