This Is What Happens to Your Body After Antibiotics

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Antibiotics have saved lives in numerous cases, but they can also wreak havoc on your gut, your mitochondria, and your immune system. And if you've ever taken a course Of antibiotics and felt off afterwards. Maybe you had new food sensitivities, fatigue, brain fog, or more immune problems or recurring infections. The reality is this, you weren't imagining those things.

In today's episode, I'll be going through antibiotics, specifically where they're hidden. In fact, most people think, oh, antibiotics, they're only found in conventional medications in capsules. No, they're found in your food supply, like your dairy, your meat, your produce. They're found in hand sanitizers and soap. They're found all over the place. The place.

I'll be talking about how to avoid those. And if you've ever taken a prescription antibiotic, anytime, especially in the last 5 years, there's been damage done to your gut and to many areas of your body, and you want to rebuild and heal those areas. I'll go through how to do that on today's show. Also, 3 years ago, I had antibiotics that helped save my life.

However, I had major concerns on what it was going to do to my body. However, I was able to fully heal and recover. And so if you're a person wanting to know how to fully heal and recover from antibiotics if you've ever taken them, even as a kid. I'll be going through how to do that and more on today's episode. Welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe Show.

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So antibiotics have saved millions of lives since they were invented in the 1920s, but unfortunately their use with major drawbacks. The reality is this: most antibiotics that are prescribed today should not be prescribed at all because of their damaging side effects. An antibiotic's main job is to kill harmful bacteria that is threatening your life or that could threaten your life.

But here's the thing you need to know: antibiotics don't discriminate between bad pathogens and good Microbes in your gut that you need for things like absorbing nutrients and for your own immune protection. Wiping out beneficial gut bacteria weakens your immune system, disrupts your digestion, and increases your risk of long-term inflammation and chronic diseases.

Everything from inflammatory bowel disease to, I believe, even conditions tied to autism and even cancer. And diverse colonies of microorganisms in the gut lead to better nutrient absorption, better digestion, better metabolism. In fact, there are studies showing when you have a healthy gut, it leads to more weight loss and a leaner, healthier body, better immune function, more hormone balance.

In fact, 95% of your serotonin levels are created in your gut. Neural activity. So there's a deep gut-brain connection and disease prevention and longevity. And so making sure you have a healthy gut microbiome, it matters. But antibiotic drugs are the single greatest thing today that is damaging our gut microbiomes.

There was a 2024 study published in the Journal of Medicine and Microecology, and it showed that even a single course of antibiotics can disrupt gut microbiota for up to 6 months, and some beneficial species may never return. So here's the reality. If you take even one round of antibiotic drugs and you don't know exactly what to do after, it can cause irreversible damage.

And most people don't think of that when they take an antibiotic. They don't realize just how harmful antibiotic drugs are. And I see this today with so many parents. Anytime we get a kid sick, with an ear infection. Anytime a child gets the common cold or a flu, the doctors rush to give them antibiotic drugs without thinking about the long-term side effects.

You know, here's the reality based on multiple medical studies. Taking an antibiotic drug can lead to increased susceptibility for future infections, allergies and food sensitivities, chronic fatigue and mood issues, skin issues, autoimmune flare-ups, and even risk of cancer long-term.

And after taking antibiotics— and most doctors don't do this— your doctor should be focused on, and you should be focused on, rebuilding back the damage that was done to restore long-term immunity and all the things we've discussed. Before you even take an antibiotic, though, there's other things you want to do that will lessen the impact of antibiotics on your body.

Following a high-fiber diet, so a diet high in prebiotic fiber. There are some great foods like that. Apples and pumpkins, for example, have the sort of fiber that these probiotics can feed and grow off of, creating a healthier gut microbiome. Taking probiotics both in your food and supplements.

And here's another big one, probably the biggest one people ignore: exposing yourself to good microbes from things like having a home garden, even if it's just a small herb garden. Interacting with animals like dogs, spending time outdoors in nature and eating at your local farmer's market or food from your local farmer's market, and consuming things like raw local honey.

All of these things help build a healthy gut microbiome and help you prevent the side effects of antibiotic use in the future. Now, here's the way that I would think about antibiotic drugs. When you take them, it's like an atomic bomb going off, or at least a bomb going off in your gut. Everything is damaged.

