[fastball]

Do doctors not routinely recommend pre/probiotics to replenish gut microbiota these days? I've had multiple discussions with medical professionals that would indicate they are on board with the idea. To whit, I had to take strong oral antibiotics for a serious bacterial throat infection I had last year, and afterwards saw a significantly diminished ability to cope with spicy foods (I love spicy food). The doctor suggested probiotics and that seemed to help a lot.

Interestingly, the body of research around fermented foods (kefir [sic], yogurt, kimchi, etc) seems to show more robust benefits than probiotic supplements[1].

[1] https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00754-6

[astrange]

Each probiotic is different and each person is different, so it's hard to make the recommendation actionable.

You'd have to know what's already in your intestines, and the best we have are poop tests, one of which (uBiome, YC S14) famously failed and is being prosecuted as insurance fraud, so doctors probably don't want to get into that. (There are still going ones like Viome that might give you interesting results.)

Fermented foods aren't all the same too; yogurt is milder than kimchi for sure.