Probiotic helps replenish your friendly bacteria
THE contraceptive pill and HRT can affect the levels of friendly bacteria in your gut because they deplete friendly gut bacteria in the same way as an antibiotic does. These friendly bacteria help to regulate your hormones, especially estrogen levels. And estrogen dominance as a result of low levels of friendly bacteria can cause symptoms of PMS, low libido, cramps, heavy bleeding, and PSOS. Taking a good probiotic could be the missing link in the treatment protocol that you are following for these symptoms.
Stress, long term illness, antibiotics and what we eat can also affect the levels of these friendly gut bacteria. Sugar, yeast, and highly processed foods are especially bad as they provide the breeding ground for the bad bacteria to flourish.
We need plenty of friendly bacteria in the gut to help support our immune system and make B Vitamins which support our mood, and also manufacture Vitamin K which is important for bone and arterial health. A deficiency of friendly gut bacteria can cause symptoms such as bloating, wind, weight gain, low immunity resulting in frequent colds.
Antibiotics work by killing the bad bacteria that are causing the health problem, that’s great–we need to be rid of the bad bacteria. But the problem is that antibiotics will also kill your friendly gut bacteria. So have you had an antibiotic recently, and then had a repeat infection and another anti-biotic? It could be something as simple as replenishing your friendly bacteria after your antibiotic. Take probiotics at the end of the day, a couple of hours after your last antibiotic.
A probiotic or an acidophilus supplement will replenish your friendly bacteria. There are many probiotics on the market and it can be difficult to decide which one is best to take. Udo’s Super 8 is highly regarded and is one that I recommend. It contains 8 different strains of bacteria with good numbers of each one in the capsule. Udo’s Super 8 probiotic supplement is useful for general health as well as for supporting friendly gut bacteria after taking antibiotics.
You don’t need to take probiotics long term, you just need to replenish the friendly bacteria, and after that they can get busy building more good gut bacteria themselves.