Antibiotics are a type of medication prescribed to combat bacterial infections, such as strep throat, urinary tract infections, bacterial pneumonia, meningitis, and other similar illnesses. These medicines work by preventing the bacteria from growing and multiply.
However, there are some antibiotics that are broad spectrum. They can kill a wide variety of bacteria (healthy ones included). This is one of the main reasons why antibiotics disrupt the gut bacteria balance.
Antibiotics don’t just kill bad bacteria; they also remove beneficial gut bacteria, which help your immune system function effectively. This disruption of gut microbiomes, known as “microbial dysbiosis,” may have long-term repercussions such as digestive discomfort and reduced immunity.
If you want to know how to rebuild your gut microbiome after taking antibiotics, continue reading.
What Is The Gut Microbiome?
The gut microbiome is an incredible collection of trillions of microorganisms living inside and on your intestines. They play a vital role in maintaining good health, from helping digest food to protecting against disease to supporting immunity, heart, and brain function.
Human bodies contain an incredible diversity of microorganisms that help our bodies absorb nutrients and metabolize various substances, such as fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals. Furthermore, these microbes communicate with intestinal cells to control the balance of bacteria within your gut environment.
Understanding how our human microbiome affects health is a rapidly expanding area of research, with initiatives by the National Institutes of Health designed to investigate various populations within our bodies as well as links between particular microbiome compositions and diseases across demographics.
How Antibiotics Affect Your Gut Microbiome?
Antibiotics are drugs used to treat bacterial infections like strep throat, UTIs, pneumonia, and meningitis. While antibiotics may save lives in treating some bacterial illnesses. They can have detrimental effects on your gut microbiome, resulting in diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting if taken too frequently.
Human gut microbiomes include bacteria, archaea, eukaryotes, and viruses found within our digestive tracts that play an essential role in supporting the immune system, metabolism, and overall health.
Antibiotics have an important positive impact on gut microbiome diversity and function; however, overusing antibiotics may have serious negative repercussions by diminishing resident bacteria that help support digestive health as well as increasing resistance genes in bacteria.
Changes to your gut microbiome can have significant ramifications on overall health. The gut microbiome plays a vital role in producing vitamins, minerals, and amino acids – essential components of health.
Restoring a healthy gut microbiome following antibiotic treatment requires eating a balanced diet, taking probiotics, and keeping up with an exercise regime. You must also manage stress effectively, as mental strain can trigger gut microbiome changes.
What to Eat for Restoring Gut Balance After Taking Antibiotics?
Antibiotics can be lifesavers in certain cases, but they can have detrimental effects on your gut microbiome. By killing both good and bad bacteria in equal measures, antibiotics destroy a critical protective barrier within your digestive tract that serves to keep harmful pathogens at bay.
To restore healthy gut flora after antibiotic use, it’s important to prioritize foods containing probiotics and prebiotics as a source of healthy bacteria. Here are the best foods to eat for restoring your gut balance after antibiotic use.
Probiotics
To restore good bacteria after taking antibiotics, it’s essential to consume plenty of probiotic foods and supplements. These can be found in fermented food products, or choose high-quality probiotic supplements as part of a regimen of healthy eating habits. The best probiotic foods you can eat are yogurt, sour pickles, miso, kefir, sourdough bread, etc. You can also take probiotic supplements to improve your gut health.
Prebiotics High-Fiber Foods
Prebiotic-rich food items can help restore good bacteria that have been damaged by antibiotics. They are essential for digestive health, and can even reduce inflammation. Prebiotics not only restore gut health but can also provide benefits to bone health and blood sugar management. Burdock root, chicory root, and Jerusalem artichokes are excellent sources of prebiotic fiber that can help relieve constipation and promote digestion.
Fermented Foods
Consuming fermented foods such as kefir, yogurt, or kombucha can help restore beneficial bacteria after taking antibiotics. These foods contain probiotics – the beneficial bacteria that help your gut and immune system remain. Fermented foods contain unique compounds created during fermentation, including antimicrobial peptides and lactic acid, that have numerous health benefits.
Collagen-Rich Foods
Collagen is one of the essential proteins in our bodies. They serve to form connective tissues that support bones, muscles, tendons, and joints while maintaining their form and flexibility. You need to eat collagen-rich foods to improve your gut health. Bone broth, made at home using either beef or chicken bones that have been simmered until their nutrients have been extracted, is an excellent source of collagen.
Tips to Restore Gut Bacteria After Taking Antibiotics
Rebuilding the good bacteria takes time; however, taking specific actions can hasten this process and help restore your gut microbiome. Here are some tips to restore gut bacteria after taking antibiotics.
Change Your Diet
Eating a nutritious, well-balanced diet is crucial to gut health. It is particularly effective at rebuilding the microbiome after antibiotic use. Foods rich in soluble fiber, such as squash, Jicama, Jerusalem artichoke, and peeled fruit, have been proven to boost gut microbiome.
Keep Stress Under Control
Maintaining low-stress levels can be helpful in restoring gut bacteria following antibiotic treatment. New research demonstrates how stress can have an effect on how effectively gut bacteria recover from antibiotic use.
Get Proper Sleep
Sleep can help restore gut bacteria after taking antibiotics, improving memory formation, clarity of thought, and balance while simultaneously repairing cells and keeping the immune system operating at an optimum level.
Conclusion
Antibiotics destroy beneficial gut bacteria, leading to an overgrowth of bad bacteria that can lead to gas, bloating, inflammation, digestive upsets, and immune system weakness – among many other adverse consequences. If you want to restore the gut bacteria after antibiotic use, start by eating foods rich in fiber and probiotic-rich supplements. Moreover, start participating in regular physical activity to help build up a healthier microbiome.