Although there are still a few weeks before Christmas Eve, the Christmas lunches and dinners They are about to invade bars and restaurants of friends, families and classmates or at work, who come together to celebrate the imminent arrival of Christmas between pounds of food and more than 39, an alcohol drama.

Even those who spend the whole year looking after their food and avoiding alcohol decide to make a truce at this time to enjoy these hearty banquets with their loved ones. However, a simple infection of the throat or even mild cystitis can sometimes destroy it, because the consumption of alcohol can interfere in the effect of antibiotics or dangerously affect the consumer health. At least that's what they say, but is this really true? To give a complete explanation to this question, you have to go very far back in time, more precisely towards Second World War.

The myths of war

Soldiers with STDs have been told that taking alcohol with antibiotics can damage their liver, preventing it from getting drunk and spreading the disease.

During the Second World War, the penicillin, discovered a little over ten years ago by Alexander Fleming, has been used frequently to treat soldiers affected by sexually transmitted diseaseslike syphilis. In these cases, it was not only necessary to resort to pharmacological treatment to fight the bacteria at the origin of the disease, but it was also very important prevent it from developing. And what is the ideal ingredient for a person to decide to make love knowing that she could be infecting her illness? Indeed, the alcohol. For this reason, doctors of the time chose to spread among their patients the godly lie that they mixed alcohol and antibiotics your health could be seriously damaged. In this way, they avoided drinking and their desire for sex was dispelled.

Another bulo broadcast at the same time comes from the need to extract the penicillin from the urine patients treated with it, so that it can be reused. The problem in this process was that if patients were fed up with beer to forget the pain of his wounds, his urine was much more diluted, it was more complicated to separate from her what could remain of the antibiotic. Again, to avoid this setback, they were told that while they drank alcohol at the same time as the drugs, their health could be affected. Holy hand.

The reality beyond myths

Nowadays, we know that the first warnings against the joint consumption of alcohol and antibiotics have been Bullies to avoid secondary problems. However, that does not mean that these doctors were not right. In fact, even without knowing it, they were not liars at all, because in one way or another, the consumption of alcohol with antibiotics yes it can be harmful to health.

It depends on many factors, such as taking antibiotics or the frequency of alcohol consumption. The most common side effect is known as antabus effect, which occurs especially during the consumption of antibiotics metronidazole, tinidazole, erythromycin or linezolid, especially when the consumption of alcohol is abundant and continuous. The most characteristic symptoms of the antabus effect are headache, facial flushing, excessive sweating, tachycardia, nausea, vomiting and even in some cases hypotension and syncope. In addition, the characteristic symptoms of hangover they increase significantly.

Now, does this mean that we should simply avoid these four antibiotics? To answer this question, in hypertext we contacted Marián García, doctor of pharmacy, professor at Isabel I University and author of the blog Boticaria García, who stressed the importance of taking into account the dose of alcohol consumed:

"The consequences of alcohol on antibiotics and medications in general are variable and depend on the amount of alcohol ingested.On the one hand, a moderate consumption of alcohol can promote the 39; absorption of certain drugs (sometimes resulting in toxicity), while excessive consumption decreases its bioavailability (the drug is less absorbed) by causing irritation or inflammation of the intestinal lining.

Therefore, the effects vary depending on the antibiotic. but, as Dr. García points out, "what will have a more decisive weight is whether the consumption of alcohol is carried out occasionally or chronically"The latter would be particularly dangerous in the case of chronic alcoholicsantibiotics could make them "less effective", which makes it necessary to drug dosage adjustment.

Antibiotic resistance: the hidden danger

By reading this, it may be that more than one person thinks that a slower absorption of the drug It's not a bad thing if the price is to consume alcohol at Christmas in exchange for a little more sore throat. However, the fact that the antibiotic is not absorbed properly can be linked to one of the biggest public health problems in the world: antibiotic resistance.

"In the case of antibiotics, a decrease in the available doseAs we have said, this can happen in chronic alcoholics, it can have consequences short and long term", Explain Marián García. "In the short term, more visibly unable to properly treat the infection. And in the medium and long term, by the resistance development. If the bacteria do not receive the proper dose of antibiotics for the time needed, they can learn to defend themselves against antibiotics by generating the dreaded resistance. For this reason, during the month of November, the Ministry of Health presented the National Antibiotic Resistance Plan propose strategies to put an end to this problem ".

This may seem like a minor problem, but as the pharmacy doctor also remembers, a total of 33,000 people die each year in Europe as a result of infections caused by resistant bacteria, 3000 of them in Spain, according to AEMPS. Even some experts say the figure is much higher.

Knowing this, we must remember that to get tired, go dancing with friends, tell the same jokes from the previous year or singing songs as if there was no tomorrow it is not necessary to drink alcohol. You just have to have fun.

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