Not all bacteria are bad. In fact, your body contains more bacteria than human cells, with trillions of microbes living in your gut alone. These bacteria are friendly and benefit your digestive as well as overall health.

Probiotic digestive health supplements are the best way to support the health of your friendly flora, especially when taking antibiotics. Antibiotics may help treat a health condition, but they can be damaging for the microorganisms in your gut.

The Ups and Downs of Antibiotics

Pathogenic bacteria exist just as the beneficial ones do, and these are the organisms responsible for disease and illness. Typically, when diagnosed with a bacterial infection, doctors will prescribe antibiotics to kill the dangerous strains.

Unfortunately, the antibiotics are not able to distinguish beneficial from harmful strains, and your health-supporting microbiome becomes depleted as a result.

Antibiotics kill off the beneficial bacteria in your gut as well as any invading pathogens. When this happens, your body is left defenseless against any remaining or new pathogens, because the bacteria impact your immune system and health.

Candida is one of the most common opportunistic yeasts that will take over very quickly when your defenses are down, and this leaves you vulnerable to a host of health problems.

The Candida Problem

When antibiotics decrease your friendly flora numbers, opportunistic bacteria and yeasts like Candida take over. The Candida yeast is common in your body. However, when you are healthy, it is kept in check and prevented from spreading.

Without the support of a complete probiotic blend supplement, your antibiotic-compromised natural microbiome is defenseless against Candida, and the yeast can quickly spread and cause a host of health concerns.

The typical signs of Candida problems include:

♦ Mental fog

♦ Joint pain

♦ Exhaustion and fatigue

♦ Bad breath

♦ Hormone disruption

♦ Chronic allergy or sinus problems

♦ Digestive problems

Use of antibiotics is the number one reason Candida is able to thrive in your body. When you pair a course of antibiotics with high pootency, multi strain probiotic supplements, your immune system has the support it needs to keep Candida in check.

Candida overgrowth in your gut not only causes discomfort in terms of bloating, gas, and cramping, it interferes with absorption. Too much Candida can cause nutrient and water loss through diarrhea leaving you at risk for nutritional deficiencies and poor health.

Probiotic supplements help to keep Candida in check, even if the natural gut bacteria are being killed off by antibiotics. In fact, some probiotic supplements have been designed specifically for Candida Control.

Your digestive processes require a healthy and optimal function of gut microbes. The only way to ensure this happens is to combine antibiotic prescriptions with probiotic support.

Candida’s Consequences

Because your gut microbes are connected to your immune system as well as your brain and nervous system, other parts of your body are affected when your gut community gets depleted. Harmful agents like Candida are able to spread and negatively impact these systems too.  

When Candida reaches your brain it can cause mental fogs and trouble concentrating. It also impacts your mood and is linked to mood disorders and severe mood swings and panic attacks.

Once your immune system becomes compromised, Candida takes over. This not only invites other illnesses to affect you, but you will have a more difficult time fighting the infection you are taking the antibiotics for.

Probiotic supplements cannot prevent antibiotics from killing off helpful strains, but it can replenish what is lost, keeping your immune system at optimal function levels.

How Probiotics Can Help

By taking probiotic supplements before, during, and after a course of prescribed antibiotics, you can help support the natural microbiome in your gut. Replenishing any bacteria that are killed off by antibiotics keeps your bacterial gut balance in check so that pathogenic strains are not allowed to take over.

| Related: Why Your Gut Noises Could Mean IBS |

This ensures that your digestive health and immune system remain in optimal condition and protected from pathogenic bacteria and yeasts. Taking antibiotics can also cause additional problems that a probiotic supplement can help with. These include:

Antibiotic-Associated Diarrhea: Gas, cramping, bloating, and diarrhea are all common side effects of antibiotic consumption. This depends on the antibiotic being taken, but the effects are caused by the introduction of illness-causing microorganisms.

Your body naturally initiates a defense when pathogens are present, and even though antibiotics are designed to help, they are still considered foreign to your body.

Antibiotic-associated diarrhea is such a common side effect that many people stop taking the antibiotics, and the infection is left untreated. By taking regular probiotics at the same time, you can ease digestive discomfort so that the antibiotic course is complete, and the infection is cleared.

Antibiotic Resistance: A serious complication of over-using antibiotics is the development of antibiotic resistance. This occurs when bacteria develop a resistance to the antibiotics as part of their evolutionary need to survive. When this happens, a form of “superbug” is created and stronger antibiotics need to be developed to kill them.

This takes time and leaves us exposed to these dangerous bacteria without effective protection, increasing our risk for serious disease. By supporting your natural gut bacteria with probiotics, or at least adding probiotic foods to your diet, their numbers stay strong to provide natural protection against these bugs.

Limiting the use of antibiotics to only the times when they are absolutely necessary is also advised.

The Bottom Line

Regular pre and probiotic supplements use or taking probiotics alongside antibiotics will keep your gut community full and your immune system strong. This allows you to fight the infection naturally as well as with antibiotics, helping you get healthier and infection-free sooner. Probiotics also prevent sneaky pathogens like Candida from coming out and taking over.

Antibiotics are often necessary to fight and treat certain bacterial infections. While your body is pretty good at defending and healing itself, there are often cases where we need additional support.

As helpful as antibiotics can be, they can also harm your protective gut bacteria, which puts you at risk for illness. Your best defense will always be to couple probiotics with any antibiotic prescription.

READ NEXT >>> The Top 11 Probiotic Strains