Dr. Tabatha Barber explains how antibiotics kill beneficial gut bacteria. One course may recover in healthy people, but repeated exposure causes lasting damage. Overgrowth of Candida yeast can then disrupt digestion, nutrient absorption, and neurotransmitter production, affecting mood and health.
Taking antibiotics can not only kill off the good guys, but it can wipe out a good healthy microbiome. And if you're healthy enough at baseline, and it was a one time situation, those usually can come back online and repopulate. There is evidence that you're never the same again after course of antibiotics. But the majority of the research looks like that you do have the ability to get back to where you were after that. The issue comes in with you're not only being exposed to one dose of antibiotics, but a lot of people are exposed to multiple doses of antibiotics throughout their life. They're also exposed to other things that are killing off the bacteria. Alcohol kills the bacteria in your gut. Chronic cortisol production from stress kills the bacteria in your gut. Certain foods kill the bacteria in our gut. So a lot is going on to create this dysbiosis, this imbalance of what's living and what's running the show. You don't want a dictatorship in your gut, but that sometimes happens. I will, you know, often see patients where there's a species of yeast running the show, different species of candida. Candida is the same word for yeast or fungi. And if they're running the show, it's a dictatorship and it's no longer symbiotic. Then you can't digest your food appropriately, you cannot absorb your vitamins and minerals appropriately. You cannot make your neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine and all those feel good. Balancing mood stabilizing neurotransmitters that your brain needs to feel healthy. It impacts so many things.
