How to Heal Your Gut After Antibiotics (My 5-Step Gut Rebuild Protocol)

Can antibiotics damage your gut and what should you do to rebuild it?

Many people take antibiotics without realizing the massive impact they can have on the gut microbiome. While antibiotics can be life-saving when needed, they also wipe out large portions of the beneficial bacteria that support digestion, metabolism, mood, and immune health.

In this episode, Kristin shares the exact protocol she’s using to rebuild her gut after a recent round of antibiotics for an infection.

Tune in to hear:

• Why antibiotics can dramatically disrupt gut health
• How long it actually takes the gut microbiome to recover
• The importance of microbial diversity for overall health
• Why eating real, whole foods supports gut bacteria
• The role fermented foods play in rebuilding the microbiome
• How probiotics help repopulate beneficial bacteria
• What “gut lining integrity” means and why it matters
• Supplements that can support gut repair and resilience
• Why fiber is essential for feeding beneficial bacteria
• The connection between gut health, cravings, mood, and inflammation

Resources mentioned:

• Stress balls: https://amzn.to/4lIv3ix
• Worry stones: https://amzn.to/47zENp5
• Seed: https://seedhealthinc.pxf.io/c/4620740/3216192/19848 (use code GOLDEN)
• Microbiome Labs: https://microbiomelabs.com/register/?ref=KRISTIN (use code GOLDEN for discount)
• Pendulum: https://pendulumtherapeutics.sjv.io/c/4620740/1940595/23445 (use code ENERGETICALLY for discount)
• IM8: https://im8.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=26&aff_id=1133 (use code GOLDEN for discount)
• ION GUT SUPPORT: https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/krowell 
• Tomorrow's Nutrition: https://tomorrowsnutrition.com/products/sunfiber-210-grams 
• Fecal Transplants & Postbiotics: The Future of Gut Health with Dr. Andrea McBeth of Thaena: https://youtu.be/EsD_6d2N7lI 

Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@energeticallyefficient

Connect with Kristin:

Work with Kristin 1:1: https://energeticallyefficient.com/book-now/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristin_rowell_

Website: https://energeticallyefficient.com/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Remember, you guys, so much of the health of our bodies starts with the health of our gut. And people don't realize this. They don't spend enough time thinking about what is the state of my gut health today, what have I done to support my gut health today? It affects everything from the moods that you're in to whether or not you have depression, to how energized you are, to what foods you crave, to how well you can think. Hi everyone, I'm Christian Rowell and welcome back to another episode of the Energetically Efficient Show. Today we're talking about a topic that I did not think I was gonna be recording about this year, but here we are, and that is I actually had to take a round of antibiotics. And so I want to tell you why I made that choice and what I am doing to heal my gut. So this is all about improving our gut health, especially after we've taken a round of antibiotics. Now, it is, I'm recording this as of March of 2026, and I had to take antibiotics last month because of an infection that I got in my ear. And without going into the whole entire story of the background of how that happened, let me just explain this. I have, even though I consider myself obviously very healthy and take very good care of my health, I do have a little patch on the back of my head of psoriasis. Like it gets inflamed and it itches from time to time, and then I will scratch it. Well, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I have been scratching it a fair amount and I had basically created like an open skin area where I had scratched and bacteria got in and it caused an infection. So the infection showed up because of the way our lymphatic drainage is and where those channels exist around our ears, it showed up or presented as an ear infection. And you guys, it was so bad. I'm gonna show you a photo right here of how bad my ear got. I had to take antibiotics. The doctor essentially thought what I had was a condition called cellulitis, which can be very dangerous because you don't want that running rampant in your body. It can cause all sorts of downstream calamity. So given that I didn't want to have this condition in my ear, it was this ear. And so it was pretty inflamed, it was pretty red, as you could see by that photo. Uh, I did several things. Number one is I decided to get myself, you're gonna laugh, I got myself on Amazon like these stress balls. And I say that because I realized that a lot of times when I'm working and I'm very focused and concentrated, I will sometimes do this scratching as almost a stress reliever completely unconsciously. So it's become a bad habit of mine. So I bought these stress balls, which are very satisfying, I might add, in case you ever want to get stress balls, I will put the link that I got these online below. And then also, because I was like, I gotta just figure out how I'm gonna stop from the picking because I don't want to cause another infection, of course. I got these, I don't know if you can see these, but they're these little like they're