Dr. Aaron Hartman explains how the Western diet damages your gut microbiome. Food additives made from petroleum byproducts harm the mucus barrier, while processed foods strip fiber and polyphenols your gut bacteria need. Even fecal transplants fail if you keep eating this way.
Questions this episode answers
August 29, 2025.
Neurosciences News article titled "Western Diets Block Gut Microbiome Recovery after Antibiotics."
Fecal microbial transplants (FMTs).
Chapters
What is it in the foods that actually destroys and messes up your gut's ability to heal after antibiotics? So first there's the chemicals. And people don't realize a lot of these chemicals, these dyes, these colors, are actually petroleum distillate byproducts. So literally consuming petroleum, which dissolves your gut mucus lining, it can affect the mucus barrier and the around your GI tract, that actually makes the toxins in your gut more penetratable into your gut line. Your diet may block your probiotics from helping you. That's an interesting concept to think about. I want to talk about right now based on some updated research. Most people, I think by now know that if you get antibiotics, you get a cold, bronchitis, whatever you get, your Z Pak, azithromycin, doxycycline, whatever the antibiotic you get, that can have a profound impact on your gut microbiome, which we've talked a lot about. But did you know that your western diet, the typical standard American diet, can cause, based on research, more damage to your gut microbiome and prevent you from healing it with probiotics? So, and I think this is something to talk about briefly because I think most people now are realizing, hey, antibiotics aren't the best for us. They can mess up our gut. You know, in young kids, the more antibiotic exposure they get, they have an increased incidence for asthma, eczema, autoimmune issues, obesity. Strangely enough, antibiotic exposure, there's a correlation to that and obesity, which in the agribusiness we've known for over 50 years because it's routinely used to help increase the weight that animals put on through affecting their microbiomes. You know, so these are things that we were learning and we now know they come into public consciousness. But I don't think people realize that our typical western diet actually blocks you from healing your gut after taking antibiotics. And this is important, especially anybody with as kids. So I want to take a deep dive into that. This actually comes from Neurosciences News and the title is Western Diets Block Gut Microbiome Recovery after Antibiotics. So if you want to find the article, it'll be linked here below. But the basic gist as a follower is that the typical western diet actually prevents recuperation of a healthy gut microbiome after antibiotics. The typical standard American diet, Western diet doesn't have enough fiber. It's not rich in plant phenols or polyphenols, which are the colorful things in food. It has trans fats, it has industrialized Seed oils, all these things are horrible havoc, wreak havoc to your gut microbiome. You know, we talk about, you know, polyphenols, probiotics, prebiotics. You know, these are the things that fix your gut. These are the colors in food. The prebiotics are fiber and the probiotics are the bacteria. Well, food processing destroys all that stuff. It makes soluble fiber insoluble. It makes, it destroys the health benefits of the colors, the polyphenols. And then if you have. Actually it's interesting, you know, even something as basic as milk, you know, when you pasteurize milk, you destroy healthy bacteria in it that would actually ferment it and turn into a fermented dairy product. And so the processing of foods destroys food's ability to heal your gut microbiome. Another thing that's really interesting is that, you know, some of you may have heard of fecal microbial transplants or stool transplants, right? FMTs. Well, these actually were ineffective if the diet was poor. These were ineffective in fixing the gut microbiome. Now this is profound because fecal microbial transplants now are FDA approved to treat hospital acquired C. Diff. There's literature that's been used around the world for, to treat all immune issues, to treat inflammatory bowel issues. So doing a fecal microbial transplant is actually a very powerful medicinal tool. Yet if you have a poor diet, it makes them ineffective in fixing your gut. And that's profound. That means your diet can make something like, you know, a stool transplant not work. So I've had some patients have it not work for them, had some patients have it work well for them, you know, but it comes back to your diet. If your diet's poor, if it's standard western diet, eating things that destroy your gut microbiome, then it's going to be hard to fix it.
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You know, this is interesting as well because it also impacts your risk for cancer. How? Because if you keep low grade inflammation in your GI tract that increases your risk for cancer, particularly colon cancer. We've known for over 20 years now that things like ibuprofen, aspirin, celebrex, celecoxib, which is a COX2 inhibitor, was actually looked at and shown to lower your, your risk for colon cancer. These anti inflammatories actually lower risk. Now they have side effects, of course, so it's kind of hard to justify taking a prescription medication. But if you have increased inflammation from diet, et cetera, the question then becomes, what is it in the foods that actually destroys and messes up your gut's ability to heal after antibiotics? So first there's the chemicals, you know, and people don't realize a lot of these chemicals, these dyes, these colors, are actually petroleum distillate byproducts. So literally consuming petroleum, which dissolves your gut mucus lining, it can affect the mucus barrier around your GI tract. That actually makes the toxins in your gut more penetrable into your gut line. There's also sugar, which we all know how bad sugar is. For us, sugar feeds yeast, it feeds strep by itself, it's, it's inflammatory fats. Your industrialized seed oils, your trans fats, these actually cause inflammation and they get incorporated into your cell membranes, which eventually part of fat consumption, you actually use to make biofilms, including the mucus on your GI tract. Consuming industrialized seed oils negatively impacts all of this. And then there's actually all the extra stuff that comes in food, like emulsifiers, conditioners, these things actually will dissolve the mucus lying in your GI tract. So for example, there are certain emulsifiers and conditioners in bread that are associated with an increased risk for inflammatory bowel disease. So maybe that's part of the gluten mystery, right? Well, if you're consuming those after having antibiotics, you know, it's going to be really hard for your gut to heal itself, to repair, to repopulate healthy bacteria in your GI tract to lower the inflammation and all these things. So if taking antibiotics, anything that messes up your GI tract after an infection, after an illness, these are all things that can be stressor to GI tract. You have to, you know, use primary food as medicine, go back to eating a whole food diet, colorful foods with fiber, healthy fats and avoiding any chemicals in it. And that's super basic but that can be super helpful and it's just amazing to think that not doing that can make it so that even a fecal stool transplant wouldn't work for helping with after having antibiotic associated diarrhea or antibiotics affecting your GI tract. Anyway. Hopefully this is helpful. The point is is that after antibiotics you got you really that's even more important. Time to focus on a clean diet. If you have something you'd like to talk about. Question Comment topic you'd like us to take a deep dive in, please let us know below in the comments. We'd love to research a little bit and share some information with you. Otherwise take care and we'll talk to you soon.
