What happens to the good bacteria if we take antibiotics?
In: Biology
So general speaking, it depends on the type of antibiotics. Some antibiotics are what they call broad spectrum antibiotics. This mean they are like a big bomb that seeks to destroy everything. It’s really good at killing lots of bacteria of different types, so it’s used a fair bit. Generally in hospitals, doctors begin with broad spectrum antibiotics while they wait for cultures (identity tests) to come back that tell them what they are fighting and what it’s weak to. Then they can use more specific antibiotics to fight things. That said, all antibiotics can change/kill the populations of bacteria in your body. This is why antibiotics can cause yeast infections, thrush, and infections like C-Diff. When healthy bacteria is killed off, the organisms that survive don’t have much competition and can go wild. So if we’re talking mouth or vagina, the yeast in those places can “go wild”… so in case of your mouth, it can cause redness, irritation, white furry tongue from yeast. In terms of your bowels, it can cause diarrhea when things are unbalanced, and C-Diff, or Clostridium Difficile is a bacteria that can become an opportunistic infection, where your normal gut bacteria isn’t there to compete, and it causes severe diarrhea as well, that often requires specific antibiotics to treat, or even fecal transplants. (Transplants of healthy donor stool (poo) )
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