Dr. Amy Nett: Again, when we think about treating the gut, we think about this as a two-step treatment. Again, if we’re talking sequentially versus overlapping, there’s a little bit of overlap, but I think of treating the gut as, step one, kill off the bad stuff. Step two, repopulate with good stuff. Nourish the gut. So step one, we’re doing our dysbiosis protocol. That’s the GI-Synergy, InterFase Plus, and Lauricidin. We’re killing off what we can, getting rid of the things we don’t want. Unfortunately we’re probably going to kill off some of the good stuff, too. Hopefully not too much, but it might happen.
So let’s say, we did eight weeks of the herbal antimicrobial protocol. Step two, you’re not done there, and I always try to really emphasize this and reinforce this because I don’t want patients doing the antimicrobial protocol and then sort of wandering away and thinking, “OK, I did the antimicrobials. I don’t need to follow up. I’m done with it, and either it didn’t work, or it did work and now I don’t need to check back in.” I try to be really clear. We’re going to do step one, which is antimicrobials, but step two is just as important, and that’s nourishing the healthy gut with prebiotics and probiotics. So for the initial two to three months after doing an herbal antimicrobial protocol, I’m still doing pretty high doses of probiotics, so I’m probably still going to be doing two capsules daily of MegaSporeBiotic, two capsules daily of Prescript-Assist. I might throw in Saccharomyces boulardii, and I’m going to be encouraging fermented foods. That’s going to be for two to three months, an intense rebuilding-the-gut phase.
Then when you’ve sort of done that, maybe, two- to three-month focus on prebiotics and probiotics, then you’re going to go to more of a maintenance. Depending on what your patient is eating in terms of fermented foods—kefir, lacto-fermented vegetables, sauerkraut, that sort of thing—they may or may not be taking probiotics.
It’s interesting. I think somewhere on this group we maybe talked about Restore. Maybe that was another group, but there’s a product called Restore that helps to heal tight junctions. I’m curious about it. I’m not 100 percent certain on that one, but some of my patients are coming to me about this product, and the idea behind that is it heals tight junctions, and they actually recommend you do not take probiotics with it.
In general, I have most of my patients probably on a maintenance probiotic because a lot of people just aren’t eating enough in the way of sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi, that sort of thing, so it might be a good idea. Then you might tell them to keep two different probiotics or three different probiotics around the house and just have one or the other on most days. Or if they’re starting to get sick, they might up that dosage a little bit. It depends where they’re at in terms of the post-dysbiosis treatment. The initial two to three months is going to be full doses of two to three different probiotics, and then beyond that is going to be more of a maintenance, and the maintenance dose is going to depend on what they’re eating in terms of fermented foods.