In my last post I talked a lot about changing my mindset to focus more on nutrition instead of training. Well, seems like my gut health has forced me to focus on this issue, at least that’s the silver lining I’m attempting to make from this current situation.

Some of you may remember I posted back in August how I contracted a bad stomach bug after traveling overseas. I recovered after a couple weeks, although I only got to maybe 90% healthy. A couple weeks ago I realized that it’s been 3 MONTHS since the trip and I’m still not 100%.

It doesn’t affect my day-to-day activity, however, if my body hasn’t fixed it by now then it’s time to get some help.

I have to remember that my goal isn’t to lose weight or get strong, it’s to get healthy. Gut health is extremely important to your overall health, so I went see the doctor.

The doctor didn’t seem worried at all and explained that sometimes bacterial infections can linger. So he wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic and I was on my way.

A Surprise Side Effect

After picking up my prescription, I read through the pamphlet to make sure I did everything correctly with timing, with/without food, and all that good stuff. Then I saw one of the side effects: “Rare (0.01% to 0.1%): … tendon rupture (mainly Achilles tendon).”

Considering in the last post I wrote how happy I was to finally be less worried about my Achilles after over a year, my reaction probably looked like this:

Called up my doctor about my concern, he said that it’s a shorter duration so he’s not that worried, but take it easy at the gym as a precaution.

Mentality

As is the most difficult part of this whole journey to health, the mental aspect is the most difficult part. In this particular instance, it’s brought my fear of injury back, which is taking it’s toll.

I took it easy the past few workouts, opting for the elliptical instead of treadmill or going much slower than my “training mode” treadmill pace.

Again, I must remind myself to focus on the long term. What’s a couple weeks of not maximizing workouts to avoid needing to take a few MONTHS off due to a rupture. Looking at my workout log, I’m only burning about 100-200 calories less than when I go all out, so the sacrifice isn’t that incredible.

Still, I can’t help but feel frustrated. Of all the possible side effects, why does it have to be the ONE thing I’ve been dealing with and feel like I JUST got over?! (refer back to the meme above, haha)

I fully understand that the tendon problems are listed as “rare,” however, many people online that say it’s under reported and that there’s more occurrences of it happening.

This is due to them saying the drug can attack collagen. Since the Achilles has lower blood flow and tendons are slow to heal in general, some people couple could have ruptures MONTHS after taking the antibiotic.

It’s rare, but with my luck and previous history, my mind got me like:

Silver Lining

Even in today’s workout the Achilles felt “off” at times. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been afraid to stretch it as aggressively the past week as I have been. Maybe it’s because I’m ramping exercises back up. I don’t know if it’s just in my head or if there is a real cause for concern.

You’d think by now that I’d know the difference between a “push through it” discomfort and “need to stop” pain. Honestly felt different today, and in my experience different usually isn’t a good thing. So maybe I’ll continue to take it easy the next few weeks.

Perhaps this is the world reminding me to focus on nutrition instead of training. That’s the silver lining that I’m taking from it.

Antibiotics and Gut Health

First off, I’m no doctor, but from what I’ve read it seems that antibiotics work by killing off all the bacteria. However, it doesn’t discriminate between the “good” and “bad” bacteria, especially in the gut.

You see lots of terms going around like “gut flora” and “microbiome,” pretty much it’s the bacterial makeup inside your gut that aides in your life. Everything from digestion to immune system. There’s even been studies that show that the gut health of obese people are different from that of non-obese people.

This gut health/flora/microbiome is largely contributed to diet, which makes sense to me. If you eat lots of greasy foods, than the bacteria that feed off greasy foods will thrive, further proving the saying “you are what you eat.”

While I still question the validity of that cleanse I did back in January, I suppose if there was a real benefit it would be here. Eating primarily veggies for 21 days would reset the gut flora. Unfortunately, that’s difficult to measure, so who knows.

Point being, similar to the concept in the cleanse, I’m seeing this round of antibiotics as a wiping the slate clean and an opportunity to improve my gut health!

What I’m Doing

First off, I need to stay nutritionally sound. Eat whole grains, lots of fruits and veggies, avoid grease and refined sugars, pretty much do everything that I’m supposed to be doing anyway.

I’ve been doing this by eating oatmeal or yogurt in the morning, cooking my meals, again, all the stuff I SHOULD be doing. Of course, with the upcoming holiday season, this will be difficult, but I’ll do my best and perhaps call in some help.

The help I’m calling in is in the form of a probiotic. Probiotics are found naturally in foods, mainly fermented foods, but also there’s pills you can get at the store. These probiotics contain the “good” bacteria and aims to help tip the gut flora in your favor.

As someone that doesn’t like taking any medications, I researched this a bunch. In the end it seems like right now the research is somewhat up in the air as to the effectiveness of probiotics. Not an incredible amount of research has been done on it.

It’s not conclusive that it works, but it’s also not conclusive that it doesn’t work.

Either way, it seems that taking a probiotic won’t be harmful, so in my opinion it’s worth a shot given the situation.

I’ll spare you the details, but so far things are improving, and that makes me happy. So I’ll continue to listen to my body moving forward.

Gut health seems to be more important than I realized prior to all of this happening, so perhaps this is a good thing after all!