Day: June 5, 2019

If I was the head of a funding agency (like the National Institute of Health) in which my job is to look at proposals for research projects and decide what projects to award funding to I would look for projects with the topics of antibiotics versus probiotics and how they can both affect human health. There are pros and cons to both medications for example, antibiotics can help prevent and cure some diseases, but taking them to often or to many types can lead to patients becoming immune or bacteria evolving which can cause diseases to worsen. Whereas, probiotics kill only the bad bacteria in our bodies, but they do not cure most diseases, but they can be taken more naturally than antibiotics. This is important for future healthcare because it can shine a light on whether or not patients should be prescribed these types of medications or not and how often they should be taking them. It can also help with future research on diseases that can only be cured from antibiotics. Can probiotics be designed to eliminate the bad bacteria of the disease and cure that disease without having to take any antibiotics? There are many paths that can be taken when researching antibiotics versus probiotics. It will be interesting if these topics are talked about more in the future.

Part 1- A list of non-infectious diseases that I can think of are  stomach cancer, asthmas, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, COPD, brain cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, and edema.

Part 2-  Looking back at my first writing exercise from week 1, I wasnt very sure about non-infectious diseases, or very many that came to mind right away. My list has definitely grown and become more positive to what non-infectious diseases are. Some important topics that I will take away from this course are how medications have evolved over time, the pros and cons of probiotics and antibiotics, how sleep or diet can effect our bodies just physically, but for our microbiomes, different diseases that I didnt know even existed. This course has also helped me become a better writer and make me more confident about research papers. I didn’t think one course could help me so much, and have an impact at how I look at the medical field in a different way or topics I can research in the future to help patients. I’m very glad to have taken this course and take away everything I have learned.