Imagine if you're at war, or we see these, you know, these videos of war on social media and on the local news, and you see, you know, uh, like a bomb going off and buildings exploding. That's what antibiotics are doing in your gut, okay? They are not only killing the bad microorganism, like the bacteria that's living in your gut, okay?

They're also killing— And Innocent bystanders, they're breaking down buildings, creating just you know major major destruction throughout your entire digestive tract, especially your colon.

And there's a study done on antibiotic use in colon cancer, and here's what they found: colon cancer risk was increased by 15% in those taking antibiotics for just 30 days, even after adjusting for other factors. According to Johns Hopkins University, they said this is likely caused due to chronic gut dysbiosis and in. Inflammation.

So one round of antibiotics increases your risk of colon cancer by 15%. Okay, here's another study. Listen to this one. Children given antibiotics before the age of 2 have a 50% higher risk of developing asthma and eczema. Think about that. You double— 50% greater increased risk of asthma and eczema if you give a child an antibiotic before the age of 2.

And yet doctors today are just handing out and giving more and more antibiotics, even sometimes when the infection isn't bacterial. Antibiotic use in children is associated with higher risk of allergies, dermatitis, celiac disease, being overweight, obesity, and ADHD. And it's thought that antibiotics can shift the gut microbiome in ways that also influence Neurodevelopment.

This is also why I believe it could be tied to issues like autism in children. And every— and I, you know, I— when I had my full-time practice here locally and nationally— now I have a virtual practice, uh, but when I had my local practice, I took care of so many kids who were on the autistic spectrum, and we saw really amazing results.

But here's my point here, um, every child I ever saw, for the most part, had some sort of GI issue, or at least leaky gut. Okay, most of them had very noticeable digestive issues. Okay, and it was really— there was this, there was this, uh, issue between the, the gut and the brain. It was that gut-brain connection. And here's what happened. It was a condition called leaky gut.

Kids would often have taken maybe antibiotics or NSAIDs or something else, like a shot or something, that disrupted their immune system.

Yeah.

But oftentimes these antibiotics and other things, they would disrupt the gut-brain connection. And what would happen is it would cause leaky gut. So then they would have things leaking into their bloodstream that shouldn't get in there. It could be undigested food proteins like gluten and casein. It could have been toxins, glyphosate, but they would leak through the bloodstream.

And in often cases, the blood-brain barrier wasn't fully developed yet, and they would have gluten and casein act almost like opioids on the brain. It would affect it over and over and over again, causing neural inflammation, and that would slow development. Okay, and antibiotics have been shown to impact neural brain, that's nervous system development in kids. So we see that connection there.

And so you want to really proceed with caution. Now listen, again, there's a time and a place to take antibiotics. If you have a life-threatening infection, but a common cold, that's not life-threatening. Okay, an ear infection, that's not life-threatening in most cases. You can do natural antibiotics, oil of oregano.

Yeah.

Olive leaf extract, mullein oil, all kinds of things instead that are more gentle on the body, high-dose probiotics. Those things aren't being done. In the United States, nearly 70% of children aged less than 2 are exposed to antibiotics. Think about that. Nearly 70% of kids that are 2 years old and younger are exposed to antibiotics.

At least 20 to 30% of antibiotics prescribed in primary care are thought to be inappropriate or unnecessary. Now, I want you to think about that number, okay? And this is from the medical establishment. They're saying around 20 to 30% of antibiotics should not be prescribed. I think that number is closer to 80%, okay? 70 To 80%. It's not 20 to 30, I can tell you this.

It's so much higher than that, okay? And this is them telling on themselves. Again, outside sources would tell you it's so much higher than that. So there was a CDC study and they found that 70% of children who suffered with C. diff infection. That's an inflammation of the colon caused by a very specific type of bacteria called Clostridium difficile.

Those kids who had C. diff, they all received numerous courses of antibiotics for things like respiratory infections, ear infections, and nose infections for 12 weeks before developing these infections. So here's what they found. People that— kids that had C. diff got that infection solely because— They had taken an antibiotic drug for treating another type of infection.

