Q&A from a YouTube video (Matt Kelly). The speaker explains how to mitigate antibiotic effects during treatment and how to rebuild gut flora afterward. Key points: antibiotics can have compounding effects; seven days of clindamycin may take ~1 year to restore the microbiome; use antibiotic-resistant probiotic spores (used in Europe as adjunct therapy for ~60 years) during antibiotics; Saccharomyces (yeast) can help acidify the gut and prevent opportunistic infections but does not colonize; after antibiotics, focus on a high-fiber, diverse diet (soluble + insoluble fibers) and fermented foods; continue spores and Saccharomyces post-therapy; use herbal antimicrobials for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) when indicated.
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Kind of a two part question. How can you sort of mitigate some of the effects of antibiotics while you're taking them, as well as what can you do to sort of rebuild your gut flora after taking antibiotics?
Okay, and that's a great question because antibiotics tend to have a compounding effect. So if you have had multiple doses of antibiotics within a short period of time, it takes much longer to rebuild your microbiome. There's a study out that showed that seven days of clindamycin will take approximately a year to rebuild your microbiome. If you're not doing really aggressive things during the antibiotic therapy itself, it's extremely important to use antibiotic resistant probiotics like spores. So that's one of the prescription uses for the spores in Europe and has been for almost 60 years, is as an adjunct therapy to antibiotics. Because it survives through the antibiotic therapy and actually will prevent the opportunistic infection growth of opportunistic bacteria. It protects against pathogenic growth as well. And it continues to produce nutrients to support the growth of your good bacteria. So it tries to hold things together during the antibiotic therapy. I also like saccharomyces. During antibiotic therapy, Saccharomyces does a good job of acidifying the gut and also preventing opportunistic infection. Saccharomyces doesn't colonize the gut, but it can have good immunomodulatory effects. It can really acidify the gut, produces a lot of lactic acid as it passes through. Both of those things can help mitigate some of the damage that's going on. But the moment the antibiotic is stopped, then you really need to focus on a really high fiber, really diverse diet to regenerate the bacteria whose numbers have come way down. If you don't modulate your diet after an antibiotic therapy dose of antibiotic therapy, then you really have a hard time of recovering your microbiome. It can be recovered. That's the good news. If you're going out for pizza and things like that after your antibiotic therapy, it's only going to propagate the do damage. What you want to do is get a really good doses of soluble and insoluble fibers. If you can get good fermented foods in, that's an important thing to do as well. Continue with things like spores and the saccharomyces type of products to prevent the overgrowth of pathogenic organisms. Then if you're someone that is taking antibiotics and has been known to have sibo and things like that you can also use natural herbal antimicrobials to try to bring down the overgrowth of bacteria within the small bowel itself. So it can be done, but you have to take an aggressive step to it, especially the diet part.