plasticky stones that are textured. So there are textures on them. So basically you can like just hold them in your hands. It's for stress relief and just to give something to do with your hands when you are stressed. So that's some of the things I'm working on, those that are not related to my gut health, but that are just I'm doing so that I keep my hands off the back of my head like this because I've caused this bad habit of scratching. Okay, so more importantly, and the reason I want to record this podcast episode for you today is to tell you what am I doing for my gut health? Like how am I healing it? And before I get into that, I just want to make sure that you're aware, because a lot of people are not aware of this. Antibiotics truly destroy our gut health, you guys. It's so sad what they do to your gut, but I want you to think of your gut as this beautiful tropical rainforest. So think about it. There are grasses, there are trees, palm trees, pine trees, deciduous trees, there's birch trees, ferns, every different kind of vegetation you can think of. And of course, all sorts of insects and animals and all sorts of life going on in your gut. That's how you want your gut to be. We want it to be extremely diverse. We don't want it to look like, for example, monocropped corn or monocropped soy or anything like that. So we want it to be super diverse. And when you take a round of antibiotics, you literally, it's like taking a bulldozer to that entire tropical rainforest. It clear-cuts everything in there. So now you have a barren, bald forest that's just a bunch of empty soil that doesn't have any nutrition in it. So it's very important what we do after antibiotics to repopulate that amazing forest in our gut. And just so you know, when you do a round of antibiotics, it takes somewhere between six months and a year to repopulate and heal your gut from just one round of antibiotics. And there are people that literally are antibiotics year after year after year, even multiple times a year, which is so crazy to me. So just know that if you're someone who's been on antibiotics in the past, or if you're like, oh my gosh, Kristen, I really need to take a look at my gut health. What I'm here to share with you today is my top five things that I'm doing. So I'm doing five things right now to heal and rehab my gut health. So let's get into it. So the number one thing I'm doing to rehab my gut after this round of antibiotics is I am eating real food. Okay. So I'm eating a lot of real food. And what do I mean by that? I mean I'm doing my best to not eat processed packaged things. So for example, even with my clients who I occasionally put processed packaged things on their meal plans, and for myself that I that I eat those on occasion as well, I'm doing my best to minimize those. So for example, if you're someone who's like, oh, I just didn't have time this morning, and it was just easier to go to Starbucks and get one of those things of egg bites, and then I had a protein bar in the car, I would encourage you to consider, and this is what I've been doing, I'm actually making instead homemade pancakes at home. And I've been doing a variety of my protein apple flax pancakes, which are amazing, or these new pancakes I've been trying that have eggs, cottage cheese, oat flour, cinnamon, and a little bit of vanilla extract and even a little bit of stevia. I even added some collagen protein powder to that just to make them have more of a protein-rich, diverse recipe. But the reason that I'm doing that, you guys, is every single real food that we eat feeds our gut microbiome in some way. So, for example, when I eat a really good green salad, I made something the other night that had microgreens. It had a bunch of fresh local greens from a Nashville farmer's market. And then I roasted broccoli, onion, and garlic in the air fryer, mix that all together and drizzled balsamic vinegar on it and the fresh pressed olive oil. Oh my God, it was so good. And I put a burger on top. So imagine all of the life in that vibrant meal that helps to support my bacterial diversity in my gut. And that's really what we're going for. We're going for this diversity because I want to repopulate my gut bacteria. As opposed to, and granted, I love them. I occasionally go for the wild protein chicken chips that have 13 grams of protein in a bag. I love those, but I'm doing less of that kind of stuff right now because that really is dead food. There's nothing living on that food. It's a process packaged thing that's in the cupboard that doesn't need to live in the fridge. So if you think about it this way, if there's one easy takeaway I could give you on the eat real food category, think of eating more from things in your fridge. Have go to the grocery store more, spend more time at the grocery store. If you're someone who does grocery store delivery, do it two or three times a week instead of once a week because you're getting so much more fresh food. So thinking about making recipes from scratch, thinking about how can I get something out of the fridge that has live and active cultures? How can I get, I ate, for example, for dessert last night, I had one whole container of organic raspberries. There's a lot of living bacterial diversity in organic raspberries, along with a