Medicine for Illness and Allergy
Antibiotics
These days, people seem to either depend on medication too much to control their health, or not enough. "Too much" dependence can be an issue of paranoia or drug abuse. In the case of non addictive medication, however, it can be a result of overreaction or misapplication. However, there is also the problem of refusing to take medication, even when there are no harmful side effects and doing so will relieve symptoms that cause suffering and help the body fight infection.
One of the harmful rumors surrounding medication is the idea that the human body can become immune to antibiotics if too many antibiotics are taken. For this reason, some people will refuse to see a physician when they acquire a serious bacterial illness that should be treated with antibiotics. The misconception is that if a person uses too many antibiotics, the antibiotic will be ineffective and might damage the immune system's ability to fight off infection. This is nonsense. The human body does not become immune or damaged as a result of taking antibiotics. Rather, it is the bacteria that the medication is designed to fight that can become immune to the weapons used to fight it. This happens due to misuse of antibiotics, often resulting when people fail to understand what antibiotics are for and/or fail to follow their prescriptions. This IS becoming a serious problem, but not in the way that many people think.
To begin with, antibiotics are designed to fight bacteria, not viruses, yet many people demand antibiotics for viral infections. Antibiotics are also not meant for common colds, the flu, or allergies. When people take antibiotics too frequently for simple colds or aches that do not require it, it can foster the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that remain in the body for a long time and can increase the patient's chance of getting sick in the future.
However, when a person has a contracts a bacterial infection that the body's natural immune system can't shake (like strep throat or bronchitis), then antibiotics speed up recovery and reduce the likelihood that the patient will pass the illness to someone else. However, there are billions of bacteria in an infection, and some people make the mistake of believing that once the symptoms of the illness dissipate, that they are healthy again. These people may stop taking their antibiotics as soon as they feel better and their symptoms disappear. This is a serious misuse of antibiotics. When people fail to take every pill prescribed (usually enough for two weeks), they run a high risk of leaving a good number of those billion bacteria alive. What doesn't kill bacteria will only make it stronger, so those surviving bacteria will learn to evolve past the antibiotics' effectiveness, resulting sometimes in a relapse of the illness or a worse case the next time around. In this event, the same antibiotic can fail to work as well as it did the first time, and sometimes a stronger antibiotic must be prescribed. Worse still is that people who fail to kill off the bacteria by refusing to take all their meds can pass the stronger, more resistant infection on to other people! It is for this reason that stronger and stronger antibiotics are needed over time and why stronger antibiotics are now being prescribed for illnesses that never used to require it.
Therefore, follow directions. If your illness is not very serious, antibiotics will be superfluous and potentially damaging. When your illness does requires antibiotics, get them immediately and take them as directed. You should be sure to take antibiotics only for bacterial illnesses (not viruses) and finished the entire bottle no matter how "good you feel".
Allergies
Another instance where people sometimes refuse to receive proper medication for their illnesses is in the case of allergies. Allergies are an over sensitive reaction to allergens. Allergens aren't technically harmful to the body, but when a person has an allergy, the human body interprets the allergen as dangerous and overreacts in a manner that is often more dangerous than the allergen itself. Common allergens include pollen, pine, cotton, bees, and other environmental stimulants. Some allergies--like peanut allergies or shellfish allergies--are quite severe and can cause a person to seize up or stop breathing. Other allergies are merely irritating and mimic symptoms of a sinus cold, itchy, water eyes, or itchy red bumps.
Whether deadly or mild, allergies require treatment. However, people with mild allergies can be reluctant to get treatment. Allergies can develop later in life, sometimes because of a change in environment liker increasing pollution and sometimes because of a change in the human body that develops the allergy. People who have been allergy-free all their lives sometimes fail to realize that they have developed an allergy in a later period of their lives. They may mistake the symptoms as signs of a cold or simply try to ignore them. However, where allergy symptoms are strong enough to interfere with productivity or happiness, treatment should definitely be sought.
There are a variety of treatments for allergies. One of the treatments is Allergy Immunotherapy. This practice is an option that attempts to eliminate the allergy entirely from a person's system by slowly building up the body's tolerance of the allergen through a series of shots. For a non-injection approach, Allerdrops are allergy immunotherapy drops applied under the tongue that cause an allergic person's immune system to build up a tolerance to allergens. Although not possible for all allergy types, immunization is a good option for allergy symptoms that are chronic, constant or particularly rehabilitating. For the rest, there are prescription medicines and over-the-counter medicines that can alleviate symptoms and provide relief. Claritin and Alavert are over-the-counter allergy medicines known as antihistamines that relieves a variety of symptoms for people with common allergies. Prescription medicines can vary depending on the doctor or institution prescribing them, but are generally most effective when taken according to direction.
Whatever the circumstance, it is recommended that medication be taken where it is needed. Resisting non-addictive medication does not make the body stronger, especially when the body is already weakened from fighting off illness in the first place, and it can confuse a diagnosis if the medication fails to work. Therefore, when health prevention fails and illness strikes, a health-conscious individual will treat the problem rather than ignore it and help their body get healthy again as soon as possible. In addition to following the directions for prescribed medication, it is also important to continue to eat nutritiously, drink plenty of liquids, and rest up in accordance to doctor's orders.
Additional Resources
Read about how antibiotics work from "How Stuff Works".
Learn about when antibiotics can and can't help from Family Doctor.
Read an article discussing whether or not antibiotics are becoming ineffective.
Research article on the misuse of antibiotics with livestock in factories and farms.
Study about how the misuse of antibiotics are making them ineffective.
A free collection of articles about antibiotics from the New York Times.
View research by the University of Virginia on medicine behavior.
Article about things you can do to control your allergy symptoms from the Family Doctor.
Visit the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network for information and resources relating to common and unique food allergies, including diagnosis, recipes, and advocacy.
Read about Allergy Immunotherapy from Allergy Capital.
Read about Allerdrops as an alternative to immunotherapy.
Allergy Escape explains options for allergy medication and treatment.
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