Food Poisoning - 11th hour prevention?

[ronianna]

Can any of you medical people out there settle an ongoing debate that keeps coming up (excuse the pun!)

If you suspect that you've eaten something dodgy, a kebeb, meat curry etc if you drank either something neat alcohol based whisky or brandy etc, within an hour or two of eating, would this kill the bacteria? or would drinking something non alcohol but agressive like citrus juice or Coke do the trick?

Finally, forget drinking anything, if you were already taking a course of antibiotics, would this make it impossible for you to catch/suffer from food poisoning?

Not the best after dinner conversation topic I know!

[morg_monster]

Don't know about the first part of your question, but with regards to the antibiotics, that would work if the antibiotic you were taken happened to be effective against the bug causing the food poisoning. If it wasn't, then there would be no protection this way.

[Loosehead]

Anything  you drink will not be as strong as the nitric acid already in your stomach. Everything you eat contains bacterea mostly harmless but if you did eat something dodgy, to actually get food poisoning thousands upon thousands would have to survive the stomach acid and the body's own immune system before they could take hold. The bacterea that make you ill are always present, it's just the numbers of them that determine whether you will get ill.

[jake-the-peg]

Hydrochloric I think not Nitric

[Loosehead]

Do you pedants just hang around looking for something to pick holes in. OK OK bloody Hydro bloody chloric. That was'nt the main point!

[scubadiver]

Most enterobacteria (those which are the cause of most cases of food poisoning) are encapsulated with a polysaccharide coat, which makes them highly resistant to the breakdown by external agents - as loosehead correctly point out, they are resistant to the low pH in the stomach, so alcohol won't have much effect either. Citrus juice & coke aren't as acidic as the HCL in the stomach, so they would be of no benefit either. Better to drink plenty of water, to ensure the organisms are flushed out of the system as soon as possible.

Also - the worst thing you can do if you've eaten something dodgy is to take something like Imodium - this delays the removal of the organisms from the GI tract.

[trodgers5]

Having studied numerous health and safety stuff for food prep and catering companys , if you are gonna get food poisoning then there is nothing you can do apart from as said earlier drink copious amounts of mwater to flush it out.  No anti biotics effective - it will actually make it worse becasue the anti biotics have killed all good bacteria to fight food poisoning off with.  As also said do not take Imodium as it will make it worse - also drink some pro biotic drink like Yakult - that will replace good bacteria (blimey i sound just like the Yakult advert)

Ps Depending on what you ate can take 6 hours to 3 days for food poisoning to get you.