So, so here's what happens if you take an antibiotic. Your risk of having another infection in the future goes up. That's what people have to realize, that there is a major side effect to antibiotics. So if you take this antibiotic, only do it if it's something life-threatening, because if you don't, your— if you take it, your chance of having to take it again and again and again go up.

Have you ever known anybody who Because they got on antibiotics once, they had to get on again and again and again, sometimes for multiple years. We have to break that vicious cycle. Here's another study on inflammatory bowel disease and autoimmune disease. A large study published in the Gut Journal links antibiotic frequency with up to 50% higher odds of inflammatory bowel disease.

So think about this. The more you use antibiotics, the greater chance you have of inflammatory bowel disease. Risk was highest in adults over 40 and increased with the number of antibiotic courses taken and in the 1 to 2 years after the use. Okay, so we see this. If you take an antibiotic, your risk of autoimmune disease and inflammatory bowel disease go up tremendously.

There was a study published in the Frontiers Journal of Immunology, and they found— and this was, this is a large study. This was done on over 100,000 children. And they found that antibiotic use early in life significantly raised the risk of autoimmune diseases like Crohn's disease and even rheumatoid arthritis. Now, how does— how do antibiotics cause rheumatoid arthritis?

Well, again, it's leaky gut. Antibiotics damage the good bacteria. They damage the gut lining. Now your gut lining acts like a net, like a fishing net or a kitchen strainer for pasta. Imagine now you rip a hole in that net and now things are passing through that shouldn't be, shouldn't be able to get into your bloodstream. Okay.

Again, gluten, casein, heavy metals, pesticides, just other things get into the bloodstream. Your body says, whoa, this shouldn't be here. It treats it like it's a pathogen, like an infection causing loads of inflammation. And over time, that constant inflammation and immune response increases your risk of autoimmune illness because your body will start to say, Well, okay, this isn't working.

I've got to do something to finally fix the problem. So I'm not only going to attack these pathogens, I'm going to attack more things to try and limit these things that are in the bloodstream right now. Okay? So that's what happens and why leaky gut— antibiotics cause leaky gut, causes autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis.

Antibiotic use in the first year of life was linked to a 33% increased risk of IBD. Listen to this one. Use of non-penicillin antibiotics between the ages of 1 and 3 was linked to a 95% higher risk of ulcerative colitis.

And this is why today— this is one of the contributing factors today along with— there are other things too I think that contribute, but antibiotics are, I would call, one of the big 3 or big 5 things of why so many kids today have allergies, have asthma, have ADHD symptoms, are getting even cancer, kids being obese.

There are numerous studies showing when you take an antibiotic, it actually causes you to gain weight and body fat. Okay? And antibiotics, as I mentioned, are not just linked to those issues. They're also linked to migraine headaches, joint pain, Hypothyroidism, a number of health problems.

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If you want to check it out and grab one before they're gone, just go to mybloodwork.com now. And just to prove the point on antibiotics, Being tied to allergies, there was a study in Sweden and they found that infant exposure to antibiotics tripled the risk of developing food allergies by the age of 6. So there's your proof.

You take an antibiotic, your risk of having food allergies, which how many kids have food allergies today? So many. Well, because we're tripling the risk with just one round of antibiotics. Think about that. So, so we have to be very, very careful when taking antibiotics. Okay. Most people don't realize just how damaging these are to our gut microbiome.

And there's also studies showing when you take an antibiotic, sometimes those bacteria, they're never replaced. You never recover these because some of these bacteria you get passed on from your mom, you get passed on from your local environment where you were. And when you take an antibiotic, you just— they're wiped out for good.

Broad-spectrum antibiotics like amoxicillin have been shown to reduce significant amounts of bacteria like Bifidobacterium and Lactobacilli in just one treatment. Again, these are crucial probiotics that are passed on from your mom when you're born vaginally, or sometimes even not, right? If we follow the right protocol of covering the child in the mother's good bacteria.

Now, oftentimes people think that if you get an IV antibiotic, that doesn't damage your gut at at all. It does some, but not as much. But here's the thing I want to mention. So there is a difference between taking an oral antibiotic and an IV antibiotic. An oral antibiotic will do much more damage to your gut microbiome.

However, IV antibiotics will actually do more damage to your cells and your mitochondria. Okay, so, so don't think by, oh, I did an IV antibiotic, it's not going to damage my gut as much. It's not, but it's going to do more damage to your cells, specifically your mitochondria. So here's what people believe in the scientific community. See, mitochondria are a type of bacteria.

