This article is shared with permission from our friends at Dr. Mercola.

Barely a day goes by without some type of media announcement noting the importance of your gut flora.

One of the best and least expensive ways to optimize your gut microbiome is to eliminate sugars and processed sugars and eat traditionally fermented foods, but probiotic supplements can also be beneficial.

Greg Leyer,1 who has a Ph.D. in Food Microbiology, is the Chief Scientific Officer of UAS Laboratories, a probiotic-dedicated manufacturer, and he’s been passionate about probiotics and health for more than two decades.

“I got interested in microbiology and spent my graduate research career looking at pathogenic bacteria, those bacteria we want to avoid and that make us sick,” he says.

“In the course of doing those studies, I became aware that not all bacteria are bad and became intrigued in this whole concept of probiotics … My first post-graduate job was in the area of developing probiotics for infant nutrition. That was 21 years ago

I’ve been in the probiotic research development field ever since, and have seen the clinical research and the market just explode.”

Nourishing Your Microbiome Begins With Real Food

Mounting evidence reveals there’s more to nutrition than previously thought — a large component of it actually revolves around nourishing the health-promoting bacteria in your body, thereby keeping harmful microbes in check.

Probiotics are supplements designed to increase your beneficial bacteria, the largest concentration of which is found in your gut. Different types of bacteria live in different locations in your gastrointestinal tract. You also have bacteria residing in other areas of your body, such as your mouth and skin.
While probiotic supplements have their benefits and their place, it’s important — before taking a supplement — to optimize the conditions where these beneficial bacteria grow.
 
 One of the reasons a healthy diet is able to influence your health is by the fact that it helps create an optimal environment for beneficial bacteria in your gut, while decreasing pathogenic or disease-causing bacteria, fungi, and yeast.
 
 “Healthy eating” basically amounts to eating real food, which means avoiding processed foods and staying away from sugars, because few things fertilize and accelerate the growth of pathogenic microbes better than sugar. As noted by Leyer:
 
“In studies done in people all over the world, you’ll see different microbial communities residing in people that have different dietary intakes. You want to provide foods that are going to nourish this healthy community of bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract.
 
Sugars aren’t selective. Bacteria like sugars, but the bad bacteria love sugars. Eating real food, complex carbohydrates, fiber, and things like that, are more selective.
 
Simply put, the pathogenic bacteria don’t utilize non-fiber carbs as efficiently. It’s more difficult for them to grow with complex carbohydrates as an energy source.”
 
The Importance of Probiotics When Taking an Antibiotic
Unfortunately, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) restricts supplement makers from making certain health claims; for example, you cannot market a probiotic saying, “This is useful to take after an antibiotic,” because that would imply that antibiotics might harm you in some way.
 
As a result of these restrictions, unless you spend a fair amount of time reading about the subject you may not be aware of many of the benefits of probiotics.
 
“There’s a lot of very compelling research that we’re not able to talk about on a product label,” Leyer notes. “One of the exciting areas is the role of healthy bacteria when co-prescribed with an antibiotic, and the effect it has on maintaining healthy populations in your gut.
 
Antibiotics are selective for bacteria and not viruses, but they’re not terribly selective for a particular type of bacteria. Antibiotics — and many studies have shown this — will have a tremendously disruptive effect on the overall microbial community.
 
They’ll kill the target organism that might be causing your infection which is a good thing … but they also do a lot of harm to the good bacterial populations that are there. 

Studies have shown that when you co-administer probiotics with antibiotics and continue the probiotic administration even after stopping the antibiotic regimine, you’re quickly able to restore that microbial community to the healthy state it was prior to the antibiotic treatment.”
 
Guidelines for Taking Probiotics With Antibiotics
If you’re taking an antibiotic, don’t simultaneously take the probiotic as the antibiotic is liable to simply kill the bacteria off. Instead, take them a few hours before or after taking the antibiotic. From the clinical research Leyer has done, this strategy appears to work quite well.
 
Saccharomyces yeast, a beneficial type of yeast, may also be helpful when taking a course of antibiotics, as it has also been shown to prevent antibiotic-associated diarrhea.
 
 “Fifteen to 25 percent of people who take an antibiotic end up getting antibiotic-associated diarrhea.
 
Probiotics — I’ll include Saccharomyces in this group — have been shown to have tremendous benefits in reducing the risk of developing that kind of secondary complication of antibiotic treatment,” Leyer says.
 
The Hazards of Antibiotics in the Food Supply
Medical antibiotics are not the sole source of exposure. About 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are actually used in livestock production to fatten up the animals and prevent disease.
 
So, unless you’re buying organic grass-fed meats, you’re likely ingesting minute doses of antibiotics with each hamburger and steak you eat.

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