why 'avoid alcohol' during antibiotic treatment ?

Answer 1

I lessens the power of the antibiotic to do its job, and the inter reaction can sometimes be dangerous.

Answer 2

If you're sick enough to need antibiotics, you should probably focus on getting better.

Although kidney damage from mixing antibiotics and alcohol is unlikely, the odds of liver damage are higher. Many antibiotics are broken down by the liver, and so is alcohol. Since the liver can only metabolize so much at one time, overloading it with antibiotics and alcohol increases the risk of liver damage. Importantly, anyone with a diagnosed liver condition, such as Hepatitis B or C, should not drink while taking antibiotics.

Even without drinking, certain antibiotics can have some uncomfortable side effects. People who take an antibiotic called Flagyl (generic name: metronidazole) often experience nausea and vomiting. Others who take an antibiotic named isoniazid, or other antibiotics that contain isoniazid, may experience diarrhea. While these symptoms aren't necessarily related to any liver damage, they can be pretty unpleasant. Also, vomiting and diarrhea can lower the level of the antibiotic in the body, affecting its ability to fight an infection. So, people who are taking Flagyl or isoniazid should stay away from the bottle, too.

Answer 3

Alcohol both speeds up and neutralizes the drugs in your system. If your old enough to remember Karn Ann Quinlan back many years ago and the court fights amongst the parents. She went into a vegetive state due to drinking and taking prescription drugs. She was in a coma for many years after being taken off the life support system, finally passing on after about twenty years, many laws were both changed and ordered after this.

Alcohol can both change the properties of the drugs, speed the drugs into the system and create and bomb that could kill you, it could make the drug useless. There are just to many problems the are related with alcohol to go into here.
It would be best to just stay away form it while on drugs.

Answer 4

certain antimicrobials (more correct term than antibiotics) like metronidazole and others in the group have an ant-abuse like reaction when consumed with alcohol. patient feels restless has flushes and sometimes palpitations. so it is advisable to avoid alcohol during antibiotic treatment. besides alcohol per se may aggravate the gastritis caused due to antibiotics.

Answer 5

Antibiotics are broken down by your liver enzymes....if you take alcohol it stimulates your liver enzymes and this causes faster break down of the antibiotics so they don't have enough time to kill / maim the bugs....

Some antibiotics like metronidazole also interact with alcohol to produce a reaction like disulfuram reaction ( this drug is used to wean alcoholics off alcohol by cause sever sickness every time they take alcohol)
It's only a week so just resist the temptation to take alcohol

Answer 6

IN simple terms Antibiotics only work if you abstain from alcohol it has a canceling out effect.

Surely you can lay off the booze for a course of Antibiotics? that is if you want to get better.

Answer 7

alcohol combined with any drug is not good. There could be an adverse reaction as alcohol will combine with most drugs creating a new compound(or poison) or the drug itself may not work at all(giving you no help - which is again an adverse reaction).
For example, If you are taking meds for "life" such as epeleptics, alcohol is basically a no-no otherwise the meds do not work.

Answer 8

Alcohol react to some antibiotics, and lower it's efficacy. Beside alcohol lower your body abilities to prevent further infection.

Answer 9

It negates the effects of the antibiotics.

Answer 10

Many medications can interact with alcohol, leading to increased risk of illness, injury, or death. For example, it is estimated that alcohol-medication interactions may be a factor in at least 25 percent of all emergency room admissions (1). An unknown number of less serious interactions may go unrecognized or unrecorded. This Alcohol Alert notes some of the most significant alcohol-drug interactions. (Although alcohol can interact with illicit drugs as well, the term "drugs" is used here to refer exclusively to medications, whether prescription or nonprescription.)

How Common Are Alcohol-Drug Interactions?

More than 2,800 prescription drugs are available in the United States, and physicians write 14 billion prescriptions annually; in addition, approximately 2,000 medications are available without prescription (2).

Ap proximately 70 percent of the adult population consumes alcohol at least occasionally, and 10 percent drink daily (3). About 60 percent of men and 30 percent of women have had one or more adverse alcohol-related life events (4). Together with the data on medication use, these statistics suggest that some concurrent use of alcohol and medications
is inevitable.

The elderly may be especially likely to mix drugs and alcohol and are at particular risk for the adverse consequences of such combinations. Although persons age 65 and older constitute only 12 percent of the population, they consume 25 to 30 percent of all prescription medications (5) . The elderly are more likely to suffer medication side effects compared with younger persons, and these effects tend to be more severe with advancing age (5). Among persons age 60 or older, 10 percent of those in the community--and 40 percent of those in nursing homes--fulfill criteria for alcohol abuse (6).

How Alcohol and Drugs Interact

To exert its desired effect, a drug generally must travel through the bloodstream to its site of action, where it produces some change in an organ or tissue. The drug's effects then diminish as it is processed (metabolized) by enzymes and eliminated from the body. Alcohol behaves similarly, traveling through the bloodstream, acting upon the brain to cause intoxication, and finally being metabolized and eliminated, principally by the liver. The extent to which an administered dose of a drug reaches its site of action may be termed its availability. Alcohol can influence the effectiveness of a drug by altering its availability. Typical alcohol-drug interactions include the following (7): First, an acute dose of alcohol (a single drink or several drinks over several hours) may inhibit a drug's metabolism by competing with the drug for the same set of metabolizing enzymes. This interaction prolongs and enhances the drug's availability, potentially increasing the patient's risk of experiencing harmful side effects from the drug. Second, in contrast, chronic (long-term) alcohol ingestion may activate drug-metabolizing enzymes, thus decreasing the drug's availability and diminishing its effects. After these enzymes have been activated, they remain so even in the absence of alcohol, affecting the metabolism of certain drugs for several weeks after cessation of drinking (8). Thus, a recently abstinent chronic drinker may need higher doses of medications than those required by nondrinkers to achieve therapeutic levels of certain drugs. Third, enzymes activated by chronic alcohol consumption transform some drugs into toxic chemicals that can damage the liver or other organs. Fourth, alcohol can magnify the inhibitory effects of sedative and narcotic drugs at their sites of action in the brain. To add to the complexity of these interactions, some drugs affect the metabolism of alcohol, thus altering its potential for intoxication and the adverse effects associated with alcohol consumption (7).

Antibiotics. Antibiotics are used to treat infectious diseases. In combination with acute alcohol consumption, some antibiotics may cause nausea, vomiting, headache, and possibly convulsions; among these antibiotics are furazolidone (Furoxone), griseofulvin (Grisactin and others), metronidazole (Flagyl), and the antimalarial quinacrine (Atabrine) (7). Isoniazid and rifampin are used together to treat tuberculosis, a disease especially problematic among the elderly (12) and among homeless alcoholics (13). Acute alcohol consumption decreases the availability of isoniazid in the bloodstream, whereas chronic alcohol use decreases the availability of rifampin. In each case, the effectiveness of the medication may be reduced (7).

I hope this helps.