This means that antibiotics that target bacterial processes in the body often impair mitochondrial function. The mitochondria in your cell is so unique. Your mitochondria is what creates ATP and cellular energy, which then gives all of your organs, including your brain and your heart and your digestive system, the energy they need to function properly.

So when you damage your mitochondria, it's like your body has a battery. You are taking your entire battery and bringing it down. Antibiotics harm that. Now listen, I want to say this. Oral antibiotics damage both your gut and your mitochondria. Your gut even more, okay? Whereas oral antibiotics damage your gut some, but your mitochondria more, but they both damage both.

And antibiotics reduce, again, this ATP production in your cells. And this is where you might notice if you've taken an antibiotic, Yeah. And then after a year, the year after, you might notice you're more tired. You might have some brain fog, you know, just increased exercise fatigue.

Loss of mitochondrial function is directly tied to fatigue, low stamina, memory issues, insulin resistance as well. And this is one of the things that we rarely talk about in the medical community is how damaging antibiotics are to the mitochondria. In our cells and also how mitochondria are bacterial in nature. They can even operate in a way outside of the cell in certain instances.

Now, there was a study published in the Science Translational Medicine journal, and they found that antibiotics like Cipro, ampicillin, and kanamycin can damage mitochondria in human cells, producing excessive Reactive oxygen species, something called ROS, and this oxidative stress causes DNA damage and lipid damage.

So then what happens is it not only damages your mitochondria in your cells, which is responsible for your body's energy, it also damages the cell membrane of your cell. Okay, so you damage that cell membrane, now it affects oxygen getting into the cell and nutrients getting in the cell. And toxins getting out of your cell. Okay? And when you damage the DNA as well, that's tied to the nucleus.

Now, even how your cells are run, that also then impacts and turns on an epigenetic switch. So that can turn on certain genes like breast cancer genes and other genes that you don't want turned on. Okay? So, so many things happen at the cellular level when it comes to antibiotics damaging the mitochondria, the nucleus, And even the cell membrane.

One other thing they found in some of these studies is that glutathione depletion is another concern. Glutathione is your body's master antioxidant. Studies show that certain antibiotics like Cipro reduce glutathione levels and other antioxidants, and that leaves your cells more vulnerable to oxidative stress and inflammation. I mean, think about why we talked about this.

When somebody takes an antibiotic, they never think, oh, my chance of cancer goes up dramatically. Right? But think about this. 70% Of your immune system lives in your gut with the good bacteria. Okay? You damage the good bacteria and now you're damaging your cell, your mitochondria, which affects fighting cancer, your cell membrane, which affects your health in fighting cancer.

So you're damaging all those areas. Of course, your chance of cancer goes up when that happens. There's another study that found that one type of antibiotic, Fluoroquinolone. It's an antibiotic typically used for urinary tract infections in women.

Significantly increased oxidative stress, and there was a sharp drop in an antioxidant, probably the second most important in your body, called superoxide dismutase and glutathione as well. And by day 5 of treatment, plasma antioxidant status dropped by 77.6% with Cipro and 50.5% with levofloxacin. Okay, so you can see it.

Think about this, your antioxidant levels in your blood drop by 77% when you take one round of an antibiotic. So most people, again, and, and here's the thing I want to tell you, listen, I, I had to take an antibiotic because my life was threatened. I didn't want to take an antibiotic. So listen, there is a time, and again, my infection was by my spinal cord. I had an abscess there.

It was in my bone. So my L5 vertebra was infected and my entire disc. So it was the first time I had to take an antibiotic since I was— I think since I got my wisdom teeth removed when I was a senior in high school going into freshman year of college, since I was like 18 or 19 years old. Okay? And I was like 41. So I'm talking about 20-plus years. So I do everything I can to avoid them.

Sometimes there's a time and a place, but only if your life is threatened. Elaine Gottschall, she's the author of a book called Breaking the Vicious Cycle. And Elaine's daughter was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and put on repeated courses of antibiotics, and her symptoms worsened despite this treatment.

