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Questions & Answers

Restoring Your Gut After Antibiotics: Ten Steps You Need To Take

How do you restore your gut flora after taking a course of antibiotics? Here are ten tips I’ve provided my clients over the years.

1. Finish the antibiotic treatment as prescribed: It doesn’t make sense to take the antibiotics for a day or two and then stop. If you need the treatment, finish the course. If you are getting side effects or an allergic reaction from the antibiotics, you need to let your doctor know right away. Stop taking the medication if signs of an allergy surface.

2. Don’t let your next step be more antibiotics: If the first round of antibiotics didn’t work, don’t take another round unless it is absolutely necessary. Some of the sickest clients I had during my career as a naturopath, took antibiotics repeatedly and severely damaged their gut function as a result.

3. Eat well for several weeks: You’re not going to get your gut right unless you eat good food. A critical step in restoring your gut health is to make sure you’re eating well.

4. If you get sick again, see a naturopath or a functional medicine doctor: You may want to get a comprehensive stool analysis to see what needs to be cleared up. It will help you decide what you need to do next to clear up your gut. It may be that you have a yeast infection that needs to be addressed.

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5. You need to rest up: Rest is best, as they say. If you can take time off work, do. If you push through instead of resting, you can end up with adrenal problems, thyroid problems, and fatigue. Cancel your social functions and spend time relaxing.

6. Engage in light exercise: You’re not going to get your gut in high spec, if you overexercise. Do some light exercise, but don’t push your stress hormone axis by training for three hours a day.

7. Get to bed on time: You need a lot of sleep to facilitate gut recovery. Better sleep patterns will help you recuperate faster.

8. No alcohol: Alcohol and soda drinks are not a good idea when you are trying to restore gut function after antibiotics. It worries me if people find it hard to take a break from alcohol – it may mean that they have a problem with drinking that is also harming the gut.

9. If you’re not getting better, get more testing: If you are having allergies and gut problems despite a healthy stool test, do some further testing. Take a look at your adrenal function through a salivary cortisol test. You may also need to look at your iodine levels and thyroid function. If you have hormonal problems, it sets you up for recurrent infections.

10. Don’t come off probiotics in a hurry: It’s crucial to stay on probiotics for the long haul to recover fully. For every week you were on antibiotics, you can easily stay on probiotics for four to eight weeks. Make sure you have a healthy gut long before you discontinue your probiotics.

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Questions & Answers

Five Steps To Regaining Gut Health After Antibiotic Use

If you had a course of antibiotics, it’s essential to do what you can to restore your gut health.

1. Firstly, if at all possible, avoid doing another round. One course of antibiotics is bad enough, taking another round is like going back into the ring with the world heavyweight boxing champion. I’ve had clients who have been on antibiotics almost continuously for six months, and it destroys their gut. I look at it as the medical equivalent of napalming your garden time and time again.

2. Next, it’s crucial that you focus on eating the kinds of foods that will help build your but back up again. If you’ve just finished a week of ciprofloxacin, now is not the time to be feasting on take-out pizza while drinking a liter of pop. You’re better off cooking yourself some bok choy and brown rice at home. If you jump into eating high-sugar food right after finishing antibiotics, there is a very good chance that the yeast population in your gut is going to increase significantly. If you have a burning desire to eat sweets after using antibiotics, it’s a sure-fire sign that you’ve developed SIBO or a yeast problem.

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3. Make sure that you take a probiotic long enough to make a difference. Some people think that seven to ten days of probiotics is enough to reverse all the damage that has been done by antibiotic treatment. Not true. I recommend staying on the probiotic until your gut function is excellent again. Even then, if you stop the probiotics and your gut problems resurface, you need to go back on the probiotic.

4. Make sure you get adequate rest and avoid living a high-stress lifestyle. Some people who get sick, unfortunately, stay sick because they live an unhealthy lifestyle. It may be their relationship, it may be their job, or it could be the family dynamics. Something needs to change because if the person continues to expose themselves to significant stress, their gut isn’t going to bounce back and recover.

5. Please don’t take too many dietary supplements in the hopes that it will speed up your return to gut health. I’ve seen people take 30 or more pills a day. When your gut is recovering from antibiotics, I strongly recommend keeping things simple. Eat a basic, healthy diet and reduce your life stress. Now is not the time to pepper your digestive system with B vitamins, magnesium supplements, zinc supplements, and so on. Try and back off a lot of these supplements and give your gut some space to recover.

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Questions & Answers

Antibiotics In Children: My Perspective

It’s important to build up children’s immunity and gut health from an early age. I’d also like to share my thoughts on using antibiotics in children.

I have four children, but they are adults now. I never gave antibiotics to them when they were children. But, don’t feel bad if you’ve used antibiotics for your children. It’s your choice. I was in the enviable position where antibiotics were not necessary. My wife and I both agreed that we had our children’s immunity and health well under control.

We used supplements and homeopathic medication for our children. I was concerned about the risk of damaging my children’s guts by using antibiotics. I had seen that happen to so many of my clients.

There’s so much carnage out there due to antibiotics. Antibiotics are necessary. I’m not, again, saying that people shouldn’t take them. They’re absolutely vital, and they save a lot of lives, but they’re still dramatically still over-prescribed. Too many children receive antibiotics for trivial and small complaints.