bunch of fiber that's going to feed that good bacteria that I'm putting back into my system. So we really want to focus on eating real food and then eating a variety. This is also in that same category of eating real food. When I did those pancakes yesterday, and I actually made them today again for myself, they have oat flour in them, which is something I don't normally eat. They have eggs, which I love. They have cottage cheese, which I don't eat a lot of. I put a banana on top of them because a banana is feeding. There's different microbes in a banana that are going to feed short chain fatty acids to repopulate that aspect of my gut. Okay. I also drizzled honey on top of the pancakes. I sprinkled bee pollen on top of the pancakes. I'm doing things that are different at each meal because that meal gives me a whole host of diversity that is different from the meal that had the burger and the greens and the broccoli and the garlic and the onion. So thinking about how we can get a variety of all sorts of different foods on top of having them be real foods. Another idea is you might have, and this will get into my second category, which I'm going to talk about next, but I'll just preview it by saying you might make some sort of yogurt parfait that has really good yogurt with a bunch of fresh berries with some really good nuts. Other than the nuts, all of those things are kept in the fridge, right? So it's thinking about how we can get really live foods and things that'll support our microbial diversity. Okay, so number one is to eat real food and eat a variety of them. Number two, which I just previewed a little bit for you, is to eat fermented foods. Okay, so what do we think of when we think of fermented foods? Fermented foods, think about writing this down, are our sauerkrauts and kim cheese. So I consider that one category. Another category would be our kefirs and our yogurts, so that's another category. And then another category that I wrote down because I just love it so much, and this falls within the yogurt category, but I kind of put this in its special category because it's so fancy. I'm gonna show a photo up here. This is one of my favorites. It's called coconut cult yogurt, and I really like the chocolate mousse. And then you guys, I found this last week at Whole Foods, and I cannot get over how good it is. They have come out with, and here's a photo, the protein coconut cult, and the flavor is banana bread. Oh my gosh. This is so good. Banana bread, coconut cult, protein yogurt is unbelievable. So before you freak out when you see the price, because these jars, these small jars, are like$10 a jar, they have multiple servings in a jar. They are not meant to be one serving. So each jar contains four servings. If you eat two ounces in a serving, but honestly, I break them up into eight servings. So at the end of a meal, I just take a spoon. I literally put my spoon on the food scale, I set the food scale to zero, I put the spoon in the coconut cult yogurt, and I get out one ounce and I weigh it again. I have pretty much figured out how to eyeball exactly an ounce now. So I do one ounce of the coconut cult yogurt and I do that for dessert after a meal, and there's amazing, amazing ferments and bacteria in there. I'll show you a photo of my favorite sauerkraut, which is Cleveland Kitchen roasted garlic sauerkraut. I love that sauerkraut. They also have a kimchi, which I'll show you an image of the kimchi. And then, of course, because I talk about it all the time, my favorite kefir is Alexander Family Farms, and it's a grass-fed regenerative agriculture A2 kefir. I like the low-fat kefir right now. I've also used the whole milk kefir. They're both fantastic. And then you can get any sort of variety of yogurt. Any yogurt with live and active cultures in it will do. So keep in mind that fermented foods, there's such a different variety. In fact, think about getting different brands. I'll buy the Cleveland Kraut because I love it, but then I'll also buy one that you can see this package here. It's called wild brine. So that's another, it's going to give you different bacteria because, of course, not all sauerkraut, not all kimchi is the same. Those will be very different depending on the brand that you get. And then that gets you more of that microbial diversity. Now, the other thing I have to say about fermented food that I hope goes without saying, but it always surprises me that people aren't aware of this. You can't heat up fermented food and expect the live and active cultures to be there. So, for example, if you're gonna have a really delicious skillet meal or a bunch of vegetables that you roasted in the oven and then steak you did on the grill, and then you're gonna put sauerkraut on top of it, you don't then reheat that. You wouldn't heat up sauerkraut. You want to make sure that it's cold so that all those live and active cultures can be there. And you can even have the sauerkraut juice that comes in the bag that has a ton of live and active cultures in it. And all of that will be really good for feeding your gut health. Okay. So think about those categories. Again, we talked about sauerkraut and kimchi. And then there is the kefir and the yogurt category. And then I put in its own category, the coconut cult, even though