I know people who take antibiotics every time they get so much as a fart jam. I remember having to tell somebody that taking antibiotics to treat the common cold does absolutely nothing to combat the virus, it only combats the effectiveness of the drug. People are far too stupid to be allowed to self medicate with antibiotics, they really should have been administered only at hospitals.

Blame this too on people who are unwilling to leave the doctor's office without some form of antibiotic for the simplest things like a common cold...

My fiance bitches about this all the time and is one of the main factors why we have these superbugs like MRSA, which my daughter has been having bouts with for over a year now. Her strain is resistant to all but (4) known antibiotics.

Yes, then they gobble up the remaining pills after the infection has passed at a later date as if they were candy.

Unfortunately, the sound advice -- use less often and for less -- gets lost in the sensational headline grabbing lead -- children all going to die of scratches.

Then afterwards they go to the doctor complaining of bowel problems not knowing all those antibiotics they take are giving them a serious case of the shits.

Last time I took antibiotics myself was when I ended up getting MRSA from my daughter while bathing her, but fortunately for me I can take care of  it with an antibiotic cream and only takes a few days. Other than I never use them. I don't even really take pain killers or aspirins for headaches and body aches.

How are we supposed to get stronger, if we're nuking (figuratively of course) everything in our body without giving our immune system a chance to study the infection and letting it kill the disease itself? Of course I understand that not all diseases can be killed off by the immune system alone such as cancer but most of these infections that people are trying to remove can be killed by the immune system.

This why I don't sanitize or sterilize everything in my house. I don't take anything when I catch the common cold; The last time I caught a cold was in october of 07 and it wasn't even severe. Not only that, when winter hits I leave my jacket wide open when I go outside cause you can't catch a cold from the cold. Though I could be a carrier but nobody knows.

@ pezus (for some reason I cant quote or edit)

I would also like to add for the sake of being corrected that not everybody are as resistant to infections as the rest of us are. Some do have allergies, and the same strain of the rhinovirus can hit one person llike a ton of bricks compared to another person that was only a sniffle.

Maybe I will, maybe I won't. It's not something I need to be thinking today, right now, especially if worrying isn't going to make the situtation any better.

Maybe this really is true, medicine seems to suck nuts on me as I always seem to have a stuffy nose!

I think the only form of medication I have ever taken apart from jabs for TB/MMR has been paracetamol (acetaminophen to you Americans) and even that's rare. And guess what, I hardly ever get ill... from memory I recall maybe 5 instances of sickness (in about 20 years, I don't remember much at all when I was 3 or 4), and I am pretty sure two were food poisoning, the others probably some form of flu bug... then maybe half a dozen common colds, though I usually get over them quickly.

Oh, speaking of allergies, I do have hayfever... but it has been getting progressively milder as I get older. (to add to my list of medications, I have tried some different solutions to hayfever but none of those meant to combat the source have worked, and it's been 5-6 years since I bothered with anything at all and I have still been getting fewer symptoms and lessened extremes, when I was 5 my eyes once puffed up to the extent that I could only see, barely, out of one eye... now I get mildy itchy eyes and nose for a couple of weeks.)