How to Support your Gut Microbiome While Taking Antibiotics

Hello everyone and welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is the first of a new type of shorter podcast that I'm going to be doing between my longer episodes to give you more information on gut health topics. I'm going to do it about once a month next year, and this is the first of them. So I'd love to hear your feedback on this additional format. Also, if you are struggling with extra weight or with gut health problems or autoimmune issues, please reach out for a free 1-hour breakthrough session where we can talk about what's been holding you back and what's been keeping you in poor health or with extra weight on. And I can tell you a bit about what health coaching looks like and see if that might be something that could help you. And you can find me at highdistanthealthcoaching.com. So today I'm gonna be talking about the topic of how to support your gut microbiome if you have to take antibiotics, or if you've taken tons of antibiotics already and you already have gut issues, leaky gut, things like that. So the first thing that you should do if you have to go on antibiotics, which are dramatically over, overprescribed in our current medical system, and in particular during the cold and flu season during the winter, you're gonna get a lot of prescriptions for antibiotics for things that are fundamentally viral infections like cold and flu. And antibiotics kill bacteria, not viruses. So if you're given an antibiotic for what clearly looks like cold or flu, you definitely wanna ask your doctor first of all, is this really necessary? I didn't come in here to get antibiotics. Now admittedly, there are some bacterial infections like strep throat that can be secondary to a viral infection. And those legitimately do need to be treated with antibiotics or with herbal antimicrobials. If you go that route, you can go to a naturopath and get a prescription for something like that, or not a prescription, but you know, a, a medicine or instructions. But if you do have to go on antibiotics, one of the best things that you can do is to take probiotics. And you can take probiotics both during the time you're taking the antibiotics and then afterwards to make sure that you protect and rebuild your gut. So the first one that I always recommend is S. boulardii, which is actually Saccharomyces cervisiae subspecies boulardii, spelled B-O-U-L-A-R-D-I-I. And it is actually not a bacteria, it is a beneficial yeast. And I like the Jarrow brand of that. And you can find all of the supplements that I'm referencing today either on my recommended product page products page from my website or through my FullScript dispensary, which you can also find off of my website under supplements and lab tests. And that's HighDesertHealthCoaching.com. So anyway, S. boulardii, the Jarrow brand is the one I like. You can get a nice big bottle for a reasonable price. And I would take those at least 2 or 3 times a day during the time you're on the antibiotics. Since it's a beneficial yeast and not a bacteria, the antibiotics won't kill it. So you can go ahead and take it right through or take it when, even when you're taking the antibiotics. And the nice thing about S. boulardii is that it stops the reproduction of Candida, which is also a yeast. And when you're killing off bacteria, that balance between the bacteria and the Candida can get off, and then you can have an overgrowth of Candida. So S. boulardii is a great protective probiotic to take when you're on antibiotics, and I take it just on a daily basis. Then another type of probiotic you will wanna look at is the soil-based or the spore-based probiotics. And some of the big names in spore-based and soil-based are MegaSporeBiotic. That's probably the most expensive and the highest dosage one. Then there's Just Thrive, which is linked from my recommended products. And the MegaSporeBiotic you can find in full in my FullScript dispensary. And then there's also a brand called Restore Flora that has both S. boulardii and some spore-based, but not as many strains. It has 2 of the strains, which you can find through FullScript. So either, I'd either go with the S. boulardii plus a, a separate soil-based probiotic, or I would go with the combined one. But you wanna look at a dosage and make sure you're getting as much dosage as you can if you do the combined one. So you're probably gonna wanna double or triple up on the regular recommended dosage for any of these. So 2 or 3 a day of Soil-based, 2 or 3 a day of the S. boulardii. It's not an exact science, of course. Another probiotic that I would recommend as well would be Equilibrium, which is really unique in the field of probiotics because it's just human-derived probiotics. So these are strains that actually do live in your gut. So, uh, again, I would go with maybe 2 or 3 of those a day during the time you're on antibiotics or soon thereafter. And keep that up until you've finished out a bottle. You could also go with the Equilibrium Boost, which is basically 10 of them combined into one, and then follow that by a regular bottle of Equilibrium right after you finish with the antibiotics. And then either at the same time or after you're finished with your antibiotics, I'd move on to one other type of probiotic. So, oh, and, and I should mention that the other probiotics besides the S. boulardii, you wanna separate them in time from when you're taking your antibiotics, because otherwise the antibiotics will just be killing them. So for example, if you're taking your antibiotics and more, you know, breakfast and dinner, for example, then take your probiotics mid-morning or mid-afternoon or right before