Hannah Aylward (00:00.909)
Welcome to the Nutrient Dense podcast. I’m your host, Hannah Aylward, holistic health coach, functional gut health practitioner, and the founder of HAN. So many people are continuously failed by conventional and alternative healthcare. We are here to do it differently. Alongside my team of functional registered dietitians, I’ve helped hundreds of women around the world overcome their chronic digestive issues when nothing else works.

I’ve learned a thing or two about what it really takes to transform your health from the inside out. And I’m here to share it all with you. Please keep in mind that this podcast is for educational purposes only and should never be used as medical advice. Now let’s dive in. Your transformation is waiting. Hello and welcome to the Nutrient Dense podcast. I’m excited to dive in today because we’re going to be covering one of the most commonly asked questions that I get.

which is how can I repair my gut after I take a round of antibiotics? So this comes in a lot in my community on Instagram, comes in through our clients after they work with us, if they have to get on antibiotics. So we’re going to kind of dive into some strategies and like easy application, easy action items that you can really put into play to help support your gut health after a round of antibiotics. And

You know, we kind of can’t talk about gut health without talking about antibiotics because they are obviously a big offender of our overall gut health and the strength and diversity of our gut microbiome. We’ve all taken them for different reasons across the board. And I think it’s pretty safe to say that they are overprescribed. Doctors kind of tend to hand them out like candy. And sometimes they’re totally necessary. Never feel shame or guilt for taking an antibiotic if you really need one. That’s not really the point of this conversation.

but more so just be mindful and ask some good questions before you are put on an antibiotic. So I always use the example of, know, this one time I sliced my foot, it was super weird. I had this like door that kind of like swung open and swung closed. And when I was coming in from a run one day, it hit my ankle and it sliced my ankle open pretty bad. So I went to urgent care.

Hannah Aylward (02:14.84)
because after a couple of days, this thing was just getting infected and it was getting bigger and it was, it was not feeling or looking good. So I was like, I need to do something about this. So I went to urgent care and they gave me a topical antibiotic cream and they gave me two internal antibiotics to take. So I was like, I’m not going to take this antibiotic internally. I think that this topical cream is going to kick it. So I was just like, okay, thanks. I filled the prescriptions, didn’t cost me much with my health insurance and I took it all home.

And I was like, I’m going to use this topical antibiotic and this creams ointment. And if I don’t see big change in like two days, then I’m going to take the internal antibiotic. And I was really monitoring it and making sure that it wasn’t getting worse, making sure I wasn’t drawing a fever or anything like that. And honestly, one day of the topical antibiotic cream and things were starting to turn the corner. If they had gotten worse, yes, I would have taken the internal antibiotic.

However, this cut on like the outside of my foot, I was like, I don’t know if this warrants two internal antibiotics. So I used my best judgment there. That’s my personal experience. Do with that what you’d like, but they’re very often dished out. And when I think about my childhood as well, my gosh, I got sick multiple times a year as a little girl. And I was given so many like Z packs, so many antibiotics for kind of cold and flu symptoms. They used to get a lot of sinus infections that would turn into bronchitis. my gosh, my little brother and I, we were chugging.

coughs her up like Delsim. Shout out to Delsim, that orange liquid. We took so much of that. My parents didn’t really know, right? So when I speak to my mom about it now, she’s like, we didn’t really know what this was doing and how negative this could impact your overall health. So if you grew up in the 80s, 90s, you’re probably given a lot of antibiotics and now we can support our gut, gut health from here on out. But sometimes this heavy antibiotic use, you know,

in your past does play a role in what your gut health looks like today. It definitely reduced my resilience and my diversity and kind of contributed. It was one of the many factors contributing to my chronic digestive issues because I started getting digestive issues really as a little girl. I can remember them as early as like the fifth grade, kind of going into the office up front because my stomach hurt really bad and all of that great stuff. And at that point I had been on multiple rounds of antibiotics and then as a kid was eating processed food.

Hannah Aylward (04:37.369)
drinking Gatorade, eating, I mean, fruit roll-ups, you name it, whatever I was eating then, loved ramen, loved KFC mashed potatoes. So my life has really changed since then. So I didn’t know what I was doing, right? I was also a child. So we want to just be mindful of our overall antibiotic use over the years, you know, because it can, what antibiotics do, they wipe out all of the bad.

bacteria, right? So the infection, is what they’re designed to do and thank goodness they do because they save a lot of lives. And while they do that, they also wipe out all of our good gut bacteria. So they’re kind of coming in and they’re wiping out all of the bacteria, but the gut microbiome is made up of things other than just bacteria as well. So we’ve got yeast or fungi in there. We’ve got archaea, we’ve got parasites naturally occurring. And when we bring an agent in to come in and wipe out all of those bacteria,

our risk for things like candida or fungal overgrowth goes up because these good gut bacteria that we have in our gut help to, well, they influence our immune system, they modulate our immune system, but they help to weed out the not so good bacteria and the not so good like fungi and yeast. They help prevent that from overgrowing. So when we take an antibiotic that wipes out all the bacteria, the yeast remain, the yeast or the fungi, they stay.

And then we can find ourselves with a whole different set of symptoms. So it’s pretty common to get like a fungal overgrowth, Candida overgrowth after having to take an antibiotic. And that’s one of the reasons why also sometimes women get stuck on this little roller coaster of like taking an antibiotic for a UTI and then they get a yeast infection. Then they have to take an antifungal for that and then an antibiotic again. And that’s not a fun place to be.

