What is antibiotic resistance?

Bacteria can “learn” to live around antibiotics that would normally kill them. When that happens, they become “antibiotic resistant.”

Why is it important?

Infections from those bacteria can be untreatable and then lead to death.

What you can do

Never take antibiotics for viruses! This just kills all the bacteria that are not antibiotic resistant. In the end, it makes you more at risk for bacterial infections.
Only take antibiotics for bacterial infections when really needed.
Always take your full course of antibiotics and discard antibiotic responsibly. That means don’t dump them down the drain. If you community has drug take-back days, use them. If not, you can search for an Authorized Collector Location of the National Take-Back Initiative here. Ideally, have old antibiotics incinerated with medical waste from someone who works in a hospital or research. I disagree with antibiotic disposal in landfills because that just prolongs the inevitable: eventually, those too will spill out into the environment.
Be very careful in places known to have antibiotic resistant bacteria: hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, schools, gyms, doctor’s offices, etc. Don’t let your kids touch everywhere. When you return, make sure everyone washes their hands well. If it was a sporting event, bathe thoroughly.
Be careful in the kitchen: antibiotic resistant bacteria enter your house from the meat you buy. For tips to keep your kitchen safe, check out Banishsponge.com
Unfortunately, “antibiotic free” meat has also been shown to have antibiotic resistant bacteria. If you can, purchase meat from a local butcher.

How it happens

We have changed our environment to contain huge amounts of antibiotics. Only bacteria that can survive those antibiotics will make more of themselves they reproduce really quickly, in less than an hour. The result is that places with lots of antibiotics get filled with antibiotic resistant bacteria.

In homes, resistance develops when we don’t properly use antibiotics. Antibiotics do nothing for viral infections: all you do is kill all your non-antibiotic resistant bacteria, leading to the problems above. Not taking the full course of antibiotics, using them for a very long time or being careless with them (e.g. leave spills in the sink) all encourage resistance.

In healthcare, antibiotics are often unnecessarily prescribed; people make this worse by doctor shopping until they get antibiotics. Healthcare settings are also reservoirs of antibiotic resistant bacteria from other people.

On farms, we give low doses of antibiotics to make animals grow faster, also making the bacteria in the animals’ guts antibiotic resistant. Those bacteria then end up on food, in your kitchen and then in your family. They can spread on meat, in dirt (e.g. on produce), by flies and have even been shown to go airborne. In the US, 80% of antibiotics go to livestock.

Finally and really importantly, resistance can be shared between bacteria. Let’s say that you have an infection, you take antibiotics and the infection goes away. Great right? Yes, but now the all the bacteria left in you – including the good ones – are antibiotic resistant. Disease-causing bacteria can now “learn” antibiotic resistance from normal bacteria. It’s when they learn enough resistances that infections become untreatable. Do use antibiotics, but do so responsibly and only when really needed.