Don't Cross Your Eyes...They'll Get Stuck That Way!: And 75 Other Health Myths Debunked Read Online Free PDF Page A

all—even some very serious infections. Ear infections, sinus infections, and urinary tract infections happen as a result of a passageway or tube being blocked by an overgrowth of bacteria. These types of infections are usually not contagious. You need antibiotics to kill off the bacteria growing in your ear or in your bladder for you to feel better, but you are not going to pass this infection to someone else if you do not have an antibiotic. Other serious infections, such as infections of your bloodstream or pneumonias, are not very contagious to other people. Most often, these infections come about because of something else that was going on in your body first, and so healthy people around you are unlikely to get infected by the same thing. For other infections, like most sexually transmitted diseases, you will not get infected unless you have sexual contact with the person infected or have some other very close contact with them.
    Clearly, though, there are bacterial infections that can spread from one person to another. In these cases, you do want the sick person to be on an antibiotic so that they do not infect you. One of the bacteria that causes meningitis, Neisseria meningitidis , is contagious, and if one person becomes sick with infection from this bug, that sick person needs an antibiotic, plus close family members exposed to that person need to take antibiotics themselves to prevent infection. In the case of Neisseria, it is very good news to know that the infected person is on an antibiotic. Strep throat is another example where having the person on antibiotics may or may not help you. Strep throat is caused by a bacterium, Streptococcus pyogenes , and it is contagious. This bug rapidly colonizes the family members and close contacts of the person who has the first infection. When one person in the family has strep throat, the risk that someone else in the family will get strep throat is at least 10 percent. Using an antibiotic may help decrease how the bacteria colonize your throat and thus prevent other people from getting infected. The real reason we use antibiotics for strep throat is to prevent other complications to your heart or kidneys that can result without treatment. In contrast to strep throat, another form of the strep bug, Streptococcus pneumoniae, which can cause bad pneumonias, is not as contagious as the bug that causes strep throat. While you would certainly need antibiotics to help with one of these strep infections, the antibiotics would not have much of an effect on how contagious you were.
    You may have noticed that we said antibiotics “might” make you less contagious, even with contagious bacterial infections like strep throat. The truth is that there are very few scientific studies giving clear data about just how long you remain contagious. Parents are typically told that their child is no longer contagious after they have been on antibiotics for twenty-four hours or sometimes after forty-eight hours. These figures are very roughly based on how fast the antibiotics decrease the load of bacteria within the body. For some conditions, a person might still be contagious with only a small amount of the bacteria around and after they have been on an antibiotic for a while. For other conditions, the person may never have been very contagious or the period of being contagious might have passed even before you started the antibiotic. Some infections are still contagious as long as you have a rash or have a cough, whereas others are not. Often, doctors really do not know just how long you will be contagious. While it is important to take antibiotics for certain medical problems and to take them as directed by your physician, this is not a guaranteed way to know whether someone is contagious.
    Whenever you have an infection, you should talk with your doctor about how contagious this infection is, how long it will be contagious, and what, if anything, you need to do to prevent other people from