And Gottschall turned to Dr. Sidney Haas, who introduced her to something called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. This is a diet focused on removing fermentable sugars and feeding beneficial gut microbes. Her daughter fully recovered using this supportive diet, which has since helped thousands of people with irritable bowel disease and antibiotic-associated gut damage.

This diet is very similar to like a GAPS diet or even just a traditional diet. It's mostly— and it has a lot of inspiration from a Chinese medicine diet as well, or even roots to a biblical diet. It's really eating mostly soups. Okay. It's meat and it's vegetables, okay, in a soup form.

And that's, that's the bulk of the diet, really, is meat and vegetables, and that are well cooked together as a soup. And that is the basis of that diet for the most part that helped her heal. I have a friend of mine, Dr. Terry Wahls. She's a medical doctor and the author of the Wahls Protocol. And her primary condition was MS. That's multiple sclerosis.

Dr. Wahls discussed in her work, and when I interviewed her on my show once, how frequent antibiotic use in early life, she believes that was her greatest contributor to leaky gut and immune dysregulation that led to MS. Dr. Terry went on a diet of cooked meat and well-cooked vegetables. That's really— that was the basis of the whole diet.

She reversed her MS and healed completely, got out of a wheelchair. Really, really amazing. And he said her biggest focus was healing the gut microbiome. Really, her diet was bone broth, fermented foods, vegetables. She really focused and talked about sulfur-rich vegetables like cooked cabbage.

And then she also focused on mitochondrial support with things like methylated B vitamins and certain types of antioxidants. And that's how she reversed her MS. You know, I have so many colleagues in the medical community and friends of mine like Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Will Cole, Dr. Steven Gundry, Dr. David Perlmutter.

I mean, so many of these doctors who have continued to speak out against the overuse of antibiotic drugs. You know, Mark Hyman in particular has talked a lot about Candida overgrowth with prolonged antibiotic use and the side effects there. And most of us have very similar advice.

One, only use antibiotics in life-threatening emergencies or only if you have a good protocol to help your body recover and heal quickly and use them as little as possible. Now, I know that there are some doctors, I'm thinking of a couple in my mind, and they will still use antibiotics if somebody has a very, very severe infection. I'll give you an example.

I have a couple friends of mine, you know, Dr.— I've seen Dr. Gabriel Lyons mention this. I've seen Dr. Geza Goly. These are really good integrative doctors. And where I recommend them less than probably they even do If they have a patient that has Lyme disease or, you know, certain types of just, you know, GI infections, they will recommend some traditional antibiotics in doing a round of those.

But right afterwards, they do everything they can as part of a full-on protocol to heal and restore the gut microbiome. Okay. And this is something most doctors aren't doing today. All traditional doctors, they almost always just give you an antibiotic They don't even tell you to take a probiotic.

If a doctor ever prescribes an antibiotic, with that same prescription right afterwards, they should be handing you a prescription for a high-dose probiotic and a dietary plan to rebuild back your gut and all the other things and deficiencies that are created when you take an antibiotic drug. Now, I want to share with you my exact protocol.

Listen, I, with my life-threatening spine infection, The doctor told me I would likely need to be on antibiotics for 3 months straight. Think about all the things I just talked about, and then I was told I would need to be on antibiotics for 3 months. I read a medical study on hyperbaric chambers and was able to cut my antibiotic time down to just 4 weeks or 28 days. Okay, so cut it down.

I was able to cut it down dramatically. I still did them because, again, life-threatening issue, but I was able to reduce them greatly. And I want to walk you through my exact protocol that I followed to limit the damage and to heal as quickly as possible and rebuild my gut microbiome back.

The first thing that I did that I recommend patients do if they have to take antibiotics is along with and immediately after doing high-dose probiotics. So let's say you have to get on antibiotics for 2 weeks because your life is threatened or your child's life is threatened. You want to take about 400 CFUs of probiotics daily or about a trillion daily in some cases.

Okay, so, so what I would do is for myself, while during and then for 3 months afterwards, I did a probiotic called Probiotic Trillion. I did a very high-dose soil-based probiotic one day, and the next day I did another type of probiotic That was more diverse, that had more of the food-based microorganisms, and that was 400 billion CFUs. So again, I alternated each day doing a high-dose probiotic.

I did the 1 trillion probiotic one day, and I did the 4 billion probiotic the next day. And one was more soil-based and one had the more multiple strains. That's what I did for probiotic use for months afterwards. By the way, there was a study published in the Journal of American Medical Association, and they found that probiotics reduce Antibiotic-associated diarrhea and side effects by 58%.

So we know clinical studies show it, it makes a massive difference. So that's what you want to do is typically get on at least one, if not 2 probiotics, very high doses. Again, pay attention to the dosage, 400 billion to 1 trillion daily for 3 months afterwards. And then you want to stay on for at least a year or 2 on probiotics afterwards at maybe 100 billion Or so daily.

Okay, so high dose as a supplement. The other thing you want to do is you want to really focus on getting prebiotics from your food. Okay, I would recommend a diet that's rich in prebiotic fiber. My favorite is going to be apples and apple pectin. So I would do lots of apples. In addition, I would do pumpkin. Is— I mean, apple and pumpkin. What I would do every morning is I would do a smoothie.

And I would put in half an apple, and I would put in about a third a can of pumpkin or about a half a can of pumpkin. So pumpkin and apple along with water in there. And then I also used an herb called Triphala, which is a berry blend that's a good prebiotic as well. I would put that in there. And I would make this whole gut-healing smoothie every morning.

And then I put in a big scoop, about 20 grams of a bone broth protein or a stem cell protein or some sort of protein that's high in Collagen and, and some of those sorts of proteins. So I would put a scoop of that in as well every single morning. So I paired my probiotic supplement along with this prebiotic-rich superfood for breakfast.

Now, when I had to take my antibiotic, I did, I did that in the, um, in the, in the morning and the probiotic in the evening, or vice versa. So I didn't take them at the same time. I took them at the opposite times of day, about 12, about 8 to 12 hours apart in that way so they wouldn't interfere with each other.

And so that's another— so probiotics first, along with a prebiotic-rich diet, along with bone broth is very important. And then the other things I did is I really focused on protecting my mitochondria. Remember, not only is your gut damaged when you take antibiotics, your cells are damaged. And in order to heal the cell, the biggest thing I took, I really focused on B vitamins.

Your cells need B vitamins, also methylation. Your body needs B vitamins, specifically B2, B6, B9, also known as folate, and B12 are the most essential. But I took a methylated B vitamin. I took actually a double dose. I would take 2 capsules in the morning and 2 capsules in the evening. I also took a glandular supplement to support getting more of these B vitamins and a number of nutrients.

And so, I took a multi-organ supplement. I also took magnesium, 400 milligrams a day, to support with my gut recovery and support the mitochondria. I then took a liposomal glutathione supplement or N-acetylcysteine to support those glutathione levels that can be depleted. Now, I also did more. Listen, I did everything I could.

I took an omega-3, I took CoQ10, but those are the things I did along with the probiotics.

Okay.

In order to heal my gut. Now, I also had a time where I wanted to help my body detox and support my gut lining. And so I did some clay, about a teaspoon of liquid clay a day to bind to some of the toxins in my gut and help flush them out. So I did that while I was taking antibiotics and for about a week afterwards.

And I would also sometimes add in a little bit of slippery elm or licorice root because that helps soothe the gut lining.

Okay.

And I would do that as well. And then one of the last things I want to mention here, I did something called fecal microbiota capsules. Okay? So I found a donor who— an organization where I could get the healthy fecal matter. That's right. Poop of another individual. Because here's what happens when you take an antibiotic, your gut is really wiped out.

What's the— what is the— what is the thing that is going to be the highest in probiotics? That is going to truly help take residence and help heal your gut. It's actually the fecal matter of other individuals. And I wrote about this. I wrote about this so many years ago in a book I wrote called Eat Dirt.

And there were patients with C. difficile, that type of bacteria, when it's overgrown, this is the number one way to help cure that and heal that type of infection. So if somebody has chronic infections and really a weak or damaged gut microbiome, doing FMT, fecal microbiota transplant therapy, where you take the oral capsules of fecal matter of healthy tested individuals.

So what they do is they go and test the poop of healthy individuals and they make sure there's no viruses, no parasites, that it is, it is just teeming with good bacteria. And these are people that have never taken antibiotic in their life, and they tend to be younger individuals.

