No class of drugs has saved more human lives than antibiotics. Using them improperly causes significant harm too. Improper use is not only wasteful but degrades your health in the short term and the usefulness of the drug within your own body in the long term . More on the ‘degrading the usefulness’ thing here:
Suppose there is no physician handy. If you have determined that taking an antibiotic is required, and hopefully understand that taking a full course is important … how do you know what a ‘full course’ is? How do you select how much to take and for how long?
I myself am not a physician, so I’m not going to tell you how much of a prescription drug to take. I will share some thoughts on how I’d make such a decision and you make your own choices.
We did do a podcast to go along with this article, you can listen to it here:
What antibiotics doses does your doctor prescribe?
Some people have recurring issues. As a prep, you might consider writing down drug name, quantity per pill, dosing instructions, any significant precautions, and for which diagnosis it was given. All this information can be found in the fine print papers that come with every prescription — which are very useful to read anyway. What’s most helpful is the chemical name, not just trade name (such as recording azithromycin, not just z-pak); as veterinary antibiotics are usually sold by the drug name.
Preppers who stock antibiotics usually stock the veterinary forms, as they are available without prescription.
If you are getting the antibiotics for a child, also note how big the child was when prescribed. Children have this habit of growing; and doses are size dependent.
Storing antibiotic dosing information with all drugs
If you go to a search engine and type in a drug name followed by dosage, you can find a selection of good sources that report the normal dosing schedules for that drug, as well as significant side effects to watch out for or related problems (such as taking with food or avoiding sunlight while taking).
All of that information can be printed out and stored right with the drug, perhaps in the same ziplock bag. Wouldn’t that be great to have if you ever needed to decide how much to take?
How much to stock?
Stored antibiotics are pointless if you don’t have enough to do the job. Take a look at those dosing instructions you just looked up. Add up how much it takes for a single course of the problems you’re preparing for. Use that as a guide, considering also things like shelf life, how much money and refrigerator space you can donate to the project, and if you’re going to keep any other kinds of drugs. There’s no one right answer, but too little to do the job is a worse answer than none at all.
Diagnosing is necessary before dosing
To pick both antibiotic and dose, you have to know what you’re facing … or at least have a good guess that lets you proceed with treatment. Not every drug works for every condition. It’s important then to have some guides that will help you figure out what the problem is. Your medical references should help you do this.
Medical references meant for lay people without access to medical care
I for one am glad to have access to knowledgeable professionals; and think anybody who tries to self-treat with such potent drugs when they could access such professionals is making a wold-class poor choice. If those professionals aren’t available, the next best is to have references they’ve written that are meant for people in circumstances such as yours.
What’s a good reference? It has to be from a reliable source (actual trained medical professional with experience in austere medicine). It needs to help you with all aspects of care: figuring out what’s needed as well as precisely how to do it. You need to be able to learn what you need from it, so actually read some of the book before you buy to make sure it’s meeting you where you are. (Some docs are not great communicators, you might possibly have noticed.)
Salty and I have two on the shelf. (We have no financial relationship with either.) I like them both, and it seems to me that they’d be equally useful for people without my ‘medical-speak’ background. There are other good choices out there, but these are what we have:
Where There Is No Doctor by David Werner. (This one’s available as a free download too.)
Alton’s Antibiotics and Infectious Disease by Joseph and Amy Alton.
For more information about prepper medicine and health, check out our PrepperMed 101 series!
Whenever someone talks about expiration dates on medicine I like to point out that the FDA has done research on how most medications are still effective well passed the printed expiration date. Liquid medicines don’t fare as well as pressed pills, but it’s worth noting that not necessary to toss out old medicine. Of course with antibiotics it gets trickier since dosing is so important. I’m hoping that the recent Alton’s Antibiotics book talks about this, since post event we may not have access to in-date meds. I’ve slowly been accumulating meds so I will have a range of dates on my bottles…sorry if you covered this in your podcast, haven’t listened yet.
Short article on shelf life of medications: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/drug-expiration-dates-do-they-mean-anything
Long article on shelf life of medications: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-myth-of-drug-expiration-dates
Hi Spice,
Another good book is The Survival Medicine Handbook also written by Doctor Joseph and Nurse Amy Alton.
Thanks Big Boy in Mo, we definitely have that in our library and recommend it!