Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Popular Antibiotics May Carry Serious Side Effects

Antibiotics disrupt your natural gut flora, which includes "good" bacteria, so for fertility reasons, you should always be careful if prescribed antibiotics. Some studies show that even a single course of antibiotics can kill of entire colonies of good bacteria.

Further, science/the media is finally catching up to the overuse and unnecessary use of antibiotics, some of which can have severe harmful side effects. ALWAYS ask your doctor if antibiotics are absolutely necessary (and there are always the milder herbal remedies out there, depending on your particular condition). From the New York Times:

In an interview, Mahyar Etminan, a pharmacological epidemiologist at the University of British Columbia, said the drugs were overused “by lazy doctors who are trying to kill a fly with an automatic weapon.”
Dr. Etminan directed a study published in April in The Journal of the American Medical Association showing that the risk of suffering a potentially blinding retinal detachment was nearly fivefold higher among current users of fluoroquinolones, compared with nonusers. In another study submitted for publication, he documented a significantly increased risk of acute kidney failure among users of these drugs.

Read more here

No comments: