You are responsible for your own health and for the use of any remedies, treatments, or medications you use at home. All information is intended for your general knowledge only and is not a substitute for medical advice or treatment for specific medical conditions. If you’re now at 1 capsule per day, take a few days to a week before starting to work up to 2 capsules per day.ĭisclaimer: I’m not a doctor. My body responded better if I didn’t continually increase. If you’re eating foods like sauerkraut, kefir, and yogurt, make sure you’re not increasing those amounts too quickly if you’re also increasing your supplement at the same time. If you notice anything out of the ordinary, slow down a bit. Do you have headaches, rashes, or exhaustion? Whatever signs you experience will be unique to your own body. Look for signals that you’re going too quickly. If you aren’t as sensitive, perhaps you’ll be able to increase by 1/2 capsule at a time - or more.Īlthough some may be able to increase quickly and reach their therapeutic dose in no time, take it slowly, especially in the beginning while you figure out the swing of things! This leads me to my 2nd tip… #2 - Pay Attention To Your Body For me, 1/4 capsule increase per week is very manageable. Yes, it’s tempting to hurry up the process.

#1