The astonishing amount of antibiotics prescribed by Doctors on a daily basis has led to a new superbug. In my post ‘Why won’t my Doctor give me antibiotics’ I discussed how this may come about. But to refresh your memory I will summarize.
When we overuse antibiotics, the bacteria evolve and develop new ways to fight off our antibiotics. For example, they may evolve tougher cell walls, or a pump on their surface to pump out the toxic antibiotics. This has resulted in some bacterial infections becoming ‘resistant’ to certain classes of antibiotics. And the worrying thing is, our design and development of new antibiotics is not keeping up with bacterial evolution.
In the US recently a superbug has been discovered that is resistant to last-resort antibiotics! This is more than bad. If you have ever wondered why our ancestors had such short life spans (less than half of our current life span), the answer is infection. We are running out of antibiotics and this could have devastating consequences for humanity.
The responsibility does not solely fall to the doctor; patients also own a piece of responsibility and it’s time for you to take control. Unless you have a suspected bacterial infection, stop asking your doctor for antibiotics. They will not help!
-TheDoctor