Fri, 02 Nov 2007 03:51:35 GMT from aemeijers :
Dan Warren wrote:
So what do you do when you get prescribed antibiotics to take? Crap in
the yard? They do go right through you, you know. That is why you have
to take them for a week or ten days.

Good lord. Let me reassure you: antibiotics do *not* "go right
through you". Maybe you're thinking of the sometime side effect of
diarrhea -- that happens when antibiotics kill the digestion-aiding
bacteria in your gut along with the ones that are making you sick.

Antibiotics must be taken for the full course because when your
symptoms disappear a few of the bad bacteria are still living. These
are the ones that have lower susceptibility to the antibiotic. You
continue taking the medicine to kill those. Otherwise they quickly
breed back to high numbers and make you sick again, but this time you
have a strain that is resistant to the antibiotic.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
"If there's one thing I know, it's men. I ought to: it's
been my life work." -- Marie Dressler, in /Dinner at Eight/