What are antibiotics? Why are they both good and bad?
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Bacteria are all over in human bodies, and good ones help us function, like digesting food in our gut for us.
Antibiotics kill bacteria, and if they are “broad-spectrum” antibiotics, they don’t much care what kind of bacteria they kill.
Using antibiotics can both help get rid of bad bacteria that makes us sick, but also kills off good bacteria in our system at the same time.
Also, if there happens to be a mutant bad bacteria that somehow can’t be killed by commonly used antibiotics, it’ll be left to multiply in your body and create an infection that is very hard to get rid of (since it doesn’t die from common antibiotics).
There’s also the chance of passing drug-resistant, mutant bacteria to other people (like some strep throat strains), which could create widespread antibiotic-resistant infections.
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