We just want to be mindful, but that’s how they work, right? So there’s kind of an analogy that’s if you’re looking at a garden and there are weeds in the garden, you can bring things in to kind of like pull out the weeds from alongside the veggies and the fruits or the plants or whatever. But you could also get rid of the weeds by just setting the garden on fire, but you’d also get rid of all the good stuff too. You’d kill off all the beautiful plants or the veggies and fruits that you were trying to grow.

Hannah Aylward (06:49.692)
So that’s kind of what an antibiotic does. It’s as if we just set that garden on fire. Once again, I want to be very like mindful here. I’m not, I don’t like to be like incredibly black and white when it comes to these topics. There’s a time and place for an antibiotic and there’s no doubt about that. So if you need to take one, take one. And if you’re questioning it, ask questions, voice those concerns to your practitioner, to your medical care. And if you do have to take one, we’ll talk about, you know, things that we can implement to help.

support your gut and bouncing back after taking that antibiotic and our good gut bacteria, you know, we want to be mindful of killing all these things off, whether it’s an antibiotic or honestly a lot of strong herbals too, because these good gut microbes do a lot for us and they help to support immune function, which, know, the irony is that we’re taking this antibiotic to wipe out the bad bacteria to

support our immune system from this infection, but then we wipe out all the good bacteria and then our immune capacity, our immune system is functioning at a lower level because we don’t have all these good gut bacteria kind of informing it at the same time. But our gut bacteria also help to like synthesize B vitamins. They help to convert a portion of our thyroid hormone into active thyroid hormone. They help us break down certain carbohydrates.

So they’re very important for our overall health and we want a good robust amount of these good gut bacteria. And we can do that largely through the food that we eat. And that’s going to help to support gut proliferation or the growth of these good gut bacteria and microorganisms that we do need for so many reasons. So there’s a lot of talk in this space about kind of eradicating pathogens and killing off overgrowth and killing, killing, killing, killing, right?

but we also need to make sure that we are rebuilding either alongside the eradication and the killing or after, because that’s what’s going to help build resiliency and strengthen your gut so you’re not as susceptible to things going forward, which is what we really, really want. Okay, so let’s go ahead and dive into some of these main tips that I have for repairing your gut after a round of antibiotics.

Hannah Aylward (09:02.524)
So the first most important thing to do is going to be eating foods that are rich in prebiotics because contrary to popular belief, probiotics don’t actually like re-inoculate our gut microbiome. oftentimes when we take probiotics, they’re transient. So they’re impacting your system as you’re taking them and then you poop them out. And then as soon as you stop taking them, we stop getting the benefits of them. There are some that operate a little differently than your average probiotic, things like sport based probiotics, which we tend to use with clients.

But overall, these probiotics are transient. They’re really not super effective at actually repopulating your gut microbiome. We want to more so focus on prebiotics. And what’s cool is we can get a lot of these through the food that we’re eating. Some of the clients that we see are very sensitive to prebiotics because they have a lot of bacterial overgrowth. you’ll, as I list off these foods to kind of add in, take note, cause you’ll know if you’re super sensitive to prebiotics,

It’s a sign you’ve got some other, you know, gut dysbiosis going on that we can help you through. And that’s why you can’t tolerate these foods very well, but just know that what these foods are really doing is they’re feeding these, these gut bacteria that you have. We run into issues tolerating them when we already have an overgrowth of these bacteria, because we’re feeding an overgrowth and then we get super symptomatic, very bloated, very like distended in the belly. It’s not fun. It can lead to constipation, but that’s really how prebiotics are working.

they’re feeding our good gut bacteria. So we’ve got prebiotics, probiotics, and then we’ve got things called postbiotics. So when we are eating these good fibers, these prebiotic rich foods, we are supporting refeeding these probiotics or these good gut bacteria. And when these good gut bacteria eat up these prebiotic foods, they’re going to produce what we call postbiotics and or short chain fatty acids, things like butyrate and propionate and acetate.

And butyrate is the main fuel source for our colonocytes or the cells that line the colon. So if we’re looking at that leaky gut picture, which is usually more so kind of happening in the small intestine, but we always want to maintain a healthy gut barrier in the large intestine as well, especially when we’ve got things like IBD. So we want to support the production of butyrate, this really important short chain fatty acid, and we do so by eating prebiotics that then feed our probiotics.

Hannah Aylward (11:28.346)
It’s kind of amazing. The body is like a miracle, right? I mean, listen to all of this. It’s doing this without us even thinking about it. Thank you body. So we want to make sure that we’re eating a lot of prebiotic rich foods. So that’s going to include things like onions, garlic, leeks, asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, dandelion greens. These are going to be really high in prebiotics naturally.

