I’m assuming it has to do with making sure you get any straggler bacteria, but wouldn’t taking all the pills at once shock and awe the little buggers and force them to surrender?
In: Biology
There are different ways an antibiotic can work. Most don’t actually kill the bacteria up front like you would expect. Many work by inturupting natural processes in different ways to cause the bacteria to die. It’s been a while since I studied this, so I’m sure I’ll be corrected if I say something wrong. One of the main ways is during the growth phase. Bacteria have a tough to penetrate outer layer which prevents bad stuff for them from getting inside. When they are growing, they need to kind of break thier own cell wall, and put more of it in between. The new material fuses with the old stuff and you have a solid barrier again. The antibiotic can fuse to the tough stuff once it breaks, and prevents it from sticking back to itself. This means they no longer have a solid wall around them, and bad things can get in as well as the inside stuff leaking out. When that happens, the bacteria dies.
If the bacteria isn’t in the growing phase, the antibiotics can’t get in to disrupt the wall from sticking back together and does nothing. This is one reason why you take it over a few days, to make sure it will be in your system during that growth phase. Another reason is that when the inside stuff leaks out, it can be pretty nasty for your body to handle. We can deal with little bits of it over time, but if all the bacteria were to explode at once, it’ll poison you and you would die.
Edit: fixed some typos.
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