spk_1:   0:00
Hello, everybody. Hello,

spk_0:   0:01
everybody. And welcome to the show. The big show. The biggest, most important and critically acclaimed podcast is recording their car today. We're the red studio, and we're ahead. And somewhere we're not rolling on the road today. We're gonna make this short and sweet. This will be a short podcast because we're almost to our location. But we want to go ahead and pop this out because it's not that much to say. I'm just gonna turn it over to my co host, Spice, and she's gonna knock this puppy right on out of the park.

spk_1:   0:29
Okay? The problem we're looking at here is antibiotics might come in to be in short supply in some time in our futures. And you definitely don't want to use antibiotics when you don't need antibiotics, especially if they're in short supply. And so if you have no doctor, you can consult. I'm not a physician. I'm just reporting what I've read in the medical literature. If you don't have a physician, you can ask about these things and you have to decide whether or not a situation is worth antibiotics. This is just about some simple steps, some simple um, things you can look for to make an educated guess about whether or not you need antibiotics for a particular situation. When you don't have a medical professional, you can consult, so it hits the most commonly encountered situations. Upper respiratory infections are obviously first on the list of commonly encountered things for which one might be tempted to give antibiotics, especially if you've got kids because they're extremely sharing with their germs. There little germ factories S O If you've got kids or your around kids, especially, but adults as well. Upper respiratory infections extremely common. And the bad news is, they all look kind of ah lot alike. Wow, I don't feel very good. I don't have much appetite. I might be running a little bit of a fever. I've got some stuffiness. I've got a running nose. Maybe I've got a sore throat. Uh, those kinds of things are not very diagnostic of what particular problem you've got. And antibiotics have been overused and badly used, and frankly, they're two main sources for most of these infections. Bacteria and viruses. Bacteria are tiny but free living independent little cells. They Parisa ties your body. They use your resource is, but they have their very own metabolic pathways, their very own chemical processes. And so we've got some wonderful drugs that interfere with their processes that do not interfere with our processes. And we call those drugs antibiotics. And if you get the right antibiotic, they are literally wonder drugs. They have saved countless lives by killing off the bacteria without killing off the person who's carrying around the bacteria. So they're very powerful against bacteria. Bad news is they're entirely useless against viruses because viruses air, not independent cells.

spk_0:   3:24
They're actually worse than useless.

spk_1:   3:27
Yes, because they will kill off bacteria that are doing some good things for you. And they might have some other negative side effects while doing no good against the actual infection.

spk_0:   3:37
Some of these things kill off a lot of good gut bacteria, along with the bad bacteria.

spk_1:   3:42
All of them. Do you actually

spk_0:   3:44
some some arm or

spk_1:   3:45
summer more potent than others? Yes, so

spk_0:   3:47
So you could really you could actually weaken yourself by taking these things when you don't need to.

spk_1:   3:52
You can give yourself a long lasting gut infection trying to cure yourself of ah, sniffle. That's not even curable by the antibiotic s. So they're a problem. The viruses don't aren't free living cells. They're just little particles of protein and DNA or in a they make their way inside of your cells. They take over your cells and pre program your cells to make a bunch more viruses. So they do reproduce themselves, sort of. But it's really tricking you into making the viruses cause they can't make anything on their own. They don't have enough of their own biochemical processes to do that. They also don't have enough of their own biochemical processes to be good targets for drugs like antibiotics. We don't have any good antiviral drugs, and by good I mean effective in the way antibiotics are effective against bacteria. We've got some things that are kind of helpful, Yeah, but nothing that just kills off viruses because they're not really alive. They're just reprogramming yourselves. So the key decision is, Is this problem? I'm having bacterial or is it viral? If it's bacterial than antibiotics, might be the right solution. If it's viral, antibiotics are worthless or use or worse than useless. So upper respiratory tract infections, the sniffling, the sore throat the cough, the little fever. Here are some cues that people who are physicians tell you to look for. Most of the upper respiratory tract infections are in fact, viral, and they're gonna go away. Your immune system's gonna kick him off and taking the antibiotics Not gonna help a bit. How do you know when they're bacterial? And you really ought to take drugs for him if the fever gets high because it's viral, upper respiratory infections tended cause fairly low. Fever's like 100 and one Fahrenheit, and bacterial infections tend to cause higher. Fever's like 100 and 304 Shut up Fahrenheit fevers. So hire fevers or, more likely, bacterial. If you've got a the sniffle or whatever for three or four or five days, and then it suddenly gets worse and the fever gets higher. It probably started out viral, and then you added a bacterial infection. And now antibiotics might be helpful, even though it didn't start out that way,

spk_0:   6:33
you'll see a lot of years, and I'm not a doctor and ignored away play one on the Internet. Nor is she a doctoring. Nor did she play one on the Internet but you'll see a lot of that. That situation with pops up when you get up with the Sinus infections. Yeah, it is actually not really directly related to the viral part of it, But it comes on later, because of all the mucus and Fred.

spk_1:   6:58
Yeah, most of the sinusitis starts out viral, but some of it adds a bacterial infection on top of it. Once the virus damages your year, the cells that are supposed to be defending you from the outside world get damaged by the virus is, and then some of the bacteria invade. But if you don't get that worsening of symptoms and that higher fever, then it's probably still viral. And if it were me, I wouldn't be taken in any antibiotics for that.

