How do I use my antibiotics properly?
You can’t see them, but they’re there: bacteria. All around you and inside your body. Most of the time, we live in balance with them, but sometimes they take over and make you ill. That’s when antibiotics can make the difference. But how do you actually use antibiotics properly?
Antibiotics: anti-life?
The name says it all: ‘antibiotics’ literally means ‘against life’. Fortunately, this only refers to the bacteria that make you ill. These medicines help your body by killing bacteria or slowing down their growth. Some types, such as penicillin, break down the cell wall of bacteria, causing them to burst. Others disrupt processes inside the bacterial cell.
Your body is full of bacteria that are actually beneficial. They help with digestion, protect you against invaders and keep your body in balance. Antibiotics do not distinguish between good and bad bacteria and can affect these beneficial microbes as well. As a result, your microbiome can temporarily become unbalanced.
An accidental discovery
The first antibiotic was discovered more or less by accident. In 1928, Scottish researcher Alexander Fleming observed that a mould, Penicillium notatum, could kill bacteria without harming human tissue. This substance was named penicillin and was later used on a large scale to treat infections—an discovery that has saved millions of lives. Even today, fungi are still used to produce antibiotics. Penicillium chrysogenum, for example, plays a key role in the production of penicillin. This species was discovered later and turned out to be far more efficient than the original mould studied by Alexander Fleming.
