By Joanie Blaxter, Nutrition Educator & Health Coach at Follow Your Gut
The cold and flu epidemic has reached an all-time high in recent years. Visits to the ER due to cold/flu instances have risen. But it’s not just common flu or bacterial illnesses that are causing issues…there are many reasons that you (or someone you love) could be on antibiotic treatment right now. And for you, there’s good news from Just Thrive Probiotic!
Ever been told to avoid taking an antibiotic and probiotic at the same time because the antibiotic kills the probiotic? NO LONGER TRUE.
Spore bacteria, like the proprietary strains in Just Thrive Probiotic, are protected by their outer spore shell from the killing effects of antibiotics.
In contrast, conventional, non-spore strains (Lacto, Bifido, Streptococcus, etc.):
- Are unprotected, fragile and easily killed by medications, heat, stomach acid, etc. This is why many of these probiotics must be kept in the fridge and taken separately from antibiotics.
- Cannot colonize in the oxygen-free environment of the gut. In terms of reproduction, it doesn’t matter if non-spore bacteria survive stomach acid or not. By being produced in an environment that contains oxygen (a lab or through the fermenting of food), these conventional strains become genetically altered into aerobic (oxygen-based) strains that CANNOT bind to necessary receptor sites in the intestines and so, cannot colonize the anaerobic (oxygen-free) intestines.
Unlike lacto/bifido strains, gut commensal spore bacteria are naturally bi-phasic and can live in an environment that is either oxygen-rich or anaerobic.
Gut commensal spore strains can – and should – be taken at the same time as pharmaceutical antibiotics.
Spore bacteria probiotics have, in fact, been prescribed by physicians and veterinarians alike since the 60’s in Europe and Asia to be taken with medication to offset the negative effects antibiotics have on the digestive system.
That’s because these strains survive exposure to the antibacterial chemicals naturally through the protection of their spore shell and immediately go to work reducing inflammation and killing pathological strains.
How can I tell the difference between conventional vs. spore bacteria?
Look on the probiotic bottle. If the first word is “Bacillus” followed by the latin name of the strain, that’s a spore bacteria. Anything else (lacto, bifido, Streptococcus, etc.) indicates one of the fragile, non-spore strains.
Just Thrive Probiotic is the first 100% GUT COMMENSAL spore-based bacteria probiotic in the retail market.
These are NOT soil-based organisms. Soil-based organisms live and reproduce in the soil, not the human gut. SBO’s merely pass through the intestinal tract with our food, possibly giving a temporary boost to the residential, anaerobic bacteria living there.
The proprietary spore strains used in Just Thrive are gut commensal. Their natural home is the gut where they colonize and live, cleaning the intestinal tract of harmful microbes and upgrading the immune system for 3-4 weeks, from one end to the other, before being excreted out of the body.
During and after antibiotics, Just Thrive spore bacillus guard the microbiome, preventing regrowth of “bad guys.”
As we know, taking antibiotic medication is comparable to using a flame thrower to your garden – it kills virtually all bacteria, good and bad equally.
So, once we finish a round of antibiotics we are at HUGE RISK for actually becoming sicker than we were before we took the antibiotics.
Post antibiotic protocol, what grows back like a weed in the gut microbiome because the beneficials have been so destroyed by the medication they can no longer prevent the wildfire regrowth of pathological strains?
- Candida and other fungus unaffected by antibiotics, and
- Harmful bacteria, particularly the antibiotic-resistant strains.
The hardy gut commensal spore bacteria survive exposure to the antibiotic and stand guard in the intestines, preventing the regrowth of harmful microbes. They:
- Identify the difference between a harmful versus beneficial microbe to the host using “quorum sensing,”
- Constantly scan the intestinal environment and its immune system,
- Selectively kill only harmful bacteria with self-produced, natural chemicals, and
- Increase the beneficials by producing nutrients which are fed only to the beneficial resident strains.
Clinical studies of Just Thrive’s proprietary spore strains show a 30% improvement in the microbial population in the gut in about 2 weeks at one cap daily.
“I’m done with my medication. Now what?”
Once the medication ends, I encourage everyone to continue taking gut commensal spore bacteria at least 3 x week as part of a healthy lifestyle program because this is how our digestive and immune systems evolved over thousands and thousands of years. In a perfect world, we would be consuming these bacteria many times a day as we eat organic plants grown in healthy soil naturally loaded with these gut commensal spores.
Unfortunately, we have so destroyed the soil and sterilized our entire food and agricultural systems, we can no longer count on plant food sources for our gut bacteria. Nutritional supplementation currently is our best guarantee for mimicking what we should be getting from nature: daily exposure to these critically important, gut cleaning spore bacillus.
Just Thrive Spore Probiotic/Antioxidant:
- Taken BEFORE starting a round of antibiotics, these powerful bacteria on their own have been shown to kill pathological strains and may PREVENT the need to go on the antibacterial medication,
- Taken at the SAME TIME as the pharmaceutical medication, these hardy gut commensal spore strains are NOT killed by antibiotics and have been prescribed for decades to prevent the nausea, diarrhea and gastric symptoms that antibiotics can cause, and
- Taken AFTER the medication is over, these strains stand guard in the intestines, preventing the regrowth of harmful microbes.