it's a yogurt. I will tell you guys the protein in that new protein coconut cult, it's not a tremendous amount of protein. I would never consider that a source of protein, but it's kind of fun to have as an extra boost at the end of the meal. And that banana bread flavor is so good. I could not even believe it. The other thing that I noticed is that the protein coconut cult, unlike the other coconut cult, it's a lot more solid in the container. So I found that it was much easier to scoop out and measure an ounce as compared with the other coconut cult, like the chocolate or the original flavor or even the strawberry. Those, even when you stir them really well, they get pretty runny. So I liked that the protein one was actually a lot harder. It was almost like a curd. It had a it had a more solid profile to it, is what I'll say. Okay, so just recapping really quick. In the first category, we're gonna eat real food and a variety. And in the second category, we're gonna eat fermented food. And we went over those categories, of course. So now the third category that I'm doing to support my gut health after a round of antibiotics. The third category is I am taking a lot of probiotics right now. And when I say a lot, I don't mean like a bunch of pills per day. I just mean I'm taking a variety of probiotics. So I'm gonna show you images up here of the ones I am taking, and there's an intentionality that I have around what I'm taking in terms of rehabbing my gut health. So, number one, because it's one of my favorite probiotics on the planet, it's called seed. So that's seed.com. I have found that they now carry seed at Target, which is pretty remarkable. You can get seed, of course, anywhere online. Seed.com is is the place that I recommend. I do have a discount code for seed, so I'll put that below the video if you want to take advantage of that. If you've never tried seed. But I take this, I've been taking it for years. I think I started it in 2019. And so what I'm doing right now is it I normally take two of those capsules right before bed. Now I'm taking two capsules in the morning and two capsules at night, so that I'm doubling up my dose of seed just to get more probiotic beneficial bacteria into my body. So number one is seed. Number two, the other probiotic I'm taking, and I'm actually rotating between these because they are very similar, even though they have different purposes in the body, and one is a lot stronger than the other, they are called Hue58, so HU-58 from Microbiome Labs. And then the other label, which looks very similar to Hue, is called megasporbiotic, and that's also from microbiome labs. So those two labels, which look very similar and have somewhat similar ingredients in them, are different. So I might take two Hue58 at night and then two megasporbiotic in the morning, or vice versa. It just depends. And what those are gonna give me, so I should back up, what seed is gonna give me is a lot of those lactobifido strains. Now you get lactobifido strains undoubtedly when you have yogurt and kefir and those kinds of things, but lacto and bifido strains of probiotics, meaning lactobacillus, lactoruderi, there's lots of different lactofamilies of species. There's lots of different bifido family of species. But those particular families are the most studied probiotic strains in the world. We have the most clinical trials available about those studies. There's over 500 of them supporting their efficacy in the body. So seed is sort of my foundational probiotic. The strains of probiotics that have fewer studies are the ones that are found in this U58 and the megaspore. And those are strains of probiotics that are called soil-based or spore-based strains. And what's important about those strains is that they actually colonize the host. They actually colonize in your gut. So they're gonna set up camp and they're gonna kill bad guys that come into your gut. They're actually very, very powerful probiotics. In fact, those particular strains of probiotics, the soil and spore-based probiotics, which are strains that are known as bacillus subtilis, bacillus indicus, and other bacillus strains, those are so powerful that when you start taking them, you really should only take one pill every other day for the first week, and then one pill every day for the second week, and then two pills every day for the third week. Now, I'm working on rehabbing my gut health, so I'm taking two of them at night and two of them in the morning. I could probably even take more, but because I'm taking so many different kinds of probiotics, I'm trying to ration out all the things that I'm taking. And so that is what I would recommend in terms of the soil and spore-based trains. And I'll put links below the video to all of these if you guys want to check those out. And then a third kind of probiotic that I'm taking, which I also love this family, and I love this company, but I love this family of probiotics, is the pendulum acromantia municephila. So pendulum has several different suites of probiotics in their repertoire. They have a glucose control, they have the acromantia, and they have a couple of others that names are escaping me right now. But the acremantia muniscephila is one that I really want to make sure is populated in my gut because lo