how does not finishing a course of antibiotics cause antibiotic resistance?
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You take a pill, the weaker baddies die, the stronger ones get hurt, but they multiply, passing on the “I’m stronger” traits.
You take another pill, those stronger but effected by the first die.
You take another and finally feel better and stop.
You’ve allowed the strongest of the strongest to be the only ones left multiplying.
They got strong because you taught them how to defend against the pill, and they multiplied.
Now you have a bunch of stronger baddies in you, who know what the pill looks like and can defend against it better.
If you kept taking the pills, all those baddies die and don’t get stronger
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Much like not getting vaccinated or masking propagated new types of Covid.
It’s just math and statistics and short “life” cycles. Bacteria and viruses change relatively randomly but our actions can select for certain strains through iteration and propagation.
Well, kid, you gotta ask yourself, what is best in life?
I mean, sure, we all know about crushing your enemies and seeing them driven before you, but if you stop there then you’ll never hear the lamentation of their women, by Crom. Gotta keep going.
Antibiotics? They’re like having steel inside you.
Resistance exists on a spectrum. In any population of bacteria there are some that are more or less sensitive to antibiotic. If you stop before they are all killed, then you have just selected the bacterial cells that are most resistant to the antibiotic. When they grow out again they will be more resistant than the original population.
I used to explain it to my patients like this- not finishing a course of antibiotics is like giving the strain of bacteria causing the infection weights to work out with. The next time it infects you, it will be bigger and stronger.
You want to take all of those antibiotics to make sure the wimp microbe is dead. If you just let it go, it breeds and becomes an army of Arnold Schwarzenegger microbes.
100 little germs dancing around in your belly having a great time making you sick.
First dose of medicine manages to make contact with about 50 of them, and kills the weakest 10, so 90 germs left
This happens again and again. Pretty soon the only ones that are left are the absolute strongest, who need to get hit again and again to be killed.
If you stop early, then the 10 or so germs who are left alive are all the ones who are the absolute strongest resistors. And when they make babies, those babies are going to be really strong resisters.
Feed every kid in a kindergarden a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Every kid that still stands is guaranteed not to be allergic to peanuts (and it is likely that their offspring won’t be either)
Make sure you have good lawyers if you want to try this out.
– When you take antibiotics the weaker bacteria get killed first
– If you don’t complete the course the stronger bacteria might remain
– The stronger bacteria will then multiply into a colony of bacteria stronger than the original one and might make you even more sick
– Think of it like Darwinian survival of the fittest except where a generation is a few hours rather than several years.
– It won’t affect overall antibiotic resistance but will leave you infected with a colony of bacteria that are more resistant to antibiotics than the one you started with.
Imagine you are fighting 100 ninjas and you kill the 90 weakest ninjas and allow the remaining 10 ninjas to live. Those 10 ninjas have kids who are also great warriors and know how to beat you. They come back 20 years later and kill your whole family.
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