Colds, Cold medicine, and creating "super bugs"?!
Question: Colds, Cold medicine, and creating "super bugs"?
I'm in the "If you're sick, just take nyquil till you're better" camp.
What's you're verdict? Can you share some articles if you find any, either way?
Answers:
The superbugs come from society's overuse of antibiotics, which don't work for the common cold anyway.
Regular cold and flu tablets just contain pain killers and antihistamines (to clear sinuses). They don't actually kill the disease itself so can't make superbugs.
Even with cold and flu tablets, you should still get plenty of bed rest and it will take just as long to be *cured* but there's no point suffering through the pain.
"Medicine will ONLY AND ONLY 100% of the time suppress symptoms and NOTHING ELSE"
Herbal treatments DO NOT make the common cold go away faster, the only reason they are effective is because the pills are made from vitamin C, in other words 4-6 pills will contain 400-800% daily value vitamin C
Anti Biotics are the sole reason that we already have super strains, but you need not worry unless you have AIDS, so in effect, antibiotics and freshly cooked Chicken soup are the ONLY types of medicine your boyfriend can avoid.
I prefer your bf decision since common cold is caused by virus which can't be encountered by antibiotic.
There is no specific medicine for common cold so far since its have over 200 virulent serological types. Thus, make it harder to create a drug which can counter all those strains. Usually it comes with sore throat, fever,runny and cough. The best way is to relief those symptoms separately.
Wikipedia.
I'm a pharmacist.
Umm, common cold should only last about 7-10 days. It does not sound like he had cold, sounds like chronic bronchitis. That can't be fixed with Nyquill There is no medicine that works on a cold except test and fluids. Nyquill is just a shot of alcohol to help you sleep, really.
Nursing school
cold medicine only controls symptoms. They are not antiviral or antibiotic so they are not creating super bugs. if one were to take antibiotics for a cold (viral infection) then your boyfriend would be right. I take the nyquil and sleep my cold away.