and behold, what the clinical research shows us about that strain is that that particular strain of probiotic, which is found, by the way, you guys, on things like red apple skins, cranberries, it's found in a lot of more polyphenol and antioxidant-rich red fruits and vegetables. But that particular strain, the acromantia minisophylla, is often found in more abundance in the guts of people who are fit and lean. So if you are healthier, a more metabolically healthy person, you're likely gonna have more acromantia in your gut microbiome, which is awesome. So because the acromantia in pendulum is not in seed and it's not in Hue58 or megasporbiotic, I'm gonna take pendulum for the acremantia, just like there's no acromantia in the seed or in the other one that I mentioned. So all of these products that I'm taking right now have different probiotic strains in them. And I'm specifically targeting all of them because of the fact that I don't have any in my system right now because of the round of antibiotics. So antibiotics, because they're gonna wipe you out, like I mentioned before, we want to repopulate as much as we can. So I'm doing it from a combination, like I said in point one of real food and variety from fermented foods, like I said in point two, and now in point three from probiotics. I will tell you guys, there are other probiotics that I can take. So I actually just yesterday, for example, I think this morning, I ran out of the Hue 58. So now I'm gonna bring in another probiotic strain just to continue to build up that variety. And I'm gonna do this for six months. I'm just gonna keep rotating all the bottles of probiotics. So another one that I'm about to start taking is called Restore Flora. And the probiotic in that particular, or the strain rather, in that particular probiotic is something called Sacromyces spilardi. And that strain is actually antifungal. Now, I don't have any sort of need for an antifungal right now, other than I'm trying to create more diversity in my gut microbiome. And all of these strains work synergistically together in order to give you the maximum amount of gut health because of maximum diversity. Remember, you guys, so much of the health of our body starts with the health of our gut. And people don't realize this, they don't spend enough time thinking about what is the state of my gut health today, what have I done to support my gut health today? It affects everything from the moods that you're in to whether or not you have depression, to how energized you are, to what foods you crave, to how well you can think. There are so many things. How much inflammation you have in your body, I mean, so many things are affected by our gut health. So I want to encourage you, if you haven't put these connections together before, to really think about what are some ways that you can support your gut health, even if you haven't been on antibiotics anytime recently, because gut health is so critical to the way we function, to the way we learn, to the way we focus, to all kinds of things. And so these tips that I'm giving you in this podcast episode are gonna be for those of you, even if you haven't been on antibiotics, okay? Okay, so I said number three was probiotics. I want to get into number four now. And number four is one that I truly work on all of the time anyway, but I'm just going even harder right now because of the fact that I was on antibiotics. And so what I call the category a number four is I'm strengthening the lining of my gut and I'm supporting my gut integrity. Okay, so what do I mean when I say that? Strengthening the lining of my gut or supporting my gut integrity. So I've shared in other videos and in courses I've I've taught that when I refer to the gut, you could you could you could call the gut as broadly as your entire digestive system, but that's not really what I'm talking about when I talk about the gut. I'm focused more on the two most important organs in terms of probiotics and the beneficial bacteria, which is your small intestine and your large intestine. And your small intestine and your large intestine are the last two organs that the food comes through after you chew the food in your mouth. You chew it really well, it goes down your esophagus, it eventually lands in your stomach, and then it comes out of your stomach, it passes through something called the duodenum, it goes past the liver and the gallbladder, which are there to inject bile into the process. The pancreas is also injecting insulin to the process, and then the food travels out of the stomach and it gets down into the small intestine, then into the large intestine, and then it's excreted from your body. Your large intestine is the same thing as your colon. Okay. So the small intestine, the large intestine is really where all of these beneficial bacteria, all of the, I just noticed, by the way, I was itching the back of my head. So I'm gonna do this while I'm talking to you guys. I have to stop doing it. It's like it is a very involuntary, unconscious thing that I'm doing because it will itch and then I will scratch it. So I'm just gonna hold these so that I don't do it. Okay. I'm at Asking you guys to keep me accountable. Thank you. So, and by the way, strengthening my gut health is also going to help with the back