How long does it take to rebuild your good flora?

[chrissy72]

I'm now a few weeks post c.diff and I'm taking probiotics and eating yogurt every day. I want to know how long does it generally take to rebuild y our good flora. Are we talking weeks, months, etc...?

[anlockwood]

I have always heard one year is what it takes to get your gut flora back to a good place. That doesn't mean that there isn't more good then bad to beat out the c diff but just means that it takes that long to rebuild to what you originally had.

Amanda

[beth22]

Amanda is right and it also depends on how many rounds of AB you had and what you eat. Yogurt and kefir are good to rebuild the flora, so you should continue to eat the yogurt. Unless probiotics start to give you intestinal problems, it won't hurt to take those for a long time either. It takes at least 6 months the doctor told me, but that is minimum. A year is more likely.

[Vikingjeff28]

Same stroy I was told by GI. He also said don't expect to get exactly back to where you were before, you may but may not. I would say I can eat about 30% of what I would really like to eat and I am 9 months out.

[klt03301]

I am 16 months out and can eat whatever I want. This took a VERY long time, though. It's just been in the past couple of months I've been able to eat raw veggies, even lettuce. I thought my salad days were over, but I was wrong. :-). I had to take things very slowly.

Karen

[trob25]

I was told by my GI it takes a year to a year and a half, I'm at 11 months and while I have long streaks of being ok and can eat more foods than I first could, I also have weeklong episodes of IBS from hell, triggered by food or god knows what. I'm thinking and hoping I will be better at the year and a half mark as a complete end to IBS in about 18 days (1 year since C-diff was killed) doesn't seem likely.

[bpagan]

It has been slightly over a year for me and I still am not 100%. I may go for a few days feeling fine and then for a few feeling lousy. I have not noticed that my eating habits or particular foods make a difference one way or the other. I will say that I have improved and hope I never have to relive last September.

[Vikingjeff28]

I was at 10 months...:(. With all the probiotics I poured into me I am amazed I relapsed. The good news is Xifaxin seems to be working well, I feel great right now and bowels working normal. Here is to it staying that way! One thing he said, I could have been C diff positive for a while and because of all the probiotics it took a lot longer for me to see symptoms that would cause me to think I was positive, given the hellacious nature of the first two rounds I thought nothing of the occasional D's until mucus appeared.

[Bobbie]

Mucus doesn't mean much -- just indicates irritation but do doublecheck this with your doc.

[Hua Kul]

A few random thoughts.

Here is an interesting article from Wired magazine.
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/new ... riahacking

From what I've read it's typical to have 600 or more different microbes populating our gut at any one time, out of a menu of 6,000 or so known to inhabit the guts of the world. I don't really understand how the half dozen or so we could get from probiotics can help much, unless some are WAY more helpful than others.

If our only sources of food are processed we may be missing out on the bacteria we really need. It may be worthwhile to buy natural unsprayed foods (I don't trust the word "organic") from a farmers market and eat them raw. Pick a few apples off the tree, or raspberries, etc., and eat them unwashed.

Let your children play in the dirt, it may help them later in life.

An interesting blog post on gut flora.
http://moderndragons.blogspot.com/2007/ ... flora.html

Autism site about gut flora.
http://www.science-autism.org/gutflora.htm

Something I've just seen for the first time but might be worth investigating, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD, initially developed for celiac disease).
http://www.files.spiritofmotherhood.mys ... 20scd.html

God Bless,
--Hua Kul