Basically if you get an injury like a scratch, you rub an antiseptic solution on it to reduce the chance of a bacterial infection, but if someone had a full blown bacterial infection, antiseptic solution wouldn’t do anything. Why is that?
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Because then it is in the body. The antiseptic is applied outside. Antiseptic – or bleach – will make you very sick or kill you if injected.
Antiseptic kills bacteria before it infects cells. The process of bacteria attaching to cells and infecting them takes a bit of time. Once the bacteria makes it into the cells it spreads beyond the area accessible by the wound. It is then up to your internal immune system to fight the infection. Which is why taking oral or injected antibiotics is really the only way to fight a fully infected wound. Even more so if the bacteria infects the blood making the patient “septic”
When bacteria are outside your body, or on your skin, you can kill them with pretty aggressive substances. These substances would kill you too if you drank them, but they’re safe to clean e.g. your countertop with, and some of them can also be applied to your skin or an open wound – they might sting but they don’t cause any real harm to you.
When bacteria are inside your body, you can’t use these substances, because they’d kill you (or at least make you very sick) if you tried to get them inside your body. The problem being that they don’t specifically kill bacteria – they’re harmful to all life. To kill bacteria inside your body, you need something more specific – something that only harms bacteria and (mostly) leaves your body alone. Something called an “antibiotic”.
Generally speaking antiseptics work by killing living tissue through a variety of mechanisms. If an infection has managed to invade your cells, causing an infection, you could use an antiseptic…but it would also destroy what you’re trying to save. And depending how large the infection is, you could kill the person.
Or you can use the much more targeted antibiotics, which specifically kill bacteria…much better for the host.
In summary, don’t drink, inject, inhale etc Bleach to try to kill an infection.
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