If you're taking prescription antibiotics, you may feel tired and fatigued. This may be a symptom of the infection being treated by the antibiotics, or it may be a serious, but rare, side effect of the antibiotic. Learn more about how antibiotics may affect your body, and what you can do to counteract these effects.
Most commonly prescribed antibiotics should not cause fatigue or drowsiness in most people who take them. If you do feel more tired, fatigued or lethargic, it could just be a side effect of being sick. Your body is working hard to fight off a bacterial infection and needs rest to do its job effectively.
As mentioned above, antibiotics sometimes kill the good bacteria in the body along with the bad, leading to stomach issues and possibly dehydration. So in this case antibiotics can make you feel sick and tired.
There are different types of antibiotics, but the three most likely to cause fatigue include amoxicillin, azithromycin, and ciprofloxacin. If you are experiencing fatigue from your antibiotics, it is best to give your body a few days to acclimate to the treatment; in many cases, fatigue will dissipate in that time.
If you're taking prescription antibiotics, you may feel tired and fatigued. This may be a symptom of the infection being treated by the antibiotics, or it may be a serious, but rare, side effect of the antibiotic. Learn more about how antibiotics may affect your body, and what you can do to counteract these effects.
Antibiotics are important for curing bacterial infections, but they can also weaken your immune system if used improperly or too often. Your doctor should prescribe them only when necessary, and sparingly, which will help protect against any future problems with antibiotic resistance.
It is vital to restore a healthful balance in the gut microbiome after taking a course of antibiotics. People can do this by eating probiotics, prebiotics, fermented foods, and fiber. Probiotics and prebiotics can also help to reduce the side effects of antibiotics.
Typically, it will take the body time to balance the microbiome to healthy, diverse bacteria levels. In fact, research shows that it takes about 6 months to recover from the damage done by antibiotics. And even then, the body might not even be back to its pre-antibiotic state.
Certain antibiotics are known to cause dryness in the mouth. Antibiotics used to treat pneumonia, bronchitis, sinus, ear and skin infections can also contribute to oral dryness. This class of drugs is used to treat bacterial infections in different parts of the body and can cause dry mouth.
It can take several weeks to months to restore gut health after antibiotics. Research shows that most healthy gut bacteria return to normal levels roughly 2 months after antibiotic treatment. However, studies have also found that some healthy bacteria are missing even 6 months after taking antibiotics.
Eat fermented foods
Fermented foods are produced by bacteria and include yogurt, cheese, sauerkraut, kombucha, and kimchi, among others. They contain several species of healthy bacteria, such as Lactobacilli, which can help restore the gut microbiome to a healthy state after antibiotics.
New research demonstrates that by killing essential gut bacteria, antibiotics ravage athletes' motivation and endurance. The UC Riverside-led mouse study suggests the microbiome is a big factor separating athletes from couch potatoes.
A: Taking antibiotics can dramatically change the amount and type of bacteria in the gut. These changes in the gut microflora can lead antibiotic-associated diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and other gastrointestinal side effects. That's one reason why doctors recommend taking antibiotics with food.
Common side effects of antibiotics can include rash, dizziness, nausea, diarrhea, or yeast infections. More serious side effects include Clostridioides difficile infection (also called C. difficile or C. diff), which causes diarrhea that can lead to severe colon damage and death.
Even if you can exercise on antibiotics, it doesn't mean you should. Although exercise is a great way to boost your immune system, Dr. Scott says that resting while you're being treated for an infection is also a great time to take a break…and that you'll usually get better faster if you rest.
Depending upon the nature of the antibiotics and the antibiotics course's duration, it may take up to 6 months or more for the body to restore its natural immune system.
Despite their undisputable health benefits, antibiotics exert unintended collateral effects, including microbiota perturbation or dysbiosis and impaired host immunity to infections and vaccines in humans and mice (3–7).
While antibiotics kill off bad bacteria, they can also disrupt your gut's complex microbiome, the microscopic community of bacteria that work together to make everything run smoothly. To counteract this, your doctor might suggest you take probiotics supplements either during or following a regimen of antibiotics.
“There is no way around the fact that antibiotics kill both harmful and beneficial bacteria in the gut,” Bell told Healthline. “It's extremely important to focus on nourishing and rebuilding the gut after antibiotic treatment by eating a wide variety of prebiotic- and probiotic-rich foods.”
Water helps medicine pass from your mouth to your stomach and small intestine and to be absorbed to give the desired action. Swallowing medicines without enough water may prevent the medicine from acting properly and may even lead to undesired side effects in some cases.
Do not lie down immediately after taking medicine, to make sure the pills have gone through the esophagus into the stomach. Notify your healthcare provider if you experience painful swallowing or feel that the medicine is sticking in your throat.
High acid foods – Citrus fruits and juices like orange and grapefruit, soda, chocolate and tomato products have a high acid content, which could decrease how much medicine is absorbed into your system for certain antibiotics.
Some antibiotics are always meant to be taken at the same time of day, others are meant to be taken before, with or after a meal. If you are supposed to take the medicine three times a day, for example, it usually needs to be taken at set times so that the effect is spread out evenly over the course of the day.