A lot of like fruits naturally contain some prebiotics. A lot of veggies kind of naturally contain some, but those are some of the veggies that you can implement and add in that contain like good levels of prebiotics, potent levels of prebiotics. We can also add some supplementation in here too. One of the supplements that I love to use is called Sun Fiber. That’s like the brand. I have no affiliation with this brand, but we use it with a lot of clients. And what it is is it’s partially hydrolyzed guar gum, which is a prebiotic.

and it’s very well tolerated by more sensitive clients. So I put it in my morning coffee pretty regularly. It also is included in one of my favorite probiotics, the Clare Labs Therbiotics Synbiotic. That’s a great one. But remember, we don’t want to like be blindly adding in probiotics. We may respond negatively to them depending on where your gut microbiome is at and what you’ve got present in there. But that is overall, like generally speaking for people that aren’t too sensitive, a great probiotic.

and that actually contains this partially hydrolyzed guar gum or PHGG in it. But sun fiber is super simple. It dissolves really well in liquid. So you could add it to a smoothie. You could add it to a mineral cocktail. You could add it to a cup of tea. I throw it in my cold brew in the morning. Super easy. Doesn’t taste like anything. And like I said, pretty well tolerated by people that are more sensitive, including those that may have SIBO or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

that are gonna react to a lot of these prebiotics, right? With lots of bloating and burping and gas and things like that. But overall, we want to add in these prebiotics to really help repopulate our good gut microbes, feed those good gut microbes that we have and build that bacterial diversity because that is one of the biggest indicators of a healthy and resilient gut is diversity in our bacteria. We don’t wanna have too much of just one bacteria.

Hannah Aylward (13:45.21)
Essentially our good gut bacteria help to weed out the bad gut bacteria and maintain like a healthy ecosystem and kind of keep things in balance alongside our gut immune system. So that’s going to be tip number one, eating foods rich in prebiotics. So instead of focusing on probiotics after an antibiotic, I want you to focus more so on prebiotics. Then we have things like resistant starches and these are very similar, right? So they serve a very similar purpose. They’re going to help to feed the friendly bacteria in your gut.

and increase the production of those short chain fatty acids that I mentioned, things like butyrate that are gonna then help support that healthy gut lining, reduce inflammation, really good stuff like that also tends to help clients a lot with like pain. So this is gonna be foods including cooked and cooled potatoes. So the key here is to cook them and then cool them. You could like boil them and then cool them down, pop them in the fridge. The next day, heat one up, add some butter and salt, you’re good to go. It could be like a mashed potato situation.

you basically just want to cook them and cool them down. And same thing goes for rice. So white rice, brown rice, both work. You want to cook that, cool it down. That’s when the resistance starches start to form and then you can reheat it the next day. That’s fine. Or you can eat it cold, but that’s really key there. So if you’re kind of prepping for the week, you can just put on a pot of rice or throw it in the, rice cooker, slow cooker, whatever you want to call it, and then let it cook thoroughly.

cool it all down and then kind of reheat it throughout the week. That’s going to get you that good resistant starch. Things like beans and legumes, oats, green bananas, all of these are great sources of resistant starches to help refeed those good gut bacteria and build up that population of your good gut bacteria. So pretty easy add-ins there. Oats, you can do overnight oats, you can cook them hot.

Super easy, super simple. Oats have been like very vilified on social media lately. They’re not going to wreck your gut health. They’re not causing the health, poor health epidemic that our country is dealing with. Don’t blame the oatmeal. Can they be sprayed with glyphosate, oats themselves? Yes. However, just bi-organic. And that’s really that, right? People are saying that they’re loaded with glyphosate and people are saying that it’s a blood sugar nightmare. And that’s not necessarily true.

Hannah Aylward (16:05.446)
So this is a little tangent on oats, but I’m just like, someone’s got to defend these oats. There’s so much research showing that consuming oats regularly leads to positive health outcomes, including better gut health and then also like lower cholesterol and all of that. So the key here is to aim for organic or non-GMO. If it’s organic, then it should be non-GMO inherently. It doesn’t have to say organic and non-genetically modified. It should just be organic.

very easy to find you guys. can grab them at Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Publix, not super expensive and easy, easy add-in. And you also want to look for ones that are like certified gluten-free if you can as well. Oats themselves are gluten-free in nature. They don’t contain gluten, but there’s a lot of cross-contamination with them typically. So if you can find one that’s like says gluten-free on it is certified gluten-free, you’re better off if you are sensitive to gluten, have a gluten intolerance.

I’d say overall for your gut health, it’s a good call there. just aim for, you know, look for gluten-free, look for certified gluten-free and look for that organic label. And then what’s really important is pairing, kind of like formulating your oatmeal properly. So we want to avoid these empty carbs regardless of what they are, whether it’s oats or crackers or a piece of bread or a piece of cake or whatever, people are just like hating on oats for clicks. So.

We just want to really make a bowl of oatmeal the right way or make overnight oats the right way. And then, and then we’re good. That would look like adding protein to them because they don’t have much protein at all and adding a good fat source to them. And then you can even add some more fiber to them because they do contain some fiber, but it’s honestly not that much. And they are mostly carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are going to spike your blood sugar regardless of the form. And what’s going to help to minimize that blood sugar spike is going to be protein and fat. So add in some collagen protein, add in

a scoop of your favorite protein powder. I love Equip protein. We’ve got a discount code for you. We can put that in the show notes. I’m a big fan of their protein. It’s very high quality. It’s a great source. It’s like minimally processed, minimal ingredients. Those things are really important to me. I also love Trubani protein powder. That’s going to be a plant-based one. It’s organic, which is great. It’s also like very minimal ingredients. I don’t have a discount code for you guys on that one, but I can work on it if you want. But I kind of alternate between using both of those personally.