I’ve seen this routinely in my clinic, not just here in New Zealand, but I’ve seen it on patients from all around the world. I’ve dealt with children from 40 to 50 countries, and the overuse of antibiotics is a common theme.

Do children recover from the side effects of antibiotics? Yes, in most cases, they do. But in cases where there is course after course of antibiotics in childhood, adult health status is definitely negatively impacted.

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I believe that in years to come, the overuse of antibiotics will be seen as one of the biggest blunders in medical history. Not just for humans, but for animals as well.

How do you build up a child’s health to reduce the chances they will need antibiotics? Firstly, educate yourself. Do some reading about how to help your child’s immune system. One of the habits that bother me the most is when parents repeatedly wipe their children’s hands with antiseptic wipes. Research has shown that when children are exposed to a variety of bacteria, they develop a robust immune system.

Diet also plays a vital role in establishing a strong immune system. The diet has to be good. But it’s not just the nutritional diet; it’s also the emotional diet. A loving environment makes a big difference to the immune system.

It’s easy to feed a child the right kind of food. Start them young eating raw stuff, steamed stuff, cooked stuff, but all kinds of vegetables. That’s a key thing to do.

Next, get your child to take a daily multivitamin to fill any nutritional gaps. There could be a zinc deficiency, a manganese deficiency, or a molybdenum deficiency. Small trace elements easily lacking from the diet can affect the growth and development of the child.

I also suggest that children take an omega-3 fish oil supplement. 250 mg a day should be enough for a 5-year old. For a bigger child, 500 to 1000 milligrams per day is not a problem. Omega-3 fatty acids are good for the immune system and the brain.

If you want a child’s immune system to be great, reduce the instance of allergies, and increase a child’s ability to push away infectious disease, I recommend a probiotic. Studies have found a remarkable resilience to allergies in children taking probiotics versus children taking a placebo.

I recommend children, every child now under seven, to take a probiotic, at least a couple of times per year. In some cases, they can benefit from taking the probiotics for two to three months a year.

Remember that “green” time is also important. Children spend too much time in front of the television. Getting outdoors daily is essential for overall health.

You can use tea tree oil on a cut instead of antibiotic creams.

If you follow these general guidelines, customized to the needs of your child, you’re laying down the foundation they need to grow into a strong, healthy, adult.

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Questions & Answers

Why Antibiotics Are Not The Answer For SIBO

You’ll likely never get rid of SIBO by relying on antibiotics, whether it’s amoxicillin, or rifaximin, or Xifaxin.

There are a lot of naturopaths in the US that prescribe rifaximin.

I’ve seen hundreds upon hundreds of cloents that have taken rifaximin with minimal results. They may initially have seen some improvement but then they relapsed and had to go back on rifaximin.

Rifaximin doesn’t get absorbed well in the gut. Essentially, it acts in the gut and then gets excreted. That’s why it isn’t good for anything except a small bowel problem. It generally doesn’t have much of an impact on the large bowel.

In my opinion, relying on antibiotics for SIBO is a complete waste of time in nost cases. It means you’re taking your eye off the ball and thinking that a drug is going to cure all your GI problems. Well, that isn’t going to happen in most cases.

Relying on an antibiotic to fix SIBO means you’re not looking at other options.

Ask yourself, “Did I look at all my herbal options before I started taking antibiotics?”

Herbal options tend to be more broad-spectrum. Unlike rifaximin they can also have an impact on small intestinal fungal overgrowth (SIFO).

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Most of the clients I have seen have got multiple gut imbalances. They have some fungal issues and many also have parasites. Many have low pancreatic enzyme levels, low secretory IgA, and poor immune function.

An antibiotic that works on SIBO is not going to address all the other gut issues.

My suggestion is to get a comprehensive stool analysis based on three stool samples. A SIBO breath test is not enough. The stool analysis will give you an overall idea of your gut problems. It will also provide a susceptibility panel that is specific to your situation.

Another reason I don’t think rifaximin is the answer to your SIBO problem is that probiotics aren’t considered thoroughly. In some cases, probiotics have a better effect than antibiotics.

If you have low to nil counts of lactobacillus and bifidobacteria along with SIBO, probiotics are far more important than antibioitics.

Managing SIBO is not just about killing harmful bacteria. It’s also about building up the beneficial bacteria in your gut.

Thirdly, the possibility of a poor migrating motor complex (MMC) is often missed if antibiotics are considered the “answer” to SIBO.

The MMC is responsible for cleaning up the small bowel between meals.
The vagus nerve, part of the parasympathetic nervous system, and a variety of hormones are involved in regulating the activity of the MMC.

If you’ve got sympathetic dominance through stress, you’re going to have parasympathetic depression and weak vagal tone. The result is poor MMC activity followed by bloating, gas, and other digestive problems.

Antibiotics do nothing to address poor vagal tone. You need to address the issues that are causing your stress.

In my opinion, when it comes to GI health, lifestyle trumps just about anything else in life, including your diet.

Antibiotics also don’t address any structural problems that may be contributing to GI dysfunction.

I had one patient, a police officer, who was told he had a mast cell disease affecting his gut. Turned out that his holster, weighing umpteen pounds, had impacted his 11th and 12th thoracic vertebrae and the nerve supply to his small bowel. When the chiropractor addressed his vertebrae problems, his GI issues resolved.

Think about your occupation; think about your life. Don’t think that an antibiotic is going to cure SIBO. It’s not in most cases. You need to look further afield.

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