Oh Noes, All My Biots!

Sorry for the light blogging; we're having stupid stupid health problems at the moment. Actually, readers might have advice about this: Violet has to take antibiotics every evening now, half the normal dose, to ward off kidney infection. Is this going to mess her intestinal flora up or something? I guess I can feed her yogurt, but is there something like a supplement that kids can take? Here in Singapore people are really into Yakult and similar drinks, which is good, although I find it mildly revolting. Thoughts?

Comments

[Naadir Jeewa]

You need a really high dose, as most of the bacteria die when they hit stomach acid. There's limited evidence that probiotics prevent antibiotic-related diarhheoa. Drinking Yakult on the use-by date provides the lowest experimental dosage that's been used in children. Try it, I guess.This is the best stuff.

[August]

Lactobacillus acidophilus
in pill form. It works, best after the course of antibiotics is done- usually takes a week or two to get back to normal. Additionally, you get to choose which dairy product to eat.

[Lyn LeJeune]

probiotics for kids can be purchased from a health food store.

[bitchphd]

Acidophilus really is good. You can get it in pills, or you can buy acidophilous dairy products--at least, in the US, you can.

[mayita]

Oh my goodness oh my goodness. I went through something similar last year I wish I had asked this question. I had to flood my system with antibiotics for almost a month due to a botched root canal and I could have avoided a whole lot of hell if I'd known.

Those intestinal flora take a loooong time to come back and it's one of the most unpleasant processes I've ever gone through. Ever. E-VAR.

Yes, take probiotics. Yogurt is good but not enough for what Belle is going through. Probiotics are expensive but you can pay for them now or you can pay for them to fix the damage after the fact, once you're already in intestinal agony.
Read the back to see how many critters are in each capsule. You want to take 24 billion bacteria a day when you're on antibiotics. You can take them all at once, always with food. Oh, and keep them in the fridge.

I hope this helps.

[mayita]

P.S:

Whew. I re-read my post above and noticed the frantic tone. It came from a sincere hope that Belle --and anyone else who may require prolonged treatment with antibiotics-- can avoid these little-known yet not-uncommon side effects.

I know everybody is different and reacts to these things differently. I can only speak to my own experience. The information I'm posting is about what it took to re-build my own youngish, otherwise-healthy digestive system after decimating it with antibiotics.

Enter "antibiotic induced colitis" into a google search for a basic idea of what we're trying to avoid here...

[belle waring]

thanks for the info mayita, and I'm sorry you had such a rough time with it. I guess I'll go to the GNC or whatever and see if they have some chewable probiotics for the little'uns. they don't have the acidophilus milk here as far as I know.