And they take those, they freeze them, you consume them, and they don't open up because of the capsules until they actually get into your colon. And those open up and help repopulate the good bacteria in your gut. Now, here's what they found after using this therapy.

After doing 15 studies done on 6,763 patients, researchers found that oral FMT capsules had a cure rate of 82% with no serious side effects linked to the treatment. The method is safe, it's convenient, it's non-invasive.

I know for some people it may sound strange, but overall it is one of the most healing things somebody can do if they really have chronic infections, chronic gut issues, and you know you need to heal your gut microbiota. And that was something I did after I was on antibiotics. Now here's something important to mention.

Even if you haven't taken an oral or an IV antibiotic to treat an infection, Most of us are still being exposed to antibiotics every single day. Do you know that 80% of the antibiotics that we consume today is via our food supply? 80% Of antibiotics that are given today are not given to humans. They're given to our livestock— cows, sheep, chickens.

So when you eat food that's not organic or not antibiotic-free, You are getting those antibiotic residues every time you eat, okay? You are getting antibiotics every time you walk into a store and people are using sanitizers everywhere. We're using high doses of chlorine and other chemicals to spray our food supply. There are antibiotics everywhere, everywhere. And it got even worse after COVID.

And so just know this, even if you haven't taken oral antibiotic, sometimes there's just major, major benefits of—.

Yeah.

Going and focusing on healing your gut microbiome following this protocol because we're exposed to these antibiotics even though we don't consciously take an antibiotic drug. We're still getting them via our environment on a regular basis. And there's many things that also act as antibiotics. Roundup or glyphosate that's found in our food supply, that acts as an antibiotic. A lot— heavy metals.

I mean, there are numerous things that act as antibiotics. Sugar. Causes, of course, bad microbial overgrowth, which then can crowd out good bacteria in your gut. So you want to do everything you can. And I, I've almost never taken care of a patient with autism.

I've almost never taken care of a patient with autoimmune disease that didn't have some level of microbiota illness, some level of where their gut bacteria was off or it wasn't depleted. And so if you're struggling with Any sort of neurological issue, any sort of autoimmune issue, a weakened immune system, cancer, you likely want to do everything you can to support and heal your gut.

Because as Hippocrates said over 2,000 years ago, all disease begins in the gut. So if you want to heal, all healing begins in the gut, right? And so we want to focus on doing that by limiting our exposure to these chemicals, eating more organic, eating more local. Here's another big thing that I really did to help heal my gut. I started gardening.

Even just a little garden, a little garden in our backyard, an herb garden growing things like zucchini and green beans and tomatoes and cucumbers, bell peppers on a regular basis. Just growing a lot of this food on my own, just getting my hands in the soil in my backyard and spending more time outside. That's very healing for your gut microbiome as well.

Now, a lot of economists are saying a recession may be on the horizon. And that's why I believe now is the time to take steps towards protecting your financial health, just like you would protect your physical health. Historically, during economic uncertainty, gold and silver have doubled or more in value. I want to tell you that personally, I've always been a believer in biblical wealth.

You know, the Bible talks about us having things like land and gold and silver and livestock to support ourselves economically. And I remember even my dad when I was young, I remember being 8 years old, my dad actually gave me my first piece of silver because he always believed in diversifying and it really always served our family. Now today when buying gold, I personally trust Preserve Gold.

And right now they're offering a free wealth protection guide. You can actually get this guide. You just need to text AXE to 50505 or visit PreserveGold.com.

PreserveGold.com/Axe.

Now, I want to walk you through a very precise post-antibiotic diet. Here's what we need to eat. Number 1, and we already talked about this a little bit, but you need to consume a lot of prebiotics. Apples, pumpkin, Jerusalem artichoke, chicory root, but everything you can to get a lot of these easily digested— blueberries would be on that list as well. Steamed vegetables would be on there.

But you want to get a lot of this prebiotic fiber, and you can take a fiber supplement like psyllium or like an organic psyllium or acacia fiber. I really like apple pectin though, a lot. It's probably my favorite. Apples are just an amazing form of fiber. Also have anti-cancer properties in pectin. So really good there.

