Reducing the use of antibiotics increases the defenses
Most childhood diseases are caused by germs: viruses and bacteria. Viruses should not be treated with antibiotics, are common infections, which have their course and the child ends up recovering on its own. Moreover, the immune system of your child takes advantage to collect all possible information, to further address other types of pathologies. If you deal with an illness of viral origin antibiotics to the child, you are really hurting him.
Children between 1 and 6 years old are in a vital stage for their development: they are discovering the world. It is an ideal time for you to develop physically and emotionally through contact with the outside world, but you are also forming your immune system.
Oddly enough, children who get dirty, play in the park with sand, catch insects, or splash in the puddles until they get lost, they are children who will grow healthier and with greater defenses against diseases, because their defenses will grow knowing hundreds of microbes and will not develop hypersensitivity to these.
When are antibiotics advisable?
Antibiotics do not cure a cold, a cold, or otitis media. Parents are sometimes guilty that our children are prescribed antibiotics, because we think it is the only way to heal, and we insist to the pediatrician to prescribe them. It is very important to avoid child self-medication to stop the use of antibiotics.
In the same way, we also self-medicate, thinking that they are identical symptoms to the last time he was ill. This is a serious mistake, as recent studies have shown that 90 percent of the diseases of viral origin such as pharyngitis, laryngitis or acute sinusitis, which are treated with antibiotics, can remit spontaneously.
According to experiences published by the Hospital del Mar, in Barcelona, acute otitis media, very common in children under 5 years of age, which is usually treated with antibiotics, is cured in 90 percent of cases with nasal decongestants and analgesics.
For these reasons, when the child gets sick we should take him to the pediatrician and he should diagnose if it is a bacterium, in which case he will prescribe an antibiotic.
Harmful effects of antibiotic abuse
An abusive or inappropriate use of antibiotics contains potential dangers that all parents must know, as more and more strains of bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. The more antibiotics are prescribed, the greater the chance that your child will be infected with resistant bacteria.
Every time we take an antibiotic, the sensitive bacteria are destroyed, but the resistant ones can stay to grow and multiply. The repeated and inadequate use of these medications is one of the main causes of the increase in resistant bacteria.
Belén Trujillano
Advisor: Dr. Cristina Esteve
