Nobody likes being ill, be it simply feeling under the weather or a full-blown case of the flu. Viruses may be tiny, but they replicate at what seems like the speed of light, making them much tougher to get rid of. And when infections don't go away, they get in the way of life. Sure, you could go to the doctor, but how many times should you have to go for the same thing? How often can you keep popping expensive antibiotics and other medications that only seem to work for a while? When you stop taking them, more often than not, the infection comes back. We all know it takes at least two courses of strong antibiotics or antivirals to knock most infections on the head. Those pharmaceutical pills typically come with plenty of side effects – nausea, vomiting, drowsiness, muscle aches, and so on – all making you feel worse than before you started taking them. And when you have to keep taking them to control the infection, things go from bad to worse. But that's not the worst of it. Keep taking those pills, and you run the risk of antibiotic resistance. This means they stop working so effectively, making it much harder to kill off the infection.
