11-16-2012, 11:50 PM
Speedy wrote:
…Probiotics may help in replacing bacteria but only minimally. It is extremely unlikely that the antibiotic she was given earlier killed all her good intestinal bacteria. Maybe two weeks of vancomycin and tobramycin together would kill everything (except virurses) in her intestinal tract but only if she quit taking anything by mouth.…
This, right here. The problem with probiotics is that you have hundreds (if not 1000s) of different species in your gut and the probiotic stuff only gives you a few, which may not even be missing in your gut after antibiotics. The antibiotics have probably only killed off a few species and you will acquire them back the way you got them in the first place, from the people and environment around you.
The good thing is that probiotics won't do any harm and they may do some good. It would be nice to have a microbe screen of your gut for species before a course of antibiotics, right after, and then at time periods after that for people taking nothing and people taking probiotics or whatever else.