of this for the psoriasis, and I'll get to that in a minute. So, when I talk about supporting gut integrity and strengthening the gut lining, what I mean by that is in the walls of the small intestine and large intestine, I want you to think about it as if the walls of those organs, especially your small intestine, it's like wet paper towel. Okay. It's very delicate. Wet paper towel, think about how easy you can puncture through wet paper towel. Now, there's no sort of medical Western diagnosis for something called leaky gut. That's actually not a clinical condition, but undoubtedly you've heard the term leaky gut because a lot of practitioners use that term to describe a condition when the gut wall integrity is compromised. So if the walls of your small intestine are working properly, I always say it should be like what I picture a jellyfish as like in the water. You've seen a video of a jellyfish. Hopefully, you haven't been stung by one. I am lucky that I have not. But if the jellyfish is going like this, it's kind of moving like this, your walls of your small intestine should be doing that, letting certain things out, letting certain things in, letting certain things out, letting certain things in. And it's a very delicate process. Now, if you get to the point where you have quote unquote leaky gut, again, that's not a diagnosis of sorts, but what it really looks like is now the integrity, the walls of your gut lining are like, hey, hey, I can see through you. They're more like this, okay, where they're letting things out and letting things in that shouldn't be coming in and out of your gut. So after antibiotics, which are like again, a bulldozer, imagine taking a bulldozer through your gut, that's gonna rip up the walls of your gut. That's not gonna be good for your gut health. So we want to work on the integrity of those tissues by supporting it with certain products, certain supplements. And in my case, these are powders that I take to support that gut integrity. And I was just feeling a um like a what is it, a desire to itch. So I just grabbed these again. Okay, good. See? I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it, guys. Here we are, keeping myself accountable to you. Okay, so I'm taking two different powders and one liquid. Okay, so I'm gonna show you images of those powders here. So the two powders, the one is also from that company called Microbiome Labs, and this is a powder called mega mucosa. And this is very good for strengthening your gut lining. Mega mucosa is something I rotate in once a year, and I'll take it for like three months to really give my gut lining an extra boost. It's like strengthening it. So these are so, not even so tight, but just so um the right thickness. Picture that we don't want the paper towel, the wet paper towel to get holes in it. We want this to work properly. So mega mucosa is an amazing gut lining, strengthening support product. And so I'm taking that. Again, I'll put all the links underneath this video if these are interesting to you. And then the other one, which I kind of consider to be like a mega mucosa light, you guys, I actually take this supplement every single day of my life. It is powdered L-glutamine. Okay, this is a great supplement. This is an amino acid. All L-glutamine is is amino acid, and it's a fantastic supplement to support your gut lining, to strengthen that gut lining on a daily basis. So I put, you know how I do my lemon water with my creatine and my redmond's relight every single morning? In that same bottle, I put a half a teaspoon of L-glutamine. And then at night before bed, in my last bottle, half a teaspoon of L-glutamine. So I do one teaspoon of L-glutamine a day. The mega mucosa, I do one scoop of that. No, do I do two? I do two scoops of that a day. So that bottle, because it's much smaller than the L-glutamine, it doesn't last as long. So I have to do more of that. But the L-glutamine lasts a long time because that bottle is so big. In addition to the mega mucosa, which again I do two scoops of a day, and then the L-glutamine, which I do a half a teaspoon in the morning and a half a teaspoon at night. So in addition to those two supplements, the other gut supporting supplement that I do that I love, which is strengthening my gut lining and supporting my gut integrity, is this, which is called ion gut support. Now, this is a liquid, and normally I do a half a teaspoon of this in my water in the morning and a half a teaspoon at night. But when I'm really working to strengthen my gut for the next three months, I'm doing one teaspoon of this in the morning and one teaspoon of it at night. And I do that, and you could just take it, a teaspoon, and just drink it. It actually kind of tastes like dirt because it's got um ancient soil. It's humic and I think it's humic acid. I don't think it's fic acid. I think it's just humic acid from ancient soil. It may also be fic acid, but amazing for your body and for your gut health. It also, the reason I take ion gut support all the time, even when I'm not working on my gut after antibiotics, is because ion gut support is one of the only supplements. I think it's the only one, certainly that I'm aware of, that has been shown to clear and clean glyphosate from the body. I actually watched a video about