ANTIBIOTICS FOR YOUR COLD

Whether it happens to be flu season or not, a typical Urgent Care department will see a great many people with complaints of sore throat, sinus infections, earaches, coughs and many more cold related symptoms.  Nothing is worse than have to get up drag yourself to the Urgent Care in the middle of the night when your child is throwing up or has a high fever, or spending your morning off from work in your doctor’s office when you’d rather have been resting in bed.  This section is written especially for those of you or your loved ones that suffer from annual colds and flu symptoms.  You really can save a lot of effort, money and hassle if you know what to look for and how to treat it at home.
More and more these days, you might be in the car on the way to your healthcare provider’s office thinking about how much better you’ll feel after taking the antibiotics they prescribe for you, only to leave the office empty handed and disappointed.  Then, as you roam the aisles of the “over the counter” (OTC) medicine section at your local grocer, you may wonder why your HMO or healthcare providers are not giving you the medicine you need so badly.  “What? Do they not want to spend the money? Is my provider getting a bonus for not prescribing me any antibiotics?”
The truth is that within the last 10 years, there is a big push by the Centers For Disease Control and the general health care population to avoid prescribing unnecessary antibiotics.  This is not because the insurance company is trying to cut back on expenses, but because there is a definite  increase in bacterial resistance to antibiotics.  You see, in the old days if you had an infection, you could get a prescription for some penicillin and the infection wound be gone in a few days.  Yes, it was the new lifesaving magic drug.  These days however, the bacterial strains that will commonly infect you, literally laugh at penicillin and many of the other antibiotics we prescribe.  This is largely due to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics.
How does that work?  Well to put it simply, the more antibiotics we use, the more the bacterial population learns about them and finds ways to mutate and become resistant to them.  By the same token, if you take too short of a course of antibiotics or don’t finish the complete recommended course of them, you don’t kill all the bacteria.  The remaining bacteria then learn and mutate, becoming a “super bacteria.”  What this means is that if we don’t deep coming up with newer and stronger antibiotics, a  cut finger, scrape to the knee, a sore throat or urinary tract infection, may become life threatening.  Imagine having to go to the hospital for I.V. antibiotics over an ingrown hair or infected hangnail!
Another truth is that the colds are caused by on of over 200 strains of influenza viruses and not bacterias!!  Your body is really the only defense you have for recovery; there is no medicine that will cure it.  It’s hard to believe that mankind can walk on the moon and and make genetic clones, but not fix a simple bout of the flu.  For the same reason however, there is no cure for AIDS, it’s a virus!  Sometimes it is truly hard to tell the difference between viral and bacterial infection. Recognizing a viral infection is the key to being able to treat yourself at home and saving up to 45 of your hard earned bucks on an unneeded co-pay to your healthcare provider’s office.  So when should you go in?
To put it plainly, unless your health care provider sees an obvious localized infection, such as a very painful ear or a severely red throat with pus hanging off of it, you probably won’t leave the office with a prescription for antibiotics.  There is one medicine that is not widely used, called amantadine that has been shown to shorten the course of the flu virus by about 50%, but you have to take this stuff within the first 24 hours of onset.  Your healthcare professional has to be able to justify the medicines prescribed you, by what he sees.  There is good news however because his job now is directed to making you feel better with other available medicines.

The very newest drug on the market today is called Relenza.  It comes as an inhaled antiviral medicine and claims to cut the flu symptom suffering time in about half or more.  We’ll have to wait and see.  Until then please see the Colds and Flu section to see what you can do at home to treat yourself and feel better!!