When We Overuse Antibiotics, Our Guts Get Screwed Up And We Kill The Bacteria We Need

Let me (as well as doctors, public health experts and mountains of scientific data) repeat: Antibiotics should not be used when you have the flu or the common cold. They not only create antibiotic resistant superbugs, but overusing antibiotics also really screws up the way our bodies work.

The study published in mBio, found that taking antibiotics for even as little as a week threw the patient's gut microbes out of whack — sometimes even lasting up to a year.

Antibiotics target bacteria without caring whether we need them or not. That means bad microbes get killed off, but so do the good ones (which help break down our food, protect our immune system and affect how we respond to hormones).

"Even a single antibiotic treatment in healthy individuals contributes to the risk of resistance development and leads to long-lasting detrimental shifts in the gut microbiome," the study said.

Researchers gave patients one of four commonly prescribed antibiotics or a placebo. They then analyzed patients' gut and oral microbes by testing their poop and saliva. These tests were done before the experiment, 1 week after antibiotics and then 2, 4 and 12 months afterwards.

A cotton swab used to gather spit samples and check microbes grow in our mouth

The study found:

• Generally, microbes in the mouth bounced back faster than the ones in the gut
  
• Patients who took clindamycin saw a drop in the microbes in the gut even after 12 months
  
• Clindamycin and ciprofloxacin saw a decrease in a bacteria that pumps out a fatty acid that reduces inflammation in the intestines
  

To make matters worse, researchers found that patients who took antibiotics actually jacked up the number of antibiotic-resistant genes people had in the mouth and gut.




Main image via Margaret Munro | John Woods / Postmedia News

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