Hannah Aylward (18:23.792)
and we recommend those to clients very often as well. So you just want to essentially add in protein that could also look like cracking an egg in it, or maybe two, it could look like adding some Greek yogurt to it. I mean, you can kind of play around with that. I think the simplest way is to make the oatmeal, then add in some protein powder. And then I top mine with like a big dollop of Greek yogurt for some extra protein and creaminess. And then I add some good fat to it. So that could be pumpkin seeds, walnuts, almonds, a good drizzle of almond butter.

cashew butter, coconut oil, mean, whatever works for you. And then I like to throw in some fruit for some extra fiber and some good sweetness. And I’ll do a little drizzle of honey. And you can also add in extra fiber through things like chia seeds and flax seeds. So pretty simple, very good, great in like these colder winter months as well. I’ve been eating a good bit of oatmeal and that’s how it’s going to actually keep you satisfied. You’ll feel satiated. You won’t be hungry an hour later, which can commonly happen with oatmeal when we’re not kind of like

doctoring it up well. And that’s going to all help to minimize that like big blood sugar surge that you can get when you’re eating those, you know, what I would call like naked carbs. So it’s not really the oats. We don’t have to vilify the oats, just pair them properly, eat them well, just like you want to do everything else too. You know, we want to pair things properly to balance our blood sugar. These oats are a great source of resistant starches and have some prebiotics. So there you go. Add them in. That’s the, that’s my advertisement for oats, not paid, not sponsored.

So the next thing on my list is going to be eating polyphenols. So polyphenols, as one of my practitioners on my team says, you’re going to look for foods that stain. So those foods that will leave a mark on your shirt will stain your cutting board. Those are going to be rich in polyphenols. We’re looking for very deeply, like richly darkly colored fruits and veggies. So that’s going to be things like cranberries, pomegranate, raspberries, blueberries, beets, turmeric, right?

this stuff that if you like drop it, you’re like, great. I’ve got, I’ve got a mark on, on the floor. Those things are going to be really rich in polyphenols. Coffee is another good source, but you know, we don’t want to rely on coffee as our source of polyphenols. Cacao is another great source too. So that’s something you could add into an oatmeal. You could drink a hot cacao. So very easy to add these things in olives. I am so obsessed with olives. I love them so much. Great source of healthy fats, great source of polyphenols.

Hannah Aylward (20:45.988)
Every time I eat them, I’m like, yay, my, good gut bugs are loving this. So these are things that you can add in green teas and other great source of polyphenols. And, these help to increase the population of your good gut bacteria ultimately. So we’ve got certain strains of gut bacteria, acromansia, mucinophila comes to mind and that specific keystone strain of gut bacteria, it should usually take up about, I would say one to four, maybe 5 % of a healthy gut microbiome.

we’re looking for about, you know, three to 4 % overall. And this gut bacteria really helps to protect our gut lining. So it can minimize risk for leaky gut. can help us repair and heal leaky gut. also can like minimize risk for autoimmunity, for metabolic dysfunction. It’s great for blood sugar regulation. It’s a really, really important strain of gut bacteria. And there’s a lot of research coming out about it right now. So

This gut bacteria specifically loves polyphenols. It wants to eat those up and then it’s going to produce these short chain fatty acids and it’s gonna help to essentially like seal up our gut lining and also help to feed and support good gut proliferation in the gut microbiome through the consumption of these foods. So this is a great way to support your gut after taking antibiotics. So once again, you’re looking for those polyphenol rich foods.

and drinks like hot cacao, green tea. You can do like a cranberry juice or a pomegranate juice as well. I just love the real food if you can get it, because as soon as we juice something, we’re removing all the fiber. And that fiber is designed to help slow essentially the effect that it’ll have on our blood sugar, right? It slows the sugar from entering the bloodstream. So when we start to juice things, we can have big blood sugar ups and downs because all the fiber is gone. That’s why juicing is very different than a smoothie.

A smoothie, you blend it all, all the fiber still in there. So if you can eat this in a whole food form, like eating raspberries and blueberries and pomegranates and cranberries and olives and things like that, that’s really your best bet. Olive oil is another great source of polyphenols too. So cooking with olive oil, adding it onto your salads, drizzling it on top of soup, I love doing. I added it to like my avocado toast with my egg this morning. So lots of great ways, but making sure that you’re prioritizing this is important.

Hannah Aylward (23:09.744)
So that’s really all about kind of supporting the supporting gut proliferation, supporting the rebuilding of our good gut microbes after we’ve kind of wiped them all out with an antibiotic. And then after that, we can kind of support our bodies in some other ways. So one being really soothing that gut lining because that can be quite irritated after taking something like an antibiotic. So I mentioned acromansia, mucinophila, that’s a really very important keystone strain of gut bacteria that helps support a healthy mucosal.

layer of our gut lining. So we have an epithelial layer and then we have a mucosal layer. A nice robust mucosal layer essentially helps to like reinforce the epithelial layer and overall together they create a nice strong barrier, which is what we want. We don’t want that weakened intestinal barrier. And I will be doing an episode on leaky gut and all of that for you guys soon too. So stay tuned, but we want to really help to soothe that gut lining. In the meantime, when

We do have taken antibiotics so we can take things like bone broth Marshmallow root collagen eating enough protein is really key here as well And then reducing or eliminating gluten at least temporarily if you’re not super sensitive is probably a good idea here as well and bone broth It’s gonna contain gelatin. It usually has a good amount of like vitamins minerals, you know It’s like grandma’s chicken soup when you get sick. There’s a reason for it and It’s going to contain

gelatin which helps to absorb water and strengthen the mucus layer of that gut lining and that’s gonna help keep these gut microbes away from that intestinal barrier which is what we want. We want to keep these microbes away from creating essentially more like breakdown of that intestinal barrier. And then it’s also gonna contain glutamine and that’s an amino acid that’s commonly found in bone broth that helps to maintain the integrity of the gut mucosa and intestinal barrier.

