Kamak wrote:Dire wrote:When mucus isn't clear it means you have an infection somewhere. It can take a few weeks for that stuff to really clear because it gets produced while the infection is still there. It's best to see a doctor at the first sign of that gunk. If you're able to that is.
I tried fighting it myself once and it took a month to beat. Eff that noise, When I cough up stuff like that it's time for the amoxicillin.
Self medicating with things like amoxicillin is part of the reason we've developed bugs that are getting wiser to our go to defenses against getting sick.
When you say 'self-medicating' do you mean that people can buy antibiotics without a prescription in some places? Here in the UK we can only buy antibiotics once a doctor has written us a prescription - and generally a doctor is the best judge of whether or not somebody actually
needs antibiotics.
Kamak wrote:It's better to go to a clinic and get something else than to down a "miracle drug" that's only going to make things worse for people in the long run.
Antibiotics aren't really a 'miracle drug'; A lot of people don't understand that antibiotics are only any good for for fighting off
bacterial infections - but have no effect whatsoever on
viruses.
If somebody has the flu a doctor shouldn't prescribe antibiotics because influenza is a virus.
If somebody has the flu
and a chest infection a doctor should prescribe antibiotics so that the body gets some help dealing with the bacteria taking advantage of the virus weakening the host's immune system.
We shouldn't
not use antibiotics because they'll become inneffective in time through use - what's the point in having medicine and not using it? Doctors are
already being advised to use better judgement when prescribing antibiotics - at least in the UK anyway.
By the time all antibiotics have been exhausted we will most likely have nanotechnologial 'medicines' which can identify and neutralise problem cells - basically microscopic robots injected into your blood stream (this is the most likely route to dealing with cancer too). Though I imagine that people will also be better able to design and manufacture synthetic antibiotics by that time as well.
Necessity is the mother of invention after all.