Add in some fermented foods like some sauerkraut, some goat's milk kefir, some sheep milk yogurt, some of that. I will say this. If you've got a lot of dampness or you notice a coating on your tongue, you have to be careful with the yogurt. Adding a lot of ginger to it and cinnamon help reduce that effect.

I'm talking about a lot of ginger and cinnamon, like a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice with a 4th teaspoon of ginger or a lot of ginger tea. That will help reduce some of the side effects of maybe— because dairy can be a little dampening to the body and that can increase Candida. But if you add a lot of ginger to it and cinnamon, it lessens that effect.

But if you— you may not have that issue at all, but if you do, that's a solution there. Anti-inflammatory plants, I mentioned ginger and licorice root, probably the 2 single best for healing the gut. I like turmeric and galangal as well, but ginger and licorice root are 2 of my favorites. Slippery elm is also great. Doing lots of bone broth.

If you want to know the ideal meal after you've gone through antibiotics or used antibiotics, Soups, soup, soup, and more soup. Getting more omega-3s, wild-caught salmon is a great thing to eat. Specifically blueberries, as I mentioned. Figs can be really good as well. Olives to help reduce inflammation, so extra virgin olive oil.

And there's one more supplement I do want to mention: L-glutamine powder, 5 grams once to twice daily. Your gut lining uses glutamine to help repair itself. You find a little bit in bone broth, but glutamine just as a powder is great as well. Here's what my diet looked like. For breakfast, I did a smoothie that included pumpkin and apple.

I might add a little bit of fiber like acacia or psyllium or pectin, about another 5 grams. And then I would do lots of water in there, and then I would do protein. I did a little bit of a plant-based protein from pumpkin seeds. And then I also did a protein powder from, as I mentioned, a bone broth-based protein powder as well. And so that's what I did for breakfast there.

And then for lunch, I would do a big thing of soup. It might be like a classic chicken vegetable soup with celery and carrots and chicken and chicken broth. And for dinner, I might do something like a grass-fed burger and a double serving of steamed vegetables or sautéed vegetables in coconut oil with some sea salt. Or extra virgin olive oil.

And then maybe sweet potato on occasion too, a little bit of that, or in some blueberries here and there. But that was my diet, and that's what your diet should be like if you're looking to heal and repair the gut microbiome. The things you want to avoid: sugar. Sugar is really going to feed the overgrowth of yeast and bad bacteria.

You also want to avoid conventional grains and gluten, of course seed oils, processed foods, all these that inflame the gut. Even alcohol is really hard on the cell in the mitochondria and isn't good for the gut lining. So the reality is this. Number 1, avoid antibiotics at all costs.

And you can do that by using number 2 here, more herbs that have antibiotic properties like oil of oregano, like thyme, like pau d'arco, like olive leaf extract. Okay, there's a lot of great ones there that have antibiotic properties That you can utilize. Okay, so that's number 2.

Number 3, eat a diet daily to just build up your gut microbiome so your immune system is strong and you can prevent having issues in the future, right? A lot of those supplements I mentioned, probiotics, taking those daily is number 1. We also know that zinc is critical for your immune system and repair.

I would add that as well to that supplement stack, taking about 30 milligrams of zinc a day, vitamin D. Long-term, just to help build your immune system as well. I did a lot of sunbathing in order to heal as well. That's something you want to consider.

And then again, last, listen, if you have to get on antibiotics, follow that supplement plan I talked about, the very high-dose probiotics, taking 2 different probiotics, doing the L-glutamine powder, doing magnesium, methylated B vitamins. Doing that is going to be very, very helpful. If you follow that protocol I just laid out for you, Yeah.

It's going to help heal your gut in such a tremendous way and prevent needing a lot of these things like antibiotics in the future. But here's the reality. You don't have to shrug off the aftermath of antibiotics and just believe that you're going to have to live with GI problems the rest of your life.

Your body has an incredible capacity to heal using diet, probiotics, prebiotics, fiber, and the right supplements to help build your gut. And your cells like your mitochondria. So again, I want to say avoid at all costs, but if you have to, there are ways to help heal and restore your health. I want to say thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Axe Show.

Remember, each and every week we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, and spiritually. Also, make sure to subscribe, like, and share. And don't forget, the greatest thing you can do here to support the show is subscribe and share the episode. Thanks so much for doing so. I'll see you on the next episode.

Bye.