You may have heard of like L-glutamine. You can take it as a supplement to support your gut lining. We honestly don’t recommend it that much. Sometimes we recommend it in a mixture with a bunch of other things that can help soothe the gut lining as well. But glutamine, you you’ll find that naturally in things like bone broth. So if you’re very sensitive to bone broth, that can be a sign that you’ve got like a histamine overload picture. We can definitely help you with that. We see that a ton in our clients. It’s usually a deeper gut issue.

Hannah Aylward (25:29.444)
It can be a few things kind of at play, gut lining, gut microbial issue, liver stuff, environmental toxins. But if you are really reactive to bone broth, it’s probably due to a histamine thing. So it’s not that bone broth’s not good for you or anything like that. but you, you do want to look out for that if you’re someone that leans a bit more sensitive, cause we definitely see those clients as well. So yeah, the bone broth, the marshmallow root is great. You can find marshmallow root tea. You can buy it in bulk.

There’s something called throat coat tea, which is great. It contains slippery Elm and marshmallow root and licorice. It’s very soothing for the GI lining. It’s great for soothing the upper GI lining too. So any like reflux heartburn, it can be helpful for that as well. And then another one that I wanted to mention that’s not on my list right here in front of me is aloe. So aloe vera can be very soothing for that gut lining as well. And you can get that in the form of aloe vera juice at your grocery store.

And that can kind of help calm inflammation and soothe that gut lining. And then I also mentioned eating enough protein. And that’s really because your digestive tract, your gut is essentially one big muscle. And what muscles need, they need amino acids. So as I mentioned, glutamine, or you’ve probably heard of that L-glutamine supplement, right? That’s just an amino acid. And what are amino acids found in? They’re found in proteins. So you want to make sure you’re eating enough protein.

that’s going to help regulate your blood sugar, also help to strengthen that gut barrier, which is very important after taking the antibiotic. So then the next thing that we can add in is going to be anti-inflammatory herbs. So those can be things like turmeric, ginger, chamomile, and cumin. And this will also help to soothe that GI irritation and reduce inflammation in the GI tract. I love a good like ginger tea. You can make it at home. You can make it fresh. Ginger root is very cheap.

you can add turmeric in it as well. You could add in a little raw honey. All of that’s going to be great. You could sip on that in the evening or throughout the day. Great. If you feel like you’re coming down with a cold, great for just like some good anti-inflammatory support. Of course, not going to be as strong as taking like a very potent supplement at a clinical dosage, but adding these herbs that we can work with in our own kitchens into our daily routine is kind of always a good idea. So turmeric and ginger, can throw it in a smoothie, chamomile tea. You can brew that at home.

Hannah Aylward (27:49.109)
cumin you can add to soups and stews and things like that. But a very simple, like I said, turmeric and ginger tea is great. All you need to do is grab the root at the grocery store, the ginger root. And then I like to peel mine. Some people don’t peel it, but I peel mine. I don’t really know what to tell you there. If there’s any extra benefits in the peel, I just like to peel mine because it’s kind of sitting at the grocery store and people are touching it. So I rinse it, I peel it, and then I just thinly slice it and I just pour some boiling water over it. I tend to make mine in a big

French press. I’ll let it steep there for a good like 10, 15 minutes and then I’ll drink it after that. I’ll just push the press down and strain it. And that’s really it. I’ll add a little bit of honey and it’s really like spicy and warming and can be great for nausea and supporting gut motility as well. So working with these anti-inflammatory herbs is going to be really helpful. And I listed a couple here, but other herbs and spices are incredible things that you can add in. So

all of these herbs and spices tend to be very high on the auric scale. They’re very high in antioxidants and they’re totally underutilized because most people are just cooking with like salt and pepper. So adding things in like oregano and thyme and parsley and rosemary and cilantro, mean, these things carry such like healing power in them. And this also adds to your plant diversity needs, which I’m going to talk about here soon.

So adding these different types of spices and herbs into your diet can be really, really helpful when honestly on any part of your gut healing journey, they’re super underutilized. You can throw them into soups, smoothies, stews, everything, curries. mean, curries loaded with so many amazing spices I love. So yeah, working with some of these anti-inflammatory herbs, super easy, super simple and pretty much always cheap too and easy to do at home, which we love. Then the next thing’s going to be

I’m just going to go into the plant diversity one since I kind of commented on that before. So adding in these herbs and spices is a really great way to up your plant diversity. And we want to aim for about 30 plus different plants per week. This is going to include herbs, spices, nuts and seeds, fruits and veggies, gluten-free grains. All of those are included in that. So it’s honestly not as difficult as you think.

Hannah Aylward (30:05.387)
But if you have a very bland diet and you’re used to eating the exact same thing every day or every week, then you might run into some issues. But the biggest study that has ever been conducted on the gut microbiome, the American Gut Project showed that essentially the diversity of plants that we consume helps promote diversity in our gut bacteria, which then helps to promote gut resiliency. So we can do this by, you know, simple, simple tips that I like to give my clients.