this way back in like, I don't know, it was from 2014. The founder of Ion Gut Support or the Ion Company is Dr. Zach Bush, and he is very obsessed with helping people learn about how to get glyphosate out of the body. And so that was the primary intention when he created this product, but it also strengthens the gut tremendously. So again, those three supplements that I'm taking to strengthen my gut lining and support my gut integrity are mega mucosa, L-glutamine, and ion gut support. Okay, I know this is a lot. I know this is a lot. And I'm I've already gone through four of the five things. So just as a recap, because I like to recap you guys, remember number one, eat real food, need a variety. Number two, eat fermented foods. Number three, we're going to take our probiotics. Number four, we're gonna support our gut integrity and strengthen our gut lining. And then number five, which I'm just going a little bit harder on right now, even though this is always a priority to me, is I am taking supplements. Okay. And when I say taking supplements, I don't mean the ones I just talked about because I get the probiotics and the gut lining ones are supplements, but I mean just making sure my body is getting the right nutrition in it, including fiber. Okay. Fiber is also so helping to populate your gut bacteria. So in my water every morning, and I'm just continuing this because I always do this, I add, and I'm gonna show this here, a scoop of tomorrow's nutrition sun fiber. So this is six or seven grams of guar fiber, which is excellent for supporting your gut health and giving your bacteria food to feed on. So remember, there's a world of prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics. I've done a whole um podcast episode that I'll link below about postbiotics. I interviewed a woman who has created a company all around postbiotics. So, in terms of the probiotics that we're taking, either in the pill form or in the fermented foods, the kefir, the sauerkraut, et cetera, we have to give those foods, those bacteria, we have to give them things to eat. They have to eat just like we do. So when we eat more fiber, when we eat a lot of raspberries, when we put psyllium husk in our water, when we use tomorrow's nutrition sun fiber, all of that awesome fibrous material is gonna help to feed that beneficial bacteria, which will just make it be able to procreate and grow in your system, which is awesome because we want, we want to rebuild that tropical rainforest that we bulldozed with the antibiotics. So when I say taking supplements in this category five, I do mean things like fiber. I want to make sure you're taking fiber, but I also mean things like making sure you're getting your micronutrients in. So are you taking really good vitamins and minerals? Are you getting things like zinc, like copper, like manganese? Are you getting your magnesium, your calcium, your potassium? Are you getting your vitamin A, your vitamin C, your vitamin D? Are you getting all your B vitamins? So I take a handful of a different different supplements, but I'm doing that, you guys, specifically as I'm healing from being on antibiotics because of the fact that those nutrients are going to continue to support the diversity of my gut health, just like all the other things I've told you on this list. So remember, you are made of cells. Your entire body is just one big bag of cells. And those cells make up tissues, those tissues make up organs, those organs make up systems, and those systems make up your body. So, what are those cells comprised of? They're comprised of the food that you eat or don't eat, and it's part of the reason why you feel so much more vibrant and alive and happy and have better skin and look better overall and are more metabolically healthy when you're supporting your body with really good nutrition. So I'm gonna show you one of the supplements. I've talked about this in prior podcasts, but this is called IM8, like the number the letter I, the letter M, and the number eight. So this is a daily vitamin and mineral combo that I've been taking that I just love because it makes it very convenient for me. Now I know a lot of people have heard of or talked about AG1. Many, many years ago, I talked I tried AG1. I personally didn't like it. I didn't like the taste, and then intuitively I just didn't feel like it was a high quality product. And so I stopped taking it. I also thought it was very expensive for what you were getting. So I was very excited about a year ago to discover this new supplement called IM8 because they have a really good scientific staff. One of my friends, he's a chief science officer of that company, and I do trust their sourcing. And I've corresponded with the founder of the company about where they get their vegetables and fruits that go into it. And so this is a supplement that I particularly trust. And then I take a number of other supplements that are key in order to having me have the most optimal metabolic health and gut health. So I take a really good magnesium at night. I take a really high-quality essential fatty acid supplement. I take some um essentially multivitamins and minerals that support my hormone health because I'm really keyed in on hormone health right now, of course. And all of those are allowing my