What happens when you stop taking Probiotics?

Topic: What happens when you stop taking Probiotics?

Probiotic science is just one of the most recent developments in modern medicine. We are just now starting to fully comprehend how our gut microbiota works and how it is related to the remainder of the human body. Modulating that our microbiota using probiotics is a promising therapeutic tool, and it’s a standard preventative treatment in patients using multiple antibiotics or protracted time.

Benefits of probiotics

The main reason people take probiotics varies from one individual to the other. The most Frequent advantages are as follows:

1. Probiotics decrease the signs of nausea: this is particularly true after antibiotic treatment. These drugs destroy our wholesome gut microbiota, which protected us from colonization by pathogenic germs.
2. Spicy foods help regulate your intestinal transit: Even if you haven’t taken antibiotics lately, you may experience irregular bowel movements diarrhoea because of microbiota alterations or gastrointestinal distress. In these cases, probiotics foods can modulate your intestinal transit and alleviate your symptoms.
3. They prevent illnesses and various gastrointestinal diseases: Inflammatory diseases and certain infections can be avoided using supplements and foods. That is how probiotics might sometimes lessen the signs of asthma, allergies, joint pain, and other symptoms related to systemic inflammation. Certain strains may reduce inflammation in your brain tissue, regulate brain function, and may even reduce the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia.

Thus, the most rational approach is saying that if you quit taking probiotics, you may stop having these benefits. Probiotics may be used therapeutically to treat cases of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea; however, in other circumstances, it plays a preventative function.

In antibiotic-associated diarrhoea, you may not have effects by quitting probiotics, provided that you do it when your physician tells you. But if you’re consuming probiotics to reduce illness, you have to keep on carrying them to keep their multiple health benefits.

Is there any outcome if you stop taking probiotics?

The best thing about its advantages is that you won’t encounter two common side effects of drugs: dependence and tolerance.

Tolerance is a continuous demand for increasing the dose of this drug to maintain the impact you’re looking for. Dependence is the requirement of the medication and depriving of your bodily health when you’re not taking it anymore. In other words, probiotics aren’t addictive, and you won’t have some side effects should you decide to stop. Additionally, there are possible complications to your immune system by probiotics you will have to think about.

But, stopping your probiotics might not be the best idea in certain clinical scenarios:

In instances of nausea: Probiotics are often prescribed to alleviate symptoms of nausea. Should you stop taking probiotics, every bowel movement will move a huge quantity of liquid and sweep your gut from its gut microbiota. Not replacing lost microbiota with probiotics may lead to prolonged diarrhoea.

Clostridium difficile infections: This type of disease is extremely tricky to treat, and many therapeutic approaches consist of probiotic use. These supplements are useful to favour colonization by healthful bacteria to substitute Clostridium difficile. Thus, it’s not a good idea to stop probiotics use until your doctor says otherwise.

If you’re taking or about to carry antibiotics: In some cases, probiotics are prescribed before you begin taking antibiotics and during antibiotic use to decrease the incidence of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea. If you don’t complete or quit your probiotic supplements, you may not be protected against this frequent side effect of antibiotics.

Should you suffer from certain gastrointestinal diseases: If you suffer from chronic diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, your physician can prescribe probiotics supplements or increase your consumption of probiotic foods. Should you quit probiotics in such scenarios, there’s a chance you’ll have severe symptoms once again.

Cut your consumption or quit Probiotics altogether?

In the circumstances mentioned previously, probiotic use is advocated, and it’s part of the treatment. Thus, patients shouldn’t stop probiotics unless instructed by their doctor. Even if probiotics are discontinued from therapy, a common question is whether falling your dose down or quitting altogether is the ideal option.

If you’re insisting on quitting your probiotics during treatment, your doctor might recommend dropping your dose down instead. This recommendation is just meant to evaluate how you believe as you drop the dose and make clinical decisions accordingly. If you start having severe symptoms or restart your nausea, your physician might recommend continuing with the preceding doses of probiotics.

They don’t exhibit nausea symptoms, so their symptoms don’t quantify their state of disease. You may have to receive a stool culture and thorough clinical evaluation before choosing to drop down your dose further or discontinue probiotic therapy.

So, what happens when you stop taking probiotics?

Now that you know why we choose probiotics, we’ll explain what happens when you stop taking probiotics. Essentially, when you quit taking probiotics, your microbiome changes. As you may expect, should you give up putting something in your body that changes your gut’s environment, it is slowly going to revert to its normal condition!

As probiotics create another balance in your gut to what you would naturally produce, when you remove probiotics, the base issues will still exist. So, whilst probiotics will help alleviate a few of the effects caused by gut ailments, they are unable to cure them.

As beneficial as probiotics have been, they’re simply not a long-term solution and must be used along with other gut management alternatives like an increase in dietary fibre and a decrease in the consumption of alcohol and red meat.

At the end of the day, gut health is a challenging thing to get right. As it’s such a complex problem that may have multiple fixes, it’s always best to attempt to address the origin of this problem than to pop a band-aid over the problem. So, as much as probiotics may appear like a miracle pill, they’re not considered to be a long-term solution.

Though this may seem a bit doom and gloom, you won’t notice any negative side effects from stopping probiotics. Though you’re no longer adding good bacteria into your system, you will not see any horrendous withdrawal symptoms, so don’t be concerned about this! Just continue your fibre intake high, keep eating healthily, and you should not have any nasty side effects.

How long can it take for my intestine bacteria to return to their prior levels if I quit taking probiotics?
Another important question when considering what happens when you stop taking probiotics.

Should you stop taking probiotics, your gut bacteria levels are likely to return to their previous levels within a few weeks. Though for some, it may take slightly longer, the advantages of probiotics will often disappear within this timescale.

Are there any options for probiotics?

Though probiotics have their place, they are not a fix-all nutritional supplement!

If you’re trying to try and balance your gut, it can be worth trying prebiotics instead. Though these are not quite as strong as probiotics because they do not ADD to your gut bacteria, they do help to feed that present good bacteria, so you have a better chance of balancing that pesky microbiome.

We hope that this has answered all those burning questions about what happens when you stop taking probiotics!
Although you need to be safe to stop using probiotics at any moment, we don’t suggest coming to a prescribed dose for any medical condition without consulting with your doctor. You will never know when you may be doing more harm than good. So, stay safe and keep healthy!