Hacker News Reader

There are indeed. Basically if you take certain antibiotics you're rolling the dice, because they kill off a bunch of your gut bacteria, and when the populations recover you might end up with toxic strains dominant which is an acute illness. I got a c difficile infection after a strong round of antibiotics. It took months to recover, because basically the treatment is to take more rounds of antibiotics and hope the right bacteria dominate.

View on HN

I wonder if ingestion of relatively large amounts of robust probiotics would have helped. I've tended kefir grains off and on for the last 20 years or so, and have read that the curd that forms from kefir remains intact a bit deeper into the GI tract than e.g. yogurt. Some people eat the grains themselves which seems like it would be a large, robust colony of mostly helpful bacteria that I assume would fight for territory against c diff.

Reminds me, it's probably time to source some more kefir grains!

Yes, in fact I didn’t put in all the details, after several rounds of unsuccessful antibiotic treatments I basically megadosed probiotics in several forms. It was that which actually stabilized me. I know the research is here or there, but due to that I always get a bunch of probiotics after I have antibiotics. I didn’t use kefir grains though, will look into that!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com