C. Diff Prevention: Gut Health Strategies That Help

Author's Bio: Marcie Vaske, MS, LN, CNS

Today we're going to talk about C. Diff prevention and strategies to help your gut health. Welcome back to our channel.

My name is Marcie Vaske and I'm a functional licensed nutritionist with Oswald Digestive Clinic. I'm going to link our website here where you can easily make an initial appointment, and I'll link our free guide, which is Five Ways to Improve Your Gut Health.

So today I'm going to talk about C. Diff.

What exactly is C. Diff? I'll run through what it is, how you can contract C. Diff, what the toll that it takes on your gut health. We'll follow it up with how you can prevent C. Diff, and if you do end up with C. Diff infection, how you can improve your gut health and be healthy again.

[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]

What Is C. Diff?

So let's dig into our topic. If you have ever experienced any kind of gut health issue, you know how disturbing it can be and how it affects your life. And if you've ever had C. Diff, especially how uncomfortable it can be, and actually it's quite serious. So C. Diff is short for clostridium difficile, and this is a bacteria that can create severe diarrhea and severe inflammation of the colon. C. Diff infection often or most times affects people who have taken antibiotics, and we know antibiotics can disturb the normal flora in our gut, which leads to this overabundance of C. Diff to take hold and create an infection that can make you pretty sick. Now, it's not that if you take one round of antibiotics, you may end up with C. Diff, although that does happen, but more often it happens after several rounds of antibiotics and your gut never has time to improve its good flora.

Symptoms of C. Diff

The symptoms of C. Diff are things like watery diarrhea, frequent stooling, abdominal pain, cramping, bloating, a loss of appetite, sometimes fevers for people if it gets way too far into it, and really creating a situation where you're getting very sick leading to malabsorption. So if you are having any of these symptoms, obviously you need to go in and have that checked. But today as I talked or as I've already stated, I want to run through how can we help to support our gut flora to keep ourselves healthy and keep C. Diff out of it.

Why Gut Health Matters

So we know what C. Diff is now, but why does gut health really matter in this? And we know that healthy gut bacteria, C. Diff is part of it. Everybody has it, but it really rears its ugly head. If we've taken antibiotics that kill off some of our good flora and it doesn't have a chance to rebound, and it ends up, C. Diff ends up being becoming more opportunistic and leading to infection. So it really is a disruption of your microbiome that leads to a overgrowth of C. Diff. So with the use of antibiotics and the breakdown of healthy flora, the microbiome actually competes with C. Diff and it wants to take up nutrients and the space. But when that competition is gone, then we end up with C. Diff spores and those spores are oftentimes resistant to many different types of antibiotics, therefore, it has more of a chance to generate and populate and become an infection.

Now once the C. Diff is active, what happens here is that it's germinating, it's growing, it's taking out space, but they also off produce a toxin that inflames the intestinal wall leading to just that inflammation in the lining of the intestinal tract and of course diarrhea and what we would call colitis. C. Diff also has a bigger chance of gaining control when we have a weakened immune response.

So we know that there's really have 80% of our immune system in our intestinal tract, and if there's a disrupted gut and a lot of inflammation going on, our immune system has a hard time fighting off this infection. And this is where we'll see worsening symptoms with c diff. So let's say you need to take an antibiotic for something else going on in the body. So how can you help support your gut flora to be as strong as possible during treatment?

Supporting Gut Flora During Antibiotic Use

And one way would be to take probiotics alongside an antibiotic. And typically the rule is to take the antibiotic and then four hours later you can take a probiotic. You want to make sure there are plenty of time in between. Otherwise, that antibiotic will kill off all the good flora that you're taking orally. And there are a few particular strains that are going to be most helpful when taking an antibiotic. One will be Saccharomyces Boulardii, and another is Lactobacillus Rhamnosus. And these are most in research have seen the most benefit in keeping C. Diff at bay as well as supporting good overall your microbiome.

Dietary Strategies for C. Diff Prevention

And of course, there's diet strategies too. So if you're taking an antibiotic, you can also support just your gut health by making sure you're eating some fiber rich foods. So getting plenty of vegetables and fruits and even grains that help to support the growth of healthy microbiome. You can also implement things like fermented foods, yogurts or kimchi or miso or sauerkraut are all great or add-ins for keeping that gut health healthy.

Now we know what C. Diff is, we know what kind of symptoms it can create. We know that we can take probiotics along with antibiotics and also making sure we get in some healthy foods in terms of fiber foods and fermented foods.

What to Eat During a C. Diff Infection

But if you do end up with c diff, there are things that you can help support just getting through the infection itself. And one would be just keeping your diet pretty bland, incorporating bone broths that provides a lot of minerals, nutrients, and even a little bit of protein and collagen to help support the gut.

You can consume things like soft foods, so maybe it's going to be cottage cheeses and maybe some fruit on top. Things that are really easy to digest, oftentimes can support just digestion in general. And then getting a little bit of good fiber along with that. And some protein. You can also do cooked vegetables, thinking if it's easy to chew, it's easy to digest.

So when you're getting through an infection, that's one way to do so. Also implementing maybe some smoothies, so things that have protein powder in it, or you can throw in some fruit and a little bit of vegetable and some healthy fats.

That way you're not having to really, your gut doesn't have to work very hard, but you're still getting nutrients so that you can heal from the infection. And of course, incorporating plenty of water, you need to stay very hydrated because as I said, a C. Diff infection can cause a lot of watery diarrhea stool, which just depletes your water and electrolytes.

So in addition to making sure you're getting enough water, you can also add in an electrolyte. There's many different brands out there that are electrolytes are all around us right now, so you can throw that in your water and sip on it throughout the day. Or you can try coconut water, which is also another option to help replenish and rehydrate.

Recovery Tips After C. Diff

And of course, as you're coming out of the infection, just want to make sure that dietarily, you've put in prebiotic fiber such as cooked oats or bananas or sweet potatoes, things that will help build up and help your flora, your own flora flourish. Also, I talked about the fermented foods, and you can do a probiotic on top of that.

So as you're maybe coming out of a seat disinfection, you can make sure that you're doing all of those dietary things in terms of foods as well as adding in a probiotic and being very mindful about making sure you're getting in those good fibers and fermented foods and supplementing with a probiotic. It doesn't have to be forever, but definitely right after that infection is really a critical time to help rebuild that flora in your microbiome.

So C. Diff is a very serious infection. If you've dealt with it yourself, you already know. I don't even need to tell you that. So I think this whole video is just to share with you how to keep your gut healthy, making sure you're eating a wide variety of foods, getting fermented foods to help build up a good microbiome. And this way, if you do need to take an antibiotic, it would be less likely that your flora would be so broken down that C. Diff would be able to take over.

Lifestyle Factors That Impact Gut Health

So in addition to foods and probiotics, even thinking about your stress and even your sleep, so impactful when it comes to gut health. So keep your gut strong and stay healthy.

Again, I'm going to link our website here if you're struggling with gut health so you can easily make an initial appointment. And please look at our free guide, which is Five Ways to Improve Your Gut Health, and also you can comment down below if you have any comments or questions.

We love to get them and thanks so much for watching. Bye-bye.

If you'd like to explore any of this information further or obtain an individualized nutrition plan, you can schedule an initial appointment at our clinic.  We also take insurance and some of our clients get full coverage, which is great.

Or you can just start by downloading our FREE GUIDE: 5 WAYS TO IMPROVE GUT HEALTH