Can Eating Sugar While Taking Antibiotics Harm Your Gut?

Do you want to please yourself with candy amid the disease and taking antibiotics? Such a habit could harm the gut microbiome, it warned. American scientists have studied how nutrition affects bacteria in the intestines of people who receive aggressive chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation. In five years, they have collected data on more than 40,000 meals and analyzed over 1,000 microbiome samples.

Researchers have found that broad-spectrum antibiotics reduce the number of certain beneficial bacteria. However, in patients who simultaneously consumed a lot of sugar, the microbiome diversity decreased more. An additional 100 grams of sugar per day was associated with a further 24% reduction in this indicator.

At the same time, potentially dangerous bacteria, particularly enterococci, began to multiply more actively in the intestine. In immunocompromised people, they can cause severe infections and lead to dangerous immune complications after transplantation. Experiments in mice have confirmed that excess sugar promotes the growth of pathogenic bacteria during antibiotic treatment.

Experts believe that limiting sweets during antibiotic therapy may help to reduce the imbalance of intestinal microflora. In this case, the study was carried out on seriously ill patients, so its results cannot be directly transferred to all those who take antibiotics. Yet it reminds us of the importance of eating a balanced diet, especially when taking drugs.

In conditions of deficiency of useful microorganisms and excess of sugar, the intestines begin to actively populate harmful pathogens, primarily enterococci. In debilitated patients, multiplication of these bacteria can cause severe blood infections and dangerous immune complications after transplantation. Parallel experiments in laboratory mice have confirmed this reaction completely: high sugar levels caused pathogens to explode solely while taking antibiotics, whereas without drugs, a sweet diet did not lead to such consequences.

The findings are leading health professionals to rethink their approach to hospital meals, as weakened patients in some countries are often offered high-calorie sweet formula to maintain strength. Scientists have emphasized that reasonable sugar restriction when taking antibacterial drugs can be a simple, safe and free way to protect the microbiome and accelerate the body’s recovery.