Instead of buying just frozen blueberries, buy a bag of mixed berries. So buy frozen organic mixed berries, raspberries, cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, whatever that’s going to give you already four different plants with no extra effort. I love simple, actionable tips that I can actually do consistently. So when we keep things easier, we can actually do them. So we want to kind of, you know, those are my favorite tips to give. So I’m like, let’s keep this as simple as possible.

Of course, cooking new recipes and all of that is also key and wonderful to do. Most of the people that we work with, and I think everyone ever is like strapped for time and they’re, you know, adding in simplicity is helpful. So that’s one way that you can do it. Instead of buying just a bag of organic spinach, buy a bag of organic mixed greens that has spinach and kale and whatever else is in there and throw that into your smoothie. Instead, throw that into your veggie stir fry instead.

of just the one green. That’s a very easy way to add in this plant diversity. Throw it into pastas. I use it as a salad. You could also just swap things week to week. And then another great thing to do is just buy something new at the store that you never buy. You know, if you’re in the rut of buying the same stuff over and over again, choose one new fruit or one new veggie and add it in. Other ways that you can do this or, you know, I like to swap out my nut butters. So sometimes you can get a mix where there’s like four different nuts in there.

I’ll buy peanut butter and then I’ll buy almond butter and then I’ll buy sunflower seed butter and you can kind of rotate those out as well. And then, you know, I try to be mindful of my consumption of like too many of one thing because especially with nuts, because everything that’s gluten-free has nuts in it. Basically now all of like these almond flour crackers and almond flour tortillas and all of that kind of stuff. So I don’t really drink almond milk because I’m getting exposure.

Hannah Aylward (32:25.141)
two almonds in like crackers and tortillas, because I do like those things. They’re gluten free and they taste great. So I’ll use like a cashew milk or I’ll make a hemp milk. You can also just use like a good quality dairy milk. That’s totally fine as well. If you tolerate that, it’s just not going to give you that plant, that plant power, but it has other benefits. So we just want to kind of mix things up a little bit. When it comes to our plant foods, if you always cook brown rice, cook a quinoa, cook a white rice. If you always buy

Kalamata olives, buy green olives next time. All of these things kind of help to increase our plant diversity and help to support that gut microbiome and really repair its strength. So this is something we do want to focus on after we do take an antibiotic, is prioritizing that plant diversity. The next thing would be really reducing our intake of processed sugars and alcohol. So antibiotics wipe out both your good and your bad bacteria.

And this is going to set the environment for that fungal overgrowth that I mentioned earlier. So minimizing sugar, you know, temporarily minimizing sugar always is kind of a good call, but having like an extra kind of your finger on the pulse of it after having to take an antibiotic is super key to kind of minimize this risk of the fungal overgrowth because yeast and fungi, they love sugar. They feed off of sugars. So really just being more mindful for a good, you know, month or two, if you can.

of that sugar intake, especially processed sugars. I wouldn’t worry too much about like fruits and things like that. I’m not, you I don’t like to strip a lot of these foods away from clients unless it’s totally necessary. So I wouldn’t have your diet be all fruit. Don’t eat like 10 bananas in one day, which some people do. We would never recommend that. No one on my team would ever recommend that FYI. You know, we want to avoid like that kind of sugar that much, but like, don’t be afraid to have a banana a day or, you know, some strawberries or whatever. Don’t stress about that.

more so looking at your processed sugars and your consumption of those after taking antibiotic. And then same goes for alcohol. Alcohol is not good for us. There’s essentially no health benefit to it. They try to make some claims about wine because of the polyphenols that I mentioned earlier, but the risks and the negatives like highly outweigh the benefits, any possible benefits. So, know, alcohol is never really a good thing to add in.

Hannah Aylward (34:42.645)
With that being said, I consume alcohol here and there, so I understand I’m not going to sit here and act like I never drink it. I love a good martini and I love a good margarita. I like to think my body can handle it in small amounts because I take pretty good care of it. But we do want to just be more mindful of consuming a lot of alcohol after taking something like an antibiotic. So I had one client and my goodness, she had the highest levels of Candida that I have ever seen in my entire life. It was nuts when we ran functional stool testing, her levels were

so, so, so high. She was super reactive to lots of food. She had a lot of digestive issues and she just looked kind of exhausted. And I’m like, how did we get here? Because we run functional stool testing that assesses like what’s going on in the large intestine, which is where the majority of your gut microbiome is. But a lot of the fungal overgrowth tends to hang out in the small intestine and even the stomach. by the time we’re seeing it on our tests that we run, we’re like, this is, these are some high levels. Like I’m looking at these test results and I’m thinking,

These levels are even higher than I can see right now, which is insane. I mean, this was the highest level I had ever seen. And so when I see that I got to go looking, right? I’m like, how did we get here? Because this is wild. And you always want to ask that, especially with Candida. We always want to ask how did this happen? Because it doesn’t just kind of happen out of nowhere. Yes, if your diet was very poor for a very long time, it can happen, but usually there’s like chronic antibiotic use. So we’re living in mold or we’ve got,

birth control use or something else is playing a role. And we do want to make sure that we address that so we can get you fully better. I’m like talking to her and I’m like, how did, let’s, let’s dive in. Like what’s going on? How did we get here? And she said that she, she just like partied really hard when she was younger. No shame to that. She just like would drink a lot and she would party a lot when she was like in college and her, in her twenties. And then she would always get sick. So she’d go get an antibiotic. So she’d like party and she wouldn’t sleep and she’d get an antibiotic.

