Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants

Brand? Dosage?

I've been fascinated by FMT, but it also grosses me out. I'm super curious, was it tough mentally to take the pill if it was a pill?

Sample size of 1 here, but hopefully worth the read.

I got food poisoning while abroad shortly after college, and took some shitty OTC antibiotics. I was low-grade sick for ~1 month, and when I came home I started developing IBS which got progressively worse over the next few years. FODMAP saved me, but at the detriment of needing to eliminate a lot of foods that I loved eating.

Recently I started eating 2tbps of chia seeds with some lemon juice and water daily. Chia seeds are incredibly fibrous. Over the next month, my stomach seemed to get permanently better - I can now eat larger quantities of some of those "problem" foods without debilitating side effects.

The bacteria in your gut affect a whole lot of things. And there are competing cultures, all of which like to eat different things. My hunch is that I coaxed the fiber-loving ones back to health, and they in turn did me the favor of repressing the cultures that liked fermenting beans and cruciferous vegetables. There's a lot we don't know about our gut microbiome, but my guess is that eating high-fiber, high-diversity diets is a much better solution than taking a pill.

I finally beat my digestive issues and chronic fatigue (physical depression) which lasted 3+ years from 2019-2021. Without getting too far into it, here's the stuff that finally worked, weighted by immediacy on a scale of 10:

- 10: Eating a serving of Brussels sprouts, preferably daily

- 10: Taking about 3 psyllium husk capsules occasionally with FODMAP and spicy meals

- 10: Taking a digestive enzyme occasionally with FODMAP and spicy meals (Digest Basic, no affiliation)

- 10: Taking a "stress" B complex with 100% daily, instead of 1000% weekly (Nature Made, no affiliation)

- 10: Avoiding all beans, unaged dairy, whole-grain wheat and most tree nuts for a few months

- 8: Drinking at least twice as much water as I feel that I need, from one big container over the course of the day

- 8: Eating plain giant salads with dressing, preferably spinach-greens mix, several times per week

- 8: Drinking Kefir daily

- 6: Trying several different brands of probiotics occasionally in no particular order

- 6: Eating 1-4 eggs per day, preferably on post-workout days

- 6: Taking an iodine supplement initially, a few times per week until the bottle was gone

I think what kicked this all off was dabbling with keto 5 years ago which might have cost me most of my tolerance to milk, and prolonged dehydration from intense workouts and large servings of protein without proactive hydration. When I lost my gut health, I may have picked up bad bacteria or parasites from food poisoning or raw seafood. I was also under debilitating stress during the last few years at my previous job, so began every morning on an empty tank spiritually. I never listened to my body until my health failed and it made the decision to stop for me.

The biggest change has been that being tired feels ordinary and rare, with no emotional component. Instead of the crushing "universe is against me" sense of being attacked, alone and hopeless knowing there was no end of it in sight, which I endured for many years before my physical health's deterioration finally caught up.

I read the study. The risk is real tho uncommon, but the study was unable to determine if bacterial overgrowth was the underlying condition responsible for the symptoms, because they appear the same as those from D-lactic acidosis, caused by the same bacteria as found in common probiotics.

So whether the issue is too much bacteria or poor compatibly with a host remains unanswered by your linked study.