Your microbiome is the entire population of microorganisms that colonize you, including not just bacteria, but also other microbes like fungi, viruses, protozoans and archaea. 

Your gut microbiome plays a large and important role in the regulation of your metabolism, gastrointestinal motility, tissue regeneration and intestinal barrier function. A growing list of evidence also proposes a role for the gut microbiome in the immune system development. Currently, a well established vision is that a healthy microbiome is for a large part responsible for the overall health of the host.

Antibiotics are valuable tools to fight infectious diseases. However, when taking antibiotics, not only the pathogen is destroyed, but the gut microbiota is depleted. By altering the composition and functions of the microbiome, the richnesss and diversity of the microbiome is decreased significantly, it contains more water content and also shows signs of delayed gastrointestinal and colonic motility. All of these effects can also lead to long term deleterious effects for the host. A study demonstrated that healthy subjects who where treated for 1 week or less with antibiotics, showed effects on their microbiome that persisted for 6 months to two years after their treatment; a loss in diversity of their microbiome and a rise in antibiotic resistant strains. The rise of multidrug-resistant organisms should also make us think twice before using antibiotics.

Luckily there is bactoyou, offering a solution to the microbiome depletion after an antibiotic treatment. By re-introducing a past captured microbiome, a bac-up, you can make sure to overcome the negative effects of an antibiotic treatment, by keeping a diverse microbiome.