Is antibiotic resistance a serious problem?
Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria that can cause serious illnesses and infections no longer respond to simple antibiotics. In this video, family physician and author Joel Fuhrman, MD, explains why this is such a dangerous health issue.
Transcript
When we take antibiotics into our body, it kills all the healthy bacteria in our digestive track and selects out for more dangerous organisms that don't
get killed by antibiotics. And those now proliferate. [MUSIC PLAYING]
It's very important people realize that antibiotic resistance is becoming a serious problem in this country. Antibiotic resistance means that the bacteria that
can cause serious illnesses no longer respond to simple antibiotics today. And the problem is getting worse.
The Center for Disease Control suggests anybody could die of these infections today and it could explode devastating our health care
system in this country. It's something we have to do something about and we have to do something about it right now. This problem arises because of the indiscriminate use
of antibiotics and their use for predominantly viral infections, which they have no effect anyway. But when we take antibiotics into our body,
it kills all the healthy bacteria in our digestive track and selects out for more dangerous organisms that don't
get killed by antibiotics. And those now proliferate. And those other, and the bacteria that are the good bacteria, take months and months to come back
and you predispose you to more serious infections in your future. It weakens your immune system. Plus, about 75% of antibiotics in this country
are given to animals in farms to help them grow faster. And then they develop these superbugs and people can
contact superbugs and serious disease from those animals as well, or handling the raw meat, or eating or eating foods that are contaminated, such as foods
that you don't cook well enough or the foods that you touch something in your kitchen when they're raw and then you use that same utensil,
that same surface to touch another food to it, and you could contact those superbugs that way as well.
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