I can’t tell you how many patients that I have seen that have had cold and cough symptoms for 1-3 days and come to see me for antibiotics. They rarely seem satisfied when I try and educate them that they have a viral upper respiratory tract infection that must run its course and that antibiotics won’t help and may make matters worse.

“Many studies and large reviews have compared antibiotics to placebos for acute bronchitis and concluded that antibiotics are unnecessary and offer no significant benefit. In addition, antibiotics have a significant downside: they produce common side effects such as diarrhea, allergic reactions, rashes, and yeast infections, as well as rarer side effects such as fatal or nearly fatal allergic reactions, liver problems, and severe skin reactions. Their extremely frequent administration has also bred an ongoing international crisis of antibiotic resistance. This means that in the aggregate, antibiotics are harmful both in the short and in the long term (when there’s well-documented risk and little-to-no benefit, the risk/benefit ratio is an easy calculation-it equals harm).”-Hippocrates’ Shadow

“People often visit their physician between roughly three and seven days from the beginning of their symptoms, and the average viral illness lasts approximately seven to ten days. In most cases, then, the illness is about to abate regardless of whether or not antibiotics are taken. But patient belief in the power of antibiotics is reinforced by the coincidence of their feeling better just days, or even hours, after the first antibiotic dose.”-Hippocrates’ Shadow

“There are roughly twenty-four thousand life-threatening allergic reactions each year from the unnecessary antibiotics. Giving antibiotics for viral disease is essentially a large-scale game of Russian roulette, and there are thousands of losers.”-Hippocrates’ Shadow