And then that she’d feel better and then she’d just do it all over again. And I was like, Holy moly. And how long did this go on for? And she was like a couple of years. And I was like, okay, at least this makes sense. Cause girl, you have the highest candida levels I have ever seen. So that’s gonna, that’s showing us, right? So she’s doing the opposite of what we, what we want to do. She was doing the opposite. She’s, she’s changed her life and props to that.

Hannah Aylward (36:58.751)
but we want to avoid, know, that, mean, imagine we’re wiping out all of those bacteria and then we’re just feeding, fueling the fire of the candida overgrowth, of the fungal overgrowth with alcohol. That’s also like wine and beer, like yeasty and like, ooh, no. So let’s avoid that after taking an antibiotic and then just like minimizing alcohol overall. Never really a bad, a bad idea.

Okay, then the next thing that we want to do is really work on our stress levels after, and this should be a big focus of ours always as well. Honestly, all of these recommendations apply like every day of the year. They’re always helpful for your gut and your overall gut health, but managing stress levels here is going to be extra important because it’s going to promote healing and support healthy gut immune function that then helps to maintain a healthy gut environment. So

When we run lab work, we will see a marker called secretory IgA. And this is reflective of your gut immune system. And this marker is very vulnerable to stress and like negative perception and mindset. So we’ll see that your secretory IgA levels will go way down. They’ll be low. If you’re chronically stressed, it’s a very prominent in clients that come to us that are like burnout stage, like they’re exhausted. They don’t have motivation anymore. They are getting like headaches in the morning.

you’re just kind of at that like low cortisol spot where you don’t even have the high cortisol anymore. You’re just like so tired and I’ve been there personally. It’s not fun. And we’ll see that they have lower secretory IgA levels present after all the stress. So we do want to be mindful of our stress levels because our secretory IgA, this is reflective of our gut immune system. And this is, this is what kind of helps keep things in check. This is what’s helping to maintain a healthy gut environment for us.

And when this is lower, we’ll also see things like food sensitivities and intolerances be more prominent. And we’ll also see like, tends to be like adrenal functions. Well, essentially your immune system, your gut immune function has been working so hard. doesn’t have that much juice or power kind of left. So it’s kind of more so that depleted state. And, know, we do want to avoid that and stress will take us there and no supplements will get us out of that. If we continue on that.

Hannah Aylward (39:19.903)
chronic stress cycle. I know that from personal experience. So we do want to be mindful of stress. adding things in like breath work, meditation, more rest saying no, just say no. If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no, right? Do you don’t have to go to that party that you don’t really want to go to, but you’re going just to be nice.

You don’t have to take on that extra project. You don’t have to take on that extra phone call, whatever it is, just be more mindful of your own needs and your, and your own boundaries during this time to protect yourself and put work away. This is where I struggle, put work away, set some boundaries for yourself there too. So, you know, once it hits a certain time, it goes away and it doesn’t get revisited until the next day. A big thing that causes chronic stress now too, is just like information overload.

on social media, Instagram, on TikTok, podcasts, on XYZ. I mean, we’re inundated. There’s not a moment that goes by where we’re like not getting in more noise and input into our brains. That’s going to keep us stressed. And then just like the incessant scrolling, the scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll that just keeps us looped in and drives up that stress response and kind of keeps us in that sympathetic dominant state. So be mindful of these habits.

after taking antibiotic and always every day for your overall health, your hormone and your gut health, but especially during this time. And that’s really to, you know, set the environment for healing. Your body cannot heal. It cannot repair when it’s in that sympathetic dominant state or that fight or flight state. So this is really important. You’re going to be fighting an uphill battle. If you’re just chugging supplements and you’re not relaxed ever, that’s going to be an uphill battle.

And we’re not looking for perfection here. There are going to be stressful moments. It’s more so like, can we flip our mindset on them? How can we flip our perspective on them? And how can we kind of like put some boundaries into place to protect ourselves and just like turn off more. So I always make the joke with my clients. I will tell them your homework is to go home and sit on your couch and stare at the wall. No phone, no TV, no podcast, no iPad, no Kindle, no nothing.

Hannah Aylward (41:30.217)
I want you to actually relax and I want you to sit still and you can close your eyes and just like feel your body. Listen to your intuition. Take some space in this moment to actually hear yourself because we cannot connect with our intuition and we cannot hear ourselves if we’re just go, go, go all the time. And this is like the really, really juicy, juicy state that we can get in.

We want to make aligned decisions in our lives and we want to make sure we’re on the right track. And in order to do that, we have to actually listen to ourselves. But most of the time we don’t have any time set out to listen to ourselves. So this is your excuse. This is your homework. You can tell your significant other, your husband, your roommate, whatever. My health coach, Hannah, she told me I got it. I got to stop and I got to slow down and I’ve got to take this space. So see you in 15 minutes. And that’s my prescription quote unquote for you.

So really being mindful of the stress after an antibiotic, utilizing things like breath work and meditation can be super helpful in these moments as well. And as we know, our like stress influences our gastrointestinal function. It influences our gut health. It causes changes in the mucosal permeability and the gut barrier function. It influences visceral sensitivity. It influences blood flow to our GI organs. It decreases stomach acid.

