I’ve just started an antibiotics course which is 4 times a day for 10 days and that got me wondering if they would be just as effective if I took them all and why not.
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there are 2 effects that influence each other:
**first effect**
antibiotics pass through your body and are filtered out by the kidneys.
so you take an amount and (like alcohol) its gonna be out of your system in a couple of hours. Imagine this as an antibiotic rain.
Remember this for a bit and meanwhile thank your kidneys.
**the second effect**
Antibiotics are either bactericidal (they kill the bacteria) or bacteriostatic (they keep the bacteria from reproducing and growing). the first kind only needs one dosis to work. so we gonna focus on the second(and most common).
The way the second kind work is not by killing bacteria but by stopping them from reproducing. its important to unserstand this. (eli5 follows):
>Antibiotics work by interfering with the bacterial cell wall to prevent growth and replication of the bacteria. Human cells do not have cell walls, but many types of bacteria do, and so antibiotics can target bacteria without harming human cells
The important part is that it does not kill the bacteria but imagine it destroys the womb of the baby female bacteria (by making holes in it that get bigger as the bacteria grow), so when they grow they cant birth any more bacteria babys. after their parents die the population dies with them. all it takes is for a baby to get wet once.
there is a problem… 2 type of bacteria are left:
type1: already grown bacteria is not affected by this and thus can have more babies that are born and raised without this holes.
type 2: some few baby bacteria might have a small resistance(thick fur) to they might survive the first wave of rain. pouring more water at once does not help as the bacteria just needs to be soaked for longer in it.
therefore there are 2 consequences:
1 you cant just do a single spray of attack.
2 pouring the 10x dose wont help at all as one dosis does all the effect. the 10x dosis is washed out soon anyway (provided your kidneys dont get damaged first) and you WANT it to be washed out as well.
so what you want is to have a constant drizzle of this damaging agent over at least 2 or 3 generation of bacteria and at least also one lifetime of bacteria so make sure the current generation died and there are no more reproductive bacteria left. so you take the antibiotics every day to keep your body in a constant medicated state refreshing the rain wave over and over.
if you only have 1 or 2 waves then a small population is still left there.. your symptoms disappear but the small population reproduces and they come back..
whats even worse… remember type2 bacteria? the few ones with a small resistance? well now they are the only ones left and suddenly you have a population made of ONLY resistant bacteria. now your first antibiotic will not work anymore or will kill again only the weaker ones leaving even more resistant babies.
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