So I know if you take antibiotics, and you stop once you feel better, can cause the infections to come back even worse and you might possibly develop a antibiotic resistance but what’s the difference between that and finishing your medication? For example, my antibiotics I take 2 a day for 7 days. How does finishing my medication not cause a resistance?
In: Biology
Think of your infection as a medieval army. The army is made up of a bunch of different people with different ethnicities, nationalities, and genetics, but most of them have swords.
However, you have a special weapon: a cannon. A cannon can wreak havoc on an army that’s not prepared. So most of the enemy is dead very fast because they don’t know cannon warfare. But some segments of that army are trained in cannon warfare, so they aren’t as weak to your cannon tactics.
However, if you blast the small cannon-trained segment that remains, day after day after day with the same cannons, they’ll still dwindle in numbers.
Even those who know cannon techniques will still die every day, and after a while (your prescription period), there’s not enough of them to stand up to your cannons even though they know how cannons work.
That’s how antibiotics work. There’s always some that are resistant, but you want to take out the army so much that even if they’re resistant to your cannons, they can’t possibly win a battle with 1,000 of their own vs. 1,000,000 of your own immune cells.
Taking your antibiotics for 1-2 weeks makes sure that there’s very few left that know cannon warfare, and your immune system can just sweep them away.
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