We’ve gone over this, so we know stress is not great for the gut. So when your gut is kind of in this more vulnerable state, it’s super helpful to be a bit more mindful here. And maybe it’s your excuse. Maybe it’s the excuse or the push that you needed to really take this seriously. Okay. The next thing we want to take a look at is liver support. So antibiotics are the most common class of drugs that cause liver damage, accounting for about 45 % of cases.

Now, know, severe liver damage is still pretty rare when you do take an antibiotic, but we want to be mindful of this and we want to give our liver a little extra loving after having to take something like an antibiotic. So biggest thing there is to pull the offenders. So your, your liver can do what it knows how to do best because it knows what it’s doing. It just needs the raw materials to do the job and it needs to not be inundated with kind of toxins nonstop. alcohol.

Hannah Aylward (43:41.735)
other drugs, Like Tylenol and things like that. Then we have like other toxins, plastics. We’ve got endocrine disruptors through personal care products. You know, we want to be mindful of all of that kind of stuff, reducing all of those. And then we can consider adding some things in like beet juice. We could add in bitter foods, bitter greens, like dandelion greens are great. I’m a big fan of dandelion root tea. It’s a great, really like gentle liver support helps to promote increased bile production.

So it can help with things like nausea, fat, mal-digestion, bloating. I mean, I love dandelion root tea. It can be really also helpful in your luteal phase right before menstruation. And we can always add in supplements here too, but we like to start with some, some food. really aiming for more of those bitter foods, bitter greens, and you could even consider something like a digestive bitters during this time. You could also consider something like a castor oil pack during this time. I love my castor oil pack. We recommend them clients all the time. Big fans over here.

super easy to use, not another oral supplement to take, which I love. And we do have a discount code for that too. And I’ve got a recommendation for you. So I’ll pop that in the show notes, just in case you want to grab one, but we usually hear that clients have less constipation, less bloating, less inflammation after using them. And I love them in the luteal phase as well. When we need a little extra support helping to detoxify estrogen, which the liver does too, it’s under like a heavier burden at that time.

right before we menstruate. So it can really be helpful for PMS symptoms, cramping, that kind of stuff when used in the luteal phase. So all of those could be good add-ins to support your liver along with getting in adequate amino acids. So liver detoxification is a nutrient dependent process. A green juice cleanse is not going to cut it. When you learn what you actually need for liver detoxification, you realize that those things don’t really make sense because you’re lacking a lot of nutrients with them.

including a lot of amino acids and phase two of liver detoxification requires many different amino acids. So where do we get amino acids? Proteins. So making sure you’re getting in some good protein sources can be really helpful there. Okay, so that’s how we can support our liver. Very quick overview. And then, you know, we just want to be mindful overall too of avoiding these refined ultra processed, ultra refined foods, foods high in sugar, foods high in like simple carbohydrates.

Hannah Aylward (46:08.397)
especially when our gut is kind of in a rebuilding phase and we’re lacking a lot of these good gut bacteria and we’re more vulnerable to that fungal overgrowth picture. We want to be mindful of the ultra processed sugars and things like that, but we always want to work to minimize our exposure to ultra refined ultra processed foods overall for our gut health always. So that shouldn’t be anything new to you, but you know, if once again, the antibiotic is kind of like a push for you to

you know, revisit that and be a bit more mindful about that. And that’s great. And we’ll take it. Okay. Those are my tips that I have for you today. You may have realized that I didn’t really mention probiotics. so I have a little bit of a different kind of take on these. There are some probiotics that can be helpful after an antibiotic. So things like Saccharomyces boriardi can sometimes be helpful. However, there has been a little bit of research that shows that taking in a probiotic might delay your gut microbiome reconstitution.

So it can kind of delay your gut getting back to that good spot. So for that reason, my personal take is to just avoid the direct probiotics for a little bit. I don’t push the fermented foods during this time either, because they can kind of, if you’ve got any histamine stuff or fungal stuff, they might flare you pretty bad. So I don’t love adding in a bunch of fermented foods or.

probiotics during this time. It doesn’t mean they’re bad. It doesn’t mean you can’t add them in later, but that’s kind of my personal take. So do with that what you will. But that would be my recommendation. And then adding in a probiotic, you know, four to six weeks kind of down the line, maybe, maybe even longer than that two to three months later, I think is good to go. But with that research, I’m just a little wary of it. And there’s, like I said, the prebiotics are really where it’s at anyway, the prebiotics, the polyphenols and the resistant starches. Those are the things that are really going to help to rebuild your gut bacteria.

Anyway, so we can focus on those in the meantime. And then, yeah, just be more mindful of fermented foods, things like kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi. If you feel good about taking those in and eating those, they make you feel better, then go for it. If they flare you, you know, let’s reduce, it’s probably a histamine issue or a fungal issue or a SIBO issue. So, you know, that’s usually the case when people are reacting to those foods pretty bad and we see a lot of clients like that. So that’s what I have for you.

Hannah Aylward (48:25.723)
for how to repair your gut after a round of antibiotics. I hope it was helpful. I hope you learned a thing or two. Send this episode to someone who needs it, who recently had to take an antibiotic. This is a really good one to have in your arsenal to reference when you need it because you probably will need it at some point. So save it, share it, and would love to hear any takeaways that you have from the episode in the comments below too. And I’ll see you in the next episode.

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Nutrient Dense Podcast. If you found this episode valuable, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and come back next week for a new episode. See you then.