Probiotics are a Must if You are on Antibiotics

Your gut requires both good and bad bacteria. But what’s more important is the ratio. You need a ratio of more of the good bacteria and less of the bad bacteria. Antibiotics can wipe out your entire gut bacteria or your micro biome and that in turn impacts your immunity. 75 to 80 percent of your immunity starts in your gut.

How Does an Antibiotic Work?
In its honest attempt to heal you by killing the bacteria that has caused your infection or your ailment or your disease, the antibiotic also kills all of the good bacteria. We have to be especially weary when we come across broad spectrum antibiotics. These are antibiotics which really have the ability to wipe out all of your good bacteria from your gut. You only take it if you really need it. It can be life-saving. You need antibiotics for most severe bacterial infections but the thing is that today it is administered the wrong way.

Probiotic
People are taking antibiotics and they’re not taking a good probiotic. Antibiotics are wiping out all of your good bacteria and you have to replenish your gut with good bacteria which comes from probiotics. It could be a supplement, it could be a probiotic from the pharmacy or it could be strong probiotic foods. But a supplement is always recommended especially when you have antibiotics because that’s how powerful it is to wipe out all or most of your good bacteria. Now the problem is when your good bacteria is wiped out many people who take antibiotics also face something called AAD that is antibiotic associated diarrhoea and when you get this diarrhoea while you’re on antibiotics the next prescription that you get is a pill to look after your diarrhoea but what you really need is a probiotic because if you replenish the good bacteria you don’t have diarrhoea. Just by taking another pill to treat the symptom caused by your antibiotic you’re actually ruining your gut health and we all know that right from acidity to bloating to constipation to diarrhoea to Crohn’s disease most autoimmune diseases including thyroid, Hashimoto’s; all of these issues are caused by leaky guts, by poor gut health including IBS.

Disparity in Anti vs Pro Biotic
When you look at the market in India last year the statistics are phenomenal. The market for probiotics is approximately 2.06 crores and the antibiotic market in that same year is 3000 thousand crores. Now I if we’ve done three thousand crores worth of antibiotics, the probiotic market should be if not more at least almost three thousand which shows a disparity in the way it’s being prescribed. That’s where more issues happen because people who constantly take antibiotics are constantly ruining their immunity just like people who constantly take antacids are constantly ruining their gut and in turn their immunity. Then we have a pill to treat all of these side-effects and we just never get better.

B-Vitamins Deficient
The best thing that you can do is insist your doctor to prescribe an antibiotic and also a B-complex because antibiotic also wipes out your B vitamins which is a water-soluble vitamin. B vitamins are a class of vitamins right from b1 b3 b5 b6 b9 b12 it’s got many of these vitamins in the B class. So for example when you’re wiping out all of these things we have a b12 deficiency and we have people who are low in thymine which is b1 b5 b6. Folic acid is a big deficiency in women who specially take antibiotics and when you have a deficiency of vitamins you compromise the health of your body because one vitamin doesn’t have one function. One vitamin has several functions in the human body.

Antibiotics for Children
I know you may have to give your kids antibiotics but always weigh your options with your doctor. Try to let your kids heal naturally if you can. Don’t make a decision to stop antibiotics if it’s life-threatening or it’s really required. One course of broad-spectrum antibiotics can wipe out their micro biome for two to three years which means they have immunity issues for two to three years and we see this especially in children who have taken antibiotics and in the following years they have allergies. So the whole idea is if you have to take an antibiotic take it but the right way. It is your right to know that you need probiotic and a B-complex.

Pre-Biotic
Today everyone’s going crazy with probiotics because people think they lose weight with probiotics and it contributes to gut health. But remember a probiotic is a bacterium, that organism that you create in your gut. But to stay alive it needs food and it gets that food from something called a prebiotic. Make sure your doctor prescribes that for you and you take a prebiotic. What’s one of the most inexpensive prebiotics that’s available to all of us? All of us have heard of Isabgol or the Psyllium husk which most people use for constipation. Psyllium husk is fibre which is a prebiotic that will feed your probiotics. So I actually recommend if you’re not taking prebiotics like apple cider vinegar or making your own prebiotics or probiotics at home, having a tablespoon or two tablespoons of psyllium husk everyday works as a fantastic prebiotic for your probiotics.

When you do your prebiotic, you do your probiotic and you do your b-complex and you have antibiotics, that’s how you prevent yourself from the side effects or collateral damage of the medication that you have to be on at certain instances in your life.

As far as possible try to heal naturally but when you need a medicine or you’re prescribed a medication take it. Weigh the pros and cons. It’s your right to ask your doctor what the side effects are. When you learn the side effects it’s your right to ask him how to manage the side effects at the same time. Remember it’s your health and your body you are in charge of it.