Alcohol and Antibiotics: Myth or Fact?
As my blog has highlighted over the course of the last couple weeks, there are many dangers associated with taking antibiotics. Obviously, I’ve emphasized the importance of antibiotic resistance. There are many empirical studies and statistics proving that taking too many antibiotics or consuming them for the incorrect reasons can lead to the presence of antibiotic resistant bacteria that ultimately leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths every year worldwide. However, even without the threat of resistance, antibiotics are still dangerous. Common side effects include diarrhea, upset stomach, nausea, and allergic reactions. On the other hand, more severe side effects would be vomiting, rash, white patches on the tongue, abdominal cramps, hives, swelling of the face, vaginal itching, and fainting. Given these circumstances, clearly there is an inherent risk to taking the drugs, even when they are prescribed to help cure you. I say all of this to lay the groundwork of antibiotic risks because in this week’s blog post I want to address a very popular, highly-debated topic: the combination of drinking alcohol and taking antibiotics.
As with any story, there are two sides of this controversial debate. In one corner, you have those who believe that mixing antibiotics with alcohol is a lethal threat and it poses an imminent danger to human livelihood. The ideology here is that the effects of alcohol negatively impact and compound the already existing negative effects of antibiotics. Thus, mixing the two can lead to very severe hangovers, further infection, glandular fever, hepatitis, extreme liver damage, and possibly death. In the other corner, there are those who stand by the assertion that mixing alcohol and antibiotics is not as dangerous or risky as most people think. Their ideology is that the thought of risking personal health is not based on any facts, but rather a myth that has been carried along for decades. There is no real danger for alcohol and medication interference, and actually, a reasonable amount of alcohol while on antibiotics doesn’t have any significantly different negative effects. It’s perfectly okay to have a modest amount of alcohol, as an excessive amount would have negative effects even if you weren’t taking antibiotics.
So who is right? Which side has more evidence, data, and research to support it? You might think that the answer is simple given all of the medical and technological advancements we have today. While we have come a long way in the medical field, we still have quite a ways to go because, as it turns out, both sides are somewhat right.
Well as it turns out, for most antibiotics, there are no harmful effects of drinking a reasonable amount of alcohol while taking the drugs. However, there are a select few antibiotics where drinking does compound certain negative effects. Isoniazid, Flucloxacillin, Metronidazole, Tinidazole, and Sulfamethoxazole/Trimethoprim are all antibiotics that should not mix with alcohol because they block pathways of metabolizing the alcohol. Drinking with these antibiotics can inflame the liver and overwork the kidneys while also exacerbating the original infection. In these cases, mixing alcohol with antibiotics is actually lethally dangerous. However, it’s important to note that these antibiotics are only used for highly specific infections. A person would only be prescribed these types of antibiotics if they had intestinal worms or an amoeba. That being said, I come to the final conclusion that as long as you have a basic viral infection for which you are prescribed antibiotics, drinking won’t make matters worse as long as you drink a responsible amount. I’m glad my blog has the capability of reaching curious, specialized audiences so that we can finally put this ongoing phenomenon to bed. Now the entire antibiotic community will know exactly whether or not mixing antibiotics and alcohol is truly harmful.
