Unfortunately, a stereotype about the illness of a non-drinker has developed. If you refuse a glass of vodka at a party, someone will inevitably ask - "Are you sick? " But few people understand that alcohol is very harmful to the body, and especially during the treatment of diseases. other disease. In this article we will talk about the compatibility of alcoholic beverages and antibiotic therapy. Can we drink it during treatment, let's try to imagine.
Consequences of taking antibiotics in combination with alcohol
Antibiotics are one of the most powerful and effective groups of drugs that have completely changed science and medicine. A few centuries ago, the average life expectancy of a person was about forty years, and with the introduction of antibiotics into widespread use, a person began to live longer. Nowadays antibiotics are very controversial, many young mothers talk about the horrors and consequences of giving their children this medicine regularly and for a long time. Indeed, like any potent drug, antibiotics require careful attention and special admission rules. And one of them is to refuse alcohol during treatment. Otherwise, it can lead to serious consequences.
- Reduce drug concentration.As you know, antibiotics do not begin to work immediately, but only after accumulating a certain amount of the drug in the body. And alcohol significantly reduces the absorption of the drug into the walls of the stomach and intestines. This means that alcoholic beverages simply cancel the effects of antibiotic therapy by reducing the concentration of the drug in the body. Therefore, taking medicine becomes simply futile, and sometimes dangerous, because without a curative effect, the condition of the disease thrives, the number of bacteria increases. In addition, small doses of antibiotics lead to the fact that harmful microorganisms develop resistance to this antibiotic, after which it becomes ineffective.
- Load for the liver.Another negative consequence of combining alcohol with antibiotics is an extremely high load on the liver. This organ is involved in the processing of ethyl alcohol and the neutralization of intermediate metabolic products of the drug. That is, during the time of taking antibiotics, the liver works as actively as possible, combined with drinking a lot of alcohol, the load on the organ is much, sometimes the liver can refuse.
- Disulfiram-like reaction.Sometimes drinking alcohol with antibiotics ends with a strong reaction in the form of nausea, vomiting, seizures, and feeling unwell. This happens when certain classes of antibiotics are taken in combination with ethanol. Often this reaction is used to encode a drinker. A special pill with a substance sewn into the space under the skin, in the same dose, enters the body for a long time - several months. If alcohol enters the human body during this period, all of the above symptoms will appear. A person who does not like persistent alcohol.
In addition, alcoholic beverages thicken the blood very strongly, leading to dehydration of the body. How an antibiotic would work in such conditions is a mystery, because each organism is individual. Sometimes the consequences of such a combination can be dangerous and irreversible. Therefore, drinking alcohol during antibiotic treatment is strictly prohibited. This also applies to low alcohol beverages.
How to use antibiotics correctly?
For a drug to be beneficial, it must be used according to certain rules. As noted, can not be combined with alcohol, you need to wait until the drug is completely eliminated from the body. This process can take from a few hours to several days after the last dose of the medicine. Here are some guidelines to follow when taking antibiotics.
Antibiotics should be taken at regular intervals, this is very important. If the doctor prescribes injections or tablets twice a day, they must be taken strictly after 12 hours. If a triple dose is prescribed, then you need to take the antibiotic every 8 hours - for example, at 6 o'clock, 14 o'clock and 22 o'clock.
Antibiotics may not work if bacteria are highly resistant to this class of drugs. Before starting treatment, you will ideally need a culture to determine which drug is most sensitive in a particular case to a given organism.
Any antibiotic should be taken only as prescribed by your doctor - not even worth mentioning. Some diseases, for all severity of symptoms, may not be susceptible to antibiotic therapy, for example, viral diseases.
Before prescribing, be sure to inform your doctor that you have had any prior allergic reaction to the drug. You also need to tell your doctor about any medications you are taking at all times - hormonal birth control pills, blood thinners, antihistamines, etc. v. The combination of certain drugs with antibiotics can cause unpredictable consequences.
Antibiotics should not be taken for less than 5 days, usually the course is about 7-10 days. Even on the 3rd day of taking the medicine, you should not cancel the medicine, otherwise the bacteria that have not been completely eliminated will begin to multiply and attack the body again. Another consequence of stopping antibiotics early is that the strain becomes resistant to the antibiotic used. The next time you have a similar illness, this medicine will be powerless.
Take antibiotics exactly as directed, especially when combined with food. As a rule, most drugs in this group should be taken after a meal with plenty of water. The drug is not washed off with juice, coffee and milk, their effectiveness may be reduced as a result of this.
Use of antibiotics must be combined with the addition of beneficial bacteria, because antibiotic therapy can completely destroy the intestinal microflora, thereby leading to dissociative disorders, diarrhea or diarrhea. To avoid this, you need to take probiotics and prebiotics together.
These are the basic rules when taking antibiotics, which must be strictly followed, regardless of the class of drugs. Sometimes the doctor may not talk about these simple rules, because they need to be known.
When can antibiotics be combined with alcohol?
There are a number of antibiotics, their combination with alcohol is strictly contraindicated. These are fluoroquinolones, nitroimidazoles, cephalosporins, aminoglycosides, erythromycin, and a tuberculosis medicine. In no case should they be combined with alcohol, otherwise a complex reaction resembling disulfiram will develop. If you are planning to drink alcohol, it cannot be avoided by any means, you need to try to drink alcohol so that the alcohol does not absorb into the body. For example, some antibiotics are cleared from the blood within 2-3 hours. After this period of time, you can drink a pint of beer, which an average-sized man will brew for a few hours. That is, by taking a new amount of medicine, the body will return to alert and clean. Such a theory has a lot of nuances, you need to take into account the rate at which drugs and alcohol are eliminated from the body, in order to know the interval between doses. Therefore, it is better to refuse alcohol during treatment for your own health.
The first mention of the dangers of alcohol during antibiotic treatment was from the 40s of the last century. During the Second World War, doctors began to actively use penicillin, which was first introduced, in the treatment of large areas. Then the patients were European soldiers who liked to drink beer. And beer, as you know, has a pronounced diuretic effect and simply flushes the drug out of the body. Then the doctors decided to "scare" the soldiers and tell them about the dire consequences of combining treatment and alcohol. The people in the white coats were intuitively right and even then they protected their patients from problems. Take care of yourself, do not drink alcohol during treatment!