Another selection from my search engine list:- “Can I take one day’s worth of antibiotics?” to which the only sensible answer is not if you have the brains god gave a gopher. I mean, why the hell would you?
One day’s worth of antibiotics will do absolutely nothing for you. It won’t even harm you, unfortunately (unless you’re allergic), as such idiocy surely deserves payback. The only exception to this is when taking 3gram (not milligram, it’s not a typo), sachets of Amoxyl, and then only for certain conditions.
The labels on antibiotics always says “Complete the course”. There’s a very good reason for that – if you stop midway, your body will retain a colony of bacteria that are only damaged, not killed, and they may very well recover, and give rise to a strain that is, to some degree, resistant to that particular antibiotic. Keep on doing it, and one day you’ll have a fully resistant population of bacteria, and probably die horribly! OK, that’s a worst-case scenario, but you take my point?
It is, in my view, such misuse of antibiotics that contributed more to diseases like MRSA getting such a hold, than did over-prescribing as the numbnuts at NICE would have you believe.
There are times when I will take, say, 3-4 day’s worth. This is mainly when I get an infection as a result on inhaling refluxed gastric acid, caused by GORD (GERD in the US) – Gastric-oesophageal Reflux Disease. If left to it’s own devices, such a minor infection will get out of control, and be as serious as any naturally-occurring COPD infection, but hit quickly with 500mg of Amoxyl every 8 hours for 3 or 4 days, and it will be eliminated before it gets a hold.
I would caution you about doing that if you don’t know what you’re doing – I have over 50 years experience with antibiotics, and I have the in-depth knowledge to allow me to take liberties safely.
On a similar theme, NICE – and I’m running out of adjectives to describe these jerks – are considering recommending that prescribed antibiotics be cut by half. To me that’s insane, and will likely lead to other bacteria becoming resistant, in the manner of MRSA and Clostridium Difficile. See this post on the subject.
