Taking Probiotics With Antibiotics?

Antibiotics can save lives.

But antibiotics can also cause discomfort, disease, and even death. 

From resistant superbugs to life-threatening antibiotic-associated diarrhea, these “wonder” drugs can cause a lot of damage. But... With the right, holistic approach to your health, you can sidestep those outcomes, even if you’ve taken antibiotics for a long period of time.

Before we get into the specifics, let’s learn a little more about what happens when you take an antibiotic...

Antibiotics vs. Probiotics

Probiotics are beneficial bacteria that improve your health. To qualify as a probiotic, these bacteria have to be alive in your gut and deliver proven benefits for your health and wellness. That includes:

  • Managing healthy blood sugar levels

  • Promoting a healthy weight

  • Improving cancer outcomes

  • Encouraging healthy cholesterol levels

  • Improving immune system function

  • Boosting memory and cognition

And this is just a small sample of the many ways probiotics help you stay strong and healthy.

Antibiotics kill bacteria… and that includes beneficial probiotic bacteria.

That’s why taking antibiotics can make you feel lousy, even as you’re technically recovering from an infection.  And by killing probiotics, antibiotics can do quite a lot of harm.

Antibiotics And The Damage They Do To Your Gut Microbiome

When your gut microbiome (the trillions of bacteria in your gut) is in healthy balance, probiotics vastly outnumber harmful, pathogenic bacteria. And those probiotics do a lot to keep you strong and well. 

However, many challenging health issues occur after taking antibiotics because they kill off the beneficial probiotic bacteria in your gut microbiome.

Even a single dose of antibiotics can wipe out huge populations of beneficial bacteria… but still leave pathogens alive. Those harmful bacteria immediately take advantage, and start to multiply and grow out of control. When pathogens outnumber probiotics in your gut microbiome – a condition called dysbiosis – your health will rapidly go down hill.

At the same time, antibiotics substantially reduce diversity in the gut microbiome. A healthy gut contains between 500-1,000 different types of bacteria. In dysbiosis, that number can shrink by more than half. And low diversity has been associated with many serious chronic diseases including diabetes and cancer.

That’s why many doctors and scientists strongly recommend that you take probiotics before, during and long after any course of antibiotics. Because probiotics give you the best chance of avoiding potentially dire bacterial imbalance. 

The Dangers of Antibiotic-Associated Diarrhea

If you’ve ever taken a course of antibiotics, you’ve probably suffered from GI issues during your treatment or as soon as it stopped. Antibiotics notoriously cause GI upset, especially diarrhea. That’s so common that it has a separate diagnosis: antibiotic-associated diarrhea (AAD). 

When antibiotics kill off the good bacteria in your gut, it clears space for some nasty infectious pathogens including C difficile. 

Research shows that up to 35% of people who take antibiotics end up with AAD. And 17% of people who get AAD suffer significant health challenges as a result.

Luckily, supporting the probiotic bacteria in your gut offers significant protection against AAD. In fact, the right support has been shown to lower the risk of AAD by 37%. 

There are also specific probiotics, such as Bacillus coagulans and that have been clinically proven to address numerous types of GI unrest to support your best digestive and immune health.

Antibiotic Misuse Creates Superbugs

Perhaps you’ve heard scary stories about drug-resistant infections – superbugs – like MRSA. 

Even worse, there are truly terrifying multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria. Those pathogens resist several different antibiotics, making them terrifically difficult to treat. And without effective treatment, people who get MDR infections can suffer dire consequences.

Superbugs are bacteria that have adapted and learned how to survive against the antibiotics normally used to fight them. And the number of bacteria in this resistant category is increasing at an alarming rate.

So what creates these superbugs?

  • Using antibiotics in livestock like chickens and cows

  • Misuse of antibiotics for non-bacterial infections

  • Overprescribing antibiotics

  • Stopping antibiotics midcourse, usually a result of side effects

According to the CDC, every year Americans suffer from more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections… and more than 35,000 people suffer major health issues. Unfortunately, this problem is expected to get much worse. The World Health Organization predicts nearly 10 times that many major health challenges in North America by the year 2050 – and more than 10 million worldwide.

Probiotics Show Harmful Bacteria The Door 

As antibiotics become less effective and continue to cause harmful side effects, researchers have been desperately searching for alternatives. And probiotics come in at the top of that list.

Turns out that many probiotic bacteria produce compounds that can crowd out dangerous pathogens. This means that probiotics can significantly support your gut and overall health by keeping pathogen populations under control.

And brand new research shows that probiotics may also help address resistant bacteria, offering real hope for fighting this worldwide challenge. For example, compounds produced by probiotic strain Bacillus subtilis show effectiveness against several pathogens.

On top of that, keeping your gut microbiome in healthy balance with probiotics during antibiotic treatment reduces the potential for resistant bugs. And because probiotics can help sidestep antibiotic side effects like AAD, people are more likely to finish their full course of treatment… which also minimizes resistance.

*Article adapted from justthrivehealth.com

Peggy Van Cleef