Not all heroes wear capes

Probiotics. Kinda like your very own set of gut homies.* 

As I maneuver the minefields of myopathy** and medication side effects, I'm finding a recurring theme: Probiotics are incredible.

Just a few of the sneaky little issues that have popped up:

• Because I’m taking drugs to shut down my immune system, I’m also taking a low-dose antibiotic to prevent little infections like you might get from a paper cut since right now my body can’t do business with bad bacteria like it normally would. Since antibiotics also take out good bacteria, there’s a good chance of diarrhea or general gastrointestinal distress. 
• Prednisone can mess with the balance of microoganisms enough to make a happy place for thrush.
• One of the side effects of prednisone is depression/mood swings.
• One of the findings from the endoscopy of the esophagus was that I have a kind of yeast growing in my esophagus. 

The one thing that addresses each of these? Yep, probiotics. 

Naturally occurring in yogurt and fermented foods like pickles and sauerkraut, probiotics seed your gut with the good bacteria needed for a healthy digestive system. Some studies have shown a connection between probiotics and mood though that’s not definitive at this point.

One of my favorite Radio Lab episodes on the connection between the microbes in your gut and your mood.

Probiotics might even have a contribution to make in the fight against COVID-19.

So I’m eating lots of yogurt and also supplementing with probiotic capsules containing lots of different strains of bacteria, including lactobacillus and bacillus coagulans.

*When our son was little, we found a truck stop near Raton, NM that had gumball machines with tiny figurines of people who seemed like they had to be from northern New Mexican. Our introduction to Homies.

** “Myopathy” means muscle disease in Greek (myo- “muscle” + pathos -pathy “suffering”)