Why antibiotics aren't always good | Integrated Learning Therapy

A question that interests some health professionals these days is why so many parents worry about vaccines and ponder whether they should be vaccinating their children yet are not at all concerned about giving their children antibiotics. In fact, a number of parents will visit a doctor with the aim of getting a prescription for antibiotics to treat their child’s complaint. In spite of warnings that antibiotics are becoming less effective because of their misuse and overuse. But lately, attention is turning to the damage antibiotics can do to our health.

The use of antibiotics depletes the population of important, ‘good’ gut bacteria in our bodies. The huge number of beneficial bacteria that we have on our bodies and in our gut is commonly referred to as our microbiota. The microbiota is essential for our physical and mental health, so destroying large numbers with antibiotics is not good news.

Especially concerning is what antibiotics do to an infant’s microbiota. Some bacteria in a baby play a critical role in the development of a child’s immune system. Antibiotic use early in life may raise the risks of allergies and allergic asthma because it reduces the beneficial effects of microbial exposure. One large study found a link between antibiotic use in the first year of life and symptoms of asthma, hay fever and eczema in children aged between 6 and 7 years. Early exposure to antibiotics could play a role in the ever increasing rates of food allergies as well. A study by the University of Chicago recently showed that young mice treated with antibiotics are more likely to develop a peanut-allergy-like condition. Dosing these mice with a certain microbe (called Clostridia) relieved them – seemingly by preventing the peanut proteins from getting into the bloodstream.

One of the biggest problems with antibiotics is that they often bring about almost instant improvements to a state of ill-health. A child suffering from a painful ear infection will very quickly start to feel better after antibiotic use. Why is this a problem? Because when you start feeling better, there are usually a lot of ‘bad’ bacteria still in your system. If you stop taking the antibiotic as soon as you’re feeling better, it gives the bacteria that were able to survive the early doses a chance to go on and develop a full resistance to that antibiotic. This means the same antibiotic won’t work for you next time. This is why doctors advise you to finish a course of antibiotics.

The problem is made worse because some doctors may use unreliable methods to decide which antibiotic to prescribe. Different bacteria need different antibiotics. Lab tests should actually be done to ensure the correct antibiotic use. Even worse than ‘guessing’ is the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics, which target wide ranges of bacterial species, resulting in damage to our entire microbiome and not just the ‘bad’ bacteria we need to get rid of.

Probiotic use in animals

Once upon a time, sick animals used to be treated with antibiotics in the same way as they are used to treat people. Then, way back in the 1950’s, it was noticed that low doses of antibiotics caused weight gain in livestock. Increased size means increased value so low doses of antibiotics has become virtually the norm in animal farming.

This is a practice that is spreading antibiotic resistance. While high doses of antibiotics kill virtually any bacteria, low doses allow changes that make bacteria a little more resistant so that when the time comes that a particular bacteria is indeed life threatening, we’ve provided it with a means to protect itself and survive. In addition, the surviving bacteria spread throughout the agricultural industry, can jump between one species and another and infect humans. That’s why the European Union banned low-dose antibacterial use for fattening livestock in 2006. In South Africa, we can benefit from limiting our meat intake to sources that are farmed free-range and certified to be free of antibiotics.

And lastly, if low doses of antibiotics fatten up our livestock, do they fatten us up as well? It seems that the answer, although not yet conclusively proven, might well be yes!

Please be cautious about running to the doctor for that ‘quick-fix’ medication. In the long run, the benefits might be fewer than you think.

[1][1] Most of this content is extracted from the book Follow your gut, by Rob Knight. Published as a TED Book in 2015 by Simon and Schuster. It is highly recommended reading! If you would like to hear more, you can listen to Rob Knight’s TED Talk, available online at www.TED.com.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.