Sorry not to answer you more quickly. I’m on vacation due the holidays. The question you ask is a very good one and one that has yet to be answered.

I highly recommend that you read some of my recent speculations on gut bacteria in the section called “A continued focus on gut bacteria” that is part of the following larger article about the Human Microbiome Project (scroll down):

http://bacteriality.com/2008/07/27/microbiome/

In the article I pose the possibility that gut bacteria may not be as beneficial as currently perceived. The only real data I have to back up this possible hypothesis is that patients on the MP do kill gut microbes but their digestion almost always improves over the course of treatment. Hardly any of our subjects take probiotics or have ever felt the need to use them. Rather, as patients progress on the MP a wide range of bowel diseases start to diminish and patients find their guts function better than ever.

This suggests that the MP is not killing “good’ bacteria. At this moment that is the only comment I can make, as until researchers more fully characterize the bacteria that live in our guts (most of which have yet to be named and identified) we really don’t know what they are doing or how they might be needed for certain beneficial functions.

Sorry I cannot provide you with a more complete answer. I can say that if you choose to do the MP I doubt that you will experience any bowel problems besides those associated with immunopahology.

Best,

Amy

Presumably, antibiotics kill both pathogenic and beneficial bacteria in the gut. Theerefore, patients on the Marshall Protocol wipe out their intestinal flora with each round of antibiotics, correct? If so, how is this handled? Do MP patients have to continually re-inoculate themselves with probiotics?

Maria