Do Antibiotics Affect Your Immunity?

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Do antibiotics affect your immunity? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and fitness hall of famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health expert. Christine from my Superimmune Secrets masterclass asked do antibiotics affect your immunity? If so, for how long? Hey, it's JJ and I've got America's gut doctor and author of happy gut Dr. Vincent Pedre with me to answer this question. I a longtime meditator and yoga teacher. He used this to help him overcome his fear of needles. Kind of hard to have that with your medical doctor. And he even became certified after that in medical acupuncture. Plus, he is quite the salsa dancer. He'll be right back with the answer, so stay with us.

Hey, it's J.J. here.

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I've seen this type of patient come in over and over. They've been on three rounds of antibiotics for a sinus infection that just won't go away or just keeps coming back. And now their gut is a mess and their immune system is no better because as we know, 70% of the immune system is all along the digestive tract. So in order to have a healthy immune system, you need to have a healthy gut lining. And in order to have a healthy gut lining, you have to have a healthy gut microbiome. And every time you take a round of antibiotics, you're paring down that microbiome, you're reducing its diversity, you're taking away its robustness. For example, a five day course of Cipro will take 12 months for your gut microbiome to recover from that. Just five days. I mean, just imagine that. That's crazy. And the more antibiotics you take, the more of a dysbiosis or imbalance between good and bad bugs it will cause and potentially yeast overgrowth that is going to lead to all sorts of toxins getting absorbed into your body. You develop leaky gut, and as a result, your immune system is on this constant high alert and it doesn't know how to turn off. But it also, because it's fighting a war along your gut lining, it can't pay attention to what's happening in other parts of your body, like your sinuses. So then you start getting recurrent sinus infections. And I've seen this over and over with people. And all you have to do is go in, balance the diet, take out the foods that are inflammatory and, and get the gut microbiome in order and suddenly their immune system is back, booted up, and they stop getting recurrent sinus infections. It's that simple. So, yes, antibiotics will affect your immunity. And the more you take, the more your immune system will struggle. And I had the same thing happen to me as a child. I was exposed to 3, 4 rounds of antibiotics every year. As a teenager, my immune system was shot. I would catch anything that anybody had. And it took me probably over two decades to figure all this out. And that's the work that I put into my book, Happy Gut, about how to balance the gut to have a strong immune system to lose weight easily and to have all the energy that you need.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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