"What Can I Do For My Friend Who Had Surgery?"

Recovering from surgery?  Check in with your gut to ease your recovery.

Even when we plan for surgery there are so many details that taking care if our background body functions is rarely the top of the list.  Just expecting to work like systems to return to normal functioning after surgery and anesthesia is a mistake. So often people ask me, “What can I do for my friend? “ One thing you can do is feed your friend some probiotics.

Our body and digestive system house trillions of living organisms.  These organisms are the beneficial bacteria called probiotics.  They break down food to usable molecules for us.  The microbiome is the genetic material of all the microbes - bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses - that live on and inside the human body. The number of genes in all the microbes in one person's microbiome is 200 times the number of genes in the human genome. WHAT? and OMG!

We can supplement our biome by mixing and matching gut-healthy foods like Kombucha, pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt and kefir.

So in someways there are more those bacteria cells then there are “human” cells.  When they are happy, your gut is happy and unfortunately the converse is true.  When they are unhappy your gut is unhappy.  Umm hello bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea.  There are many things that make probiotics unhappy including antibiotics.

Unfortunately, we use antibiotics preventively at the time of surgery.  Those antibiotics stop bacteria in their tracks.  Antibiotics don’t discriminate so they kill both “good” and “bad” bugs.  The antibiotic we use most commonly are cephalosporins.  They have strength to destroy most skin bacteria and some of our best gut bacteria. 

So after any surgery it is helpful to boost any good bacteria that is left behind.  Grow those guys strong enough so you gut works like a dream.  Give your probiotics food and love.  Probiotics feed well on prebiotics.  Prebiotics contain the fiber we can’t break down to short chain fatty acids, we need our little bacteria friends to do that for us.  Some common prebiotics are:

Onions

Garlic

Leeks 

Bananas

Apples

Flaxseed

Seaweed

Best to eat these raw, so that makes the onions, garlic and leeks less attractive. But, bananas and  flaxseed are an easy add to oatmeal or a smoothie.

So, if you are going to have surgery preload with probiotics.  After surgery, recover with prebiotics.  Probiotics can be a little too stimulating so wait to reintroduce those until you are “back to normal”.