eli5: Why can’t you drink while on antibiotics?
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Many antibiotics use the same liver enzymes to be metabolised ( either into a functional form or as an elimination strategy) as alcohol .
When you’re drinking alcohol, those enzymes are splitting their time on two things, doing neither efficiently.
These result in “drug interactions” and undesirable effects as drug/alcohol is channel through alternative pathways.
This does not apply only to alcohol, a lot of drugs have higher risk of interactions. Always disclose what drugs (legal/recreational ) you are on to your health care provider.
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