A wide range of factors influences your body and stomach. Alcohol, coffee, certain meals, and other substances can alter how our bodies function and adapt. Maintaining a healthy gut is essential to your overall health and happiness. So, does alcohol kill probiotics? How does this affect the stomach? We are here to find out the answer to that.
Alcohol Use While Taking Medicine
Your doctor may have advised you to avoid alcohol while taking certain medications, such as antibiotics, if you have ever taken them. Why is this given that abstaining from alcohol while using opiate painkillers is also advised? Well, drinking alcohol with taking certain drugs can harm your health and have some adverse side effects. What about probiotics and alcohol, though? Find out by reading on.
Taking probiotics differs slightly from taking medications. Live bacteria called probiotics are used to improve your gut flora. They aid the body’s normal and essential functions like digestion, nutrient absorption, and cognition. You should not consume alcohol if you are taking probiotics to support your digestive system and promote the health of your gut. How does it impact the core, then?
What Effect Does Alcohol Have On The Gut?
In general, alcohol is not very good for the body. Even though drinking alcohol can be enjoyable, you should only do it sometimes because it is toxic to the body. Alcohol, for instance, can affect your digestion, immune system, cognition, and blood sugar levels. Your liver will have to work harder when you drink alcohol to remove the poisons and waste from your body. By resulting in fat accumulation and inflammation, excessive alcohol use can harm the liver. Toxins can accumulate and cause damage to other organ systems if the liver cannot eliminate them.
Additionally, mainly if drunk in significant amounts, alcohol at high concentrations can destroy the beneficial microorganisms in your intestines. Even though bacteria may seem terrible, your body needs many healthy bacteria to function. Your immune system and digestive system may not function correctly without beneficial microorganisms. For our bodies’ vital processes and activities to run smoothly, a healthy gut microbiome requires a lot of beneficial bacteria.
The harmful bacteria in your digestive tract start to grow when the healthy bacteria in your digestive tract are eliminated (by alcohol). Your body is now more vulnerable to harmful bacteria and viruses. Dysbiosis occurs when your gut experiences an increase in harmful bacteria rather than beneficial bacteria. IBS and several other chronic medical disorders, including bacterial overgrowth, obesity, and diabetes, can be brought on by dysbiosis.
The condition where the intestinal barrier has grown inflamed, separates, and becomes leaky is known as “leaky gut syndrome.” This makes it easier for harmful viruses and bacteria in your gut to enter the bloodstream and do you harm. At the very least, this might cause the immune system to get activated or cause an infection. Dysbiosis patients frequently experience a wide range of chronic ailments as a result. Many people use probiotics to regulate their gut microbiota to prevent dysbiosis.
How Do Probiotics Work?
Probiotics are live bacteria, and it is suitable for the digestive system. These beneficial bacteria help maintain the equilibrium in your stomach and bring it back to normal. Yogurt and other food supplements frequently contain probiotics, which you can eat to enhance the health of your digestive system. The beneficial bacteria and normal flora of your body are increased and maintained with these living microorganisms. What happens, though, if you consume alcohol while taking probiotics?
It might be challenging to determine which probiotic is most suitable for you because there are wide varieties. Most probiotic supplements contain a variety of bacterial species and strains, frequently including those that have been proven beneficial for the gut, like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria.
Various bacteria serve various bodily purposes, depending on what you need them for; some operate better than others. Consult your doctor or a medical expert for advice if you have any questions.
Can You Use Probiotics While Drinking Alcohol?
It’s not like drinking alcohol while taking medication; it will not negatively affect your health. Therefore, in theory, you can drink alcohol and probiotics simultaneously. However, because alcohol may be poisonous to the body and can eradicate healthy bacteria in the digestive tract, it might affect how effective your probiotics are.
Alcohol destroys any beneficial bacteria in your intestines and probably kills some beneficial bacteria in the probiotic supplement you have been taking. Therefore, it makes no sense to consume alcohol while using probiotics because you would be reversing the benefits of the probiotics.
The amount of alcohol you are ingesting does matter, though. For example, a few drinks here and there won’t significantly affect your gut health or the effectiveness of the probiotics. Conversely, binge drinking can harm your liver, general health, and gut flora. The dehydration effect could cause you to experience constipation as well. By taking your probiotics either before or after drinking alcohol, you can try to lessen the adverse effects of alcohol on the probiotics.
The optimal time to take probiotics is in the morning, before or with your first meal, to avoid an interaction. As a result, the probiotics have plenty of time to enter the colon and start working their incredible healthy magic.
In summary, alcohol can destroy probiotic and naturally occurring beneficial bacteria in the body. As a result, drinking alcohol can counteract the benefits of a probiotic pill. Avoid consuming both at once.
Final Thoughts
Drinking alcohol may affect the probiotic flora that makes up your gut microbiome. It may cause or worsen IBS symptoms by changing the delicate balance of your gut bacteria. Your gut may benefit from probiotics, but doing so while consuming large amounts of alcohol is counterproductive and will not help you in any way. In most circumstances, it won’t result in a negative interaction.
It is advisable to have probiotics first thing in the morning before consuming alcohol to give the probiotics time to do their magic. The following day, assuming you drank alcohol sensibly the night before, you should take probiotics to guarantee that your gut flora has been restored and is healthy.