you go to bed or something like that. Then I'd also recommend that you look at a food-based probiotic. So something that has high levels of, you know, Lactobacilli and Bifidobacteria. If you wanna go really high end, you can look at the Bifido Maximus, which is sold out of the Gut Institute. And another good one is Renew Life Extra Care Ultimate Flora. That's got tons. And, and try and, try and look at getting yourself 100 million, 100 billion, sorry, CFU or colony forming units per day of those. So based on the dosage, you may need 1 or 2 servings of those. And then another thing you might wanna look at to help protect your gut is L-glutamine, which is a nonessential amino acid, which normally your body does make enough of. And it also comes from a lot of different foods like chicken, fish, dairy, tofu, cabbage, spinach, beets, peas, lentils, beans, but it can become deficient due to major infections, due to trauma, significant stress, and then things like radiation and chemotherapy and shock and vigorous exercise. So one way to protect your gut then during these times of infections is to have a lot of bone broth, which is why, of course, old grandma's chicken soup was recommended. And I should note that with people who have histamine intolerance, bone broth is a source of histamine, so you wouldn't wanna go that route. But it is possible to take supplements of L-glutamine. The maximum dose would be 30 grams a day split into 5 gram portions taken 6 times a day. But what I'd recommend is that you just start with a powder and work your way up to what you— what seems to be a good dose for you. And that helps seal the gut and keep it protected from intestinal permeability or leaky gut when, when the, you know, the gut opens up and allows food particles and bacteria and toxins to escape. Then I'd also look at eating probiotic foods. So, uh, sauerkraut, kefir, if you can tolerate dairy products, cow's milk, or you could go goat's milk kefir. There's even coconut kefir now. And the other thing that's really important is to avoid sugar and processed carbohydrates during the time you're on antibiotics and while you're rebuilding your gut afterwards, because this is a time you're going to be particularly prone to an overgrowth of Candida. And the more I see clients and people around me who are sick, the more I feel that a lot of these issues, these gut issues and these autoimmune issues, are traceable to antibiotics and to the destruction of the gut microbiome due to antibiotics. And I think a lot of it becomes this imbalance between the bacteria and the fungus, which is the Candida. So it's really important that you get off the sugar and the processed carbs as much as possible, and that includes alcohol, that includes, you know, all those things that Candida are going to eat. And then the other important part is to feed the body prebiotics and fiber. So just in case there's any unclarity, probiotics are the bacteria, prebiotics are the food for the bacteria. So what kind of prebiotics? Well, I wouldn't say it's necessarily to go for a supplement, but you Just eating a lot of fiber from fruits and vegetables, from onion, garlic, beans, lentils, legumes. You know, that's really the, the powerhouses of fiber are gonna be the, the legumes. And then you can also get good resistant starch, which is a food for our bacteria that helps us feel more full and provides a lot of fiber, but that we don't eat. And you can get that from tigernut flour or from Green banana flour. You can get it from banana skins. If you wanna put banana skins into your smoothie, make sure you use organic bananas. And you can actually get it from heated and then cooled rice and potatoes. So once you cool them down, you get significantly less carbohydrates or simple carbohydrates if you're eating white potatoes and white rice and significantly more resistant starch. So you could heat 'em back up once they've heated and cooled once. And then I did want to say too, though, if you have taken antibiotics a long time ago and now you're dealing with what seems to be the sequel to that, gut issues that followed on the antibiotic treatment, but it's been a while, these sort of treatments may help. You can certainly try the probiotics, you can go hard on that and see if it, see if it helps, but it may just be putting a bandaid on a bigger problem. So my recommendation is if you've, if it's been a while since you took the antibiotics and you've been having gut issues, that you probably want to see what's going on through testing. So it may be parasites, it may be bacterial overgrowth like SIBO, it may be fungi like Candida. So it's, it's important to figure out what's going on so that you can kill the appropriate thing if there's something to kill and then rebuild with the prebiotics and the probiotics. So, you know, I think that's better than trying to just put a bandaid on a dysbiotic gut. And if you didn't get this all down and you wanna see this all in written format, I'm gonna turn this into a blog post within the next couple of days. So be sure to sign up for my next newsletter, which you can do at my website. If you— there'll be a popup box soon after you arrive, or you can go to the communications newsletter page and sign up there. And if you have any questions about gut health, I would love to hear them and I, I can address them on a future episode. So please send those to Lindsey with L-I-N-D-S-E-Y at highdeserthealthcoaching.com. Well, thanks for listening, and if the show is useful to you, please give me a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or support me through my Patreon page at patreon.com/theperfectstool. And here's wishing you all the perfect stool.