Antibiotic Resistance

Antibiotic Resistance

"The problem with antibiotics is that bacteria eventually outsmart them!"

Anyone who’s had BV (bacterial vaginosis) knows how inconvenient and embarrassing it can be. Up until recently, you had no choice but to visit your healthcare practitioner and obtain a prescription for either oral antibiotics (metronidazole 500 mg twice daily for 7 days) or a vaginal antibiotic application (0.75% metronidazole gel or 2% clindamycin cream). If recurrent bacterial vaginosis was diagnosed, a prolonged course of antibiotic treatment, usually 4 to 6 months of treatment, was usually recommended.

Implications of Overusing Antibiotics

It is worth noting that while prophylaxis with antibiotics is most of the time effective in staving off BV, using antibiotics to prevent BV can have serious drawbacks. For one, while antibiotics do strip our body of the bad bacteria that can cause UTIs, they also strip our body of the good bacteria we need to keep a balanced vagina. Without the good bacteria, your vagina is primed for another bacterial or yeast infections that can more easily set in.

Furthermore, over time, over-dependence on antibiotic strategies can lead to bacterial resistance. The more frequently you take antibiotics for an infection, the more likely it is bacteria will eventually develop resistance to those antibiotics, which makes it less likely that treatment will be effective the next time around.

"In fact, the reported rate at which antibiotics “cure” BV has actually decreased from greater than 90% of cases when metronidazole was first used to a present range of 50%–80% of cases."¹

So while antibiotics are certainly a tempting prevention method for someone who repeatedly suffers from vaginal odor, it is worth noting that overusing antibiotics comes with potential long-term risk and side effects.

The good news is that you now have a non-antibiotic approach to manage both acute and recurrent episodes of vaginal odor…. Introducing GYNALAC… clinically proven to stop vaginal odors! Read more...

Bacterial Resistance is a Growing Health Concern

Resistance to antibiotics has become one of the world’s most pressing health issues. Overuse of the drugs in humans and livestock has caused germs to develop defences to survive, rendering a growing number of medicines ineffective in treating a wide range of illnesses — a phenomenon that is playing out worldwide.

“In a recently released World Health Organization (WHO) report, scientists found resistance rates of 25 to 50 % to antibiotics commonly used to infections.”

The World Health Organization suggested that increasing resistance would lead to more severe illnesses and fatalities.

It is precisely for this reason that we need to use antibiotics wisely. Think of antibiotics like a game of cards where the goal is to keep some options in your hand for when you need to play them. This strategy is important for all of us to keep in mind when we decide whether or not to use an antibiotic for UTI prevention.