body to have the nutrients that then the beneficial bacteria that I'm giving it and all of these other ways can feed on. So this means that I'm not gonna get off antibiotics and all of a sudden, like most people do, they have insane cravings for sugar. They have like, there are a lot of people who will take antibiotics, you guys, that will say, I feel like a madman took over me and I just had to like, I don't know, go and eat a whole box of movie-sized Swedish fish or sour patch kids or whatever. Like they really, really crave sugar intensely. And that has to do with the fact that they now have bugs in their system that are craving those kinds of sugars and then they're proliferating in their system because their whole entire rainforest is gone. Okay, and the rainforest in the past, there would be animals that would probably kill some of those bad guys, but now the bad guys are just taking over and proliferating, and then all of a sudden you become this sugar monster. And this happens a lot of times to people that are on antibiotics. In fact, I worked with a client several years ago. We started to work with her daughter because her daughter had a tremendous amount of issues around depression and anxiety and all sorts of things. And ultimately, in our full investigation of her story, we traced it back to a severe, severe bladder infection that she had got when she was very young. She was like six months old and she had been on IV antibiotics and it wrecked her gut health. And here she was at 14 years old, having not recovered yet. And so when we got her on a really tremendous gut healing protocol, she was literally a new human. I mean, no anxiety, no depression. Like it can make such a difference in the way you experience life, you guys. So I can't say enough good things about making sure that you're focusing on your gut health and feeding your gut with the beneficial bacteria, the good bugs, and all of the things that it really needs to thrive. It will make a huge difference in terms of how you move about your life. Okay, so just to recap, because I want to go over those five things one more time, even though I know I've given you a lot of recaps, in case this is just a quick summary for you to watch at the end. It's number one, we're gonna eat real food and have a variety of that. Number two, we're gonna eat fermented foods. And remember that includes our kimchi and our sauerkraut, it includes our kefir and our yogurts, and it includes my favorite coconut cult. You could also get other coconut yogurts. I just personally love coconut cult. Number three, we're gonna take probiotics. So that means we're gonna look at things like I mentioned seed, Q58, megasporbiotic, maybe acromancy aminocephila or other probiotics. Like I said, I'm gonna rotate a lot of these, so I'll link a bunch of my favorites below. Number four, we're gonna support our gut integrity and we're gonna strengthen our gut lining. And I mentioned those supplements to you as well. We'll put links below. And then number five, we're gonna take supplements because this is also gonna help our gut health. You know what? I'm just gonna give you one more bonus tip because I'll do this at the end of the episode. I failed to mention that we're also going to stay hydrated. And hydration is just so important for our health overall. So I can't share a podcast with you about health, including gut health, without reminding you of the importance of hydration. I hope that you've enjoyed this episode. I hope that if you've been on antibiotics, if your kids have been on antibiotics, if someone you love has been on antibiotics, that this is motivation for you to understand exactly what you can do in order to support your gut and to heal from antibiotics. So you're not dealing with things down the road like intense cravings, like anxiety, like depression, like all sorts of calamity that can be caused from gut health stuff. One more thing before I let you go, because I said I would say this, because of the fact that some of this stuff is related. Um, you know, I have this psoriasis patch back here. And so this is what caused this whole experience for me in the beginning. I'm also doing some anti-inflammatory things for this. So I've started a few anti-inflammatory peptides, and I've also started to sprinkle just one fourth of a teaspoon, very small amount, but a fourth of a teaspoon of bee pollen on my meals one time per day. So I had uh my pancakes this morning that I made with a banana and a little bit of honey and some nut butter, and then I sprinkled bee pollen all over it. Oh my gosh, so good. But bee pollen can be really good for reducing inflammation. It can also support women in the time of perimetopause and menopause and help with night sweats and hot flashes and those kinds of things. So I've been doing a lot of research about bee pollen lately, and I was excited to find some at the Nashville's Farmers Market last weekend. Okay, I will actually let you go now. Thank you for being here. I love hosting you guys with the Energetically Efficient show. If there were any aha's that you had or if this was helpful, I'd so appreciate it if you shared the episode with someone and if you liked it. And I will come back next week with yet another episode. Thanks so much for being here. Bye bye.