spk_0:   7:28
So, yeah, um, one of the problems that we have is, uh, way too much, uh, antibiotics. Just in case we're looking. We slowed down. We're looking for turtles at a spot where they usually is. Turtles. We love seeing turtles on,

spk_1:   7:46
like, water, water turtles.

spk_0:   7:48
So, yeah, I saw that your four of them. Okay, so

spk_1:   7:51
he's better at finding the dia and I would drive

spk_0:   7:54
this road three taste, too. This is what? My drive this road for work. So

spk_1:   8:00
So. If the fever isn't very high and the symptoms haven't taken a sharp uptick, it would probably still be viral. And the other thing is how long it lasts in a kid, since they get most of the upper respiratory tract infections, the cold, the viral things tend to last a little bit longer, like 10 to 14 days. But if the course extends beyond 10 to 14 days, it's more likely to be bacterial. And it's more likely that antibiotics are appropriate.

spk_0:   8:29
Okay, I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on the Internet. But I do know that very few of these turn into pneumonia and people die from. They're just uncomfortable. They make you feel terrible, but they're not generally fatal. And this needing, wanting and needing to instantaneously feel better I get I'm like everybody else. I want to do that. But this, in my opinion, leads to a lot of over a over prescribing of antibiotics with a really not needed that were anybody. If you cut yourself and you start to get an infection, yeah, that could kill you

spk_1:   9:24
Yeah, if it gets all red and puffy and a red streak starts crawling in the direction of your heart, Okay. Yeah. Then you've gotten really

spk_0:   9:32
knocked that up. Yeah, well, I've had that happen. Wants to may from a spider. And

spk_1:   9:36
we did not mess with that.

spk_0:   9:37
No, we went straight to the to the big guns right away.

spk_1:   9:42
Being the physician was the big guns, By the way, I'm not ready. Pulling something out,

spk_0:   9:49
which is which is a key. So even if you have anybody home that you're comfortable with that you feel like this is a good I got this from a good source. This is a legitimate drug. Even if you feel that unless you are a physician and then you just write you a prescription or have a colleague done. And don't take those instead of going to see a position with a position is available.

spk_1:   10:14
Frankly, they know more about this stuff than you do.

spk_0:   10:16
Really? D'oh! And they'll know about stuff like, how long do you take this? And what dose? And as we always say, the number one bad thing you could do when you start an antibiotic. Uh, starting on antibiotics is not finished. The treatment if you start it. Even why I have this happen to me where I really thought I had. Hey, uh, bacterial infection. Turns out it wasn't turned out. It was something completely different. It had all of the year marks of the bacterial infection, but it wasn't so we found out we got the test results back about, Ah, third of the way through my treatment for the antibiotics. What did I D'oh. I finished the antibiotics because that you just have to. So you don't get into this antibiotic resistance problem.

spk_1:   11:15
Otherwise, you're just training your bacteria to be resistant to the drug. Okay, so that's upper respiratory tract infections. Probably viral, but look for those three things. Another common thing is pneumonia and pneumonias are more likely to be viral and bacterial, but it's a much closer call. So there's a bigger risk that pneumonia, where you've got the coughing and you're getting blue around the lips and you're having trouble breathing. Um, that sounds those air pneumonia kinds of things. So once again, the degree of fever is the single biggest indicator they say to look for with high fevers being more likely bacterial and less of a fever, only a my old fever being more likely to be viral. Um, and there's a lot more cough, apparently with viral and with bacterial pneumonias that

spk_0:   12:19
again, if at all possible a doctor is that is absolutely, absolutely doctor certified nurse practitioner. You know somebody with medical degree is the way to go.

spk_1:   12:32
I d'oh! I know a lot more about this than the average Joe on the street, but that's where I go when I are salty. Have a problem. I don't trust my my knowledge when I can go to somebody who knows better. I'm just relating stuff. I've gotten out of the literature here. The last major thing I wanted to hit on is the urinary tract infections that ah, burning sensation and sense of urgency when relieving oneself. You feel like you really got to go, Really gotta go, really gotta go right now. But then you try and go, and there's not much in your bladder, and it burns when it comes out. That is the classic description of what a urinary tract infection looks and feels like more common in women and elderly men and little bitty kids and uncircumcised little bitty boys than they are in males because the bacteria have longer to go in guys and I'm not really gonna get carried away with that description. But it does happen. It does happen. Yeah. Ah, the main store with those is Most of those are in fact, bacterial, with E. Coli being the most common. Unlike the other two categories we talked about today, you don't tend to get UT eyes from another individual. You're more likely to get a urinary tract infection from bacteria that are perfectly normal and harmless when they're on your surface. But some of them managed to crawl their way up into the bladder and set up a living there, and that's why you're having a problem. And E. Coli bacteria are the most common cause of UT eyes, although summer viral, similar fungal summer other bacteria but its most more likely bacteria than anything else and equalize the most likely culprit. Just if you want to know the odds when you're rolling the dice, if you can't consult

spk_0:   14:25
a professional good, you know

spk_1:   14:27
that's what I had.

spk_0:   14:28
Okay, thank you for listening, and we hope you run this useful. We have a companion article to this on being bullet bandages and you dot com, and we'll get you the next time.