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Antibiotics Can Kill Healthy Gut Bacteria - Here's What You Should Eat To Counter That

The roughly 40 trillion microbes that live in our bodies, most of which are in our gut, can affect everything from how we digest our food to how we defend ourselves against external threats like viruses, parasites, and bacteria.

The microbes create a smooth balance that can be disturbed by a variety of medical treatments, especially antibiotics.

The discovery of antibiotics marked a new future for humans, which included making possible and surviving things like dental surgery.

They remain powerful tools, although their use is not without side effects. That can include the inadvertent elimination of good bacteria in our gut.

New research adds to the growing body of information about how important our microbiome is and how common antibiotics can kill certain helpful gut bacteria, highlighting the importance of mitigating potential unwanted side effects while a person goes through antibiotic treatment.

In a recent study from a reliable source published in the journal Nature, an international research team based primarily in Germany looked at how 144 antibiotics commonly used in humans impact our gut health.

More importantly, they found that two classes of antibiotics, tetracyclines and macrolides, create "collateral damage" by killing the good bacteria in the gut, leaving you exposed to gastrointestinal ailments and recurrent infections from a type of bacteria known as Clostridioides difficile (C. diff), which can cause severe diarrhea, nausea, fever, stomach pain, and even death.

Tetracyclines are a type of broad-spectrum antibiotic. There are five types of macrolides: erythromycin, clarithromycin, azithromycin, fidaxomicin, and telithromycin. They are used to treat a variety of common infections, from acne to sexually transmitted infections.

The researchers found that tetracyclines and macrolides not only prevent the growth of good bacteria, but kill about half of the strains of microbes found in the gut that the researchers analyzed.

“Many antibiotics inhibit the growth of various pathogenic bacteria. This broad spectrum of activity is useful for treating infections, but increases the risk that microbes in our gut will also be attacked. ”Lisa Maier, DFG, group leader Emmy Noether at the University of Tübingen in Germany and one of the two leaders Study authors said in a statement accompanying the research.

Camille Goemans, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tübingen and the study's other lead author, said the researchers didn't expect to see that kind of impact from tetracyclines and macrolides, as they were believed not to kill bacteria.

"Our experiments show that this assumption is not true for about half of the gut microbes we study," she said.

The researchers did not recommend that doctors stop prescribing such antibiotics, but instead explored some undisclosed drug therapies that could mitigate the effects as "antidotes."

The researchers say they tested some of those drugs in mice, and while the first results were promising, more research is needed. (It should be noted that the research was funded in part by a grant from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, which has filed a patent on the use of the methods identified in the study to prevent and / or treat dysbiosis, or the disruption of microbes. intestinal. - and "for the protection of the microbiome").

Some alternatives

Meanwhile, health experts say there are other ways to help your gut bacteria stay abundant and healthy while you are being treated with antibiotics.

A commonly recommended method is to eat yogurt and other probiotic-rich foods.

Becky Bell, MS, RDN, LN, a registered dietitian with Rooted Nutrition Therapies, recommends that her clients supplement their diets with certain strains of bacteria while undergoing antibiotic therapy. That includes Lactobacillus acidophilus, which can be found in many common yogurts.

"There is no way around the fact that antibiotics kill both harmful and beneficial bacteria in the gut," Bell told Healthline. "It is extremely important to focus on nourishing and rebuilding the gut after antibiotic treatment by eating a wide variety of foods rich in prebiotics and probiotics."

However, each person's gut biome is unique and changes throughout their lives, so there is no one-size-fits-all approach to keeping it healthy.

However, some experts say that getting probiotics from food during antibiotic treatments is the best route to take.

Dr. Andrea Paul, a medical advisor to nutritional supplement company Illuminate Labs, says that fermented foods like sauerkraut, yogurt, kimchi, and tempeh contain probiotics and are cheaper than buying probiotic supplements.

She recommends that her patients start slowly on a small serving of probiotic-rich foods during a course of antibiotics to make sure their stomachs can tolerate it.

"It can sometimes create a bit of digestive upset, so it is up to the patient to determine its level of tolerability, but many patients feel better when they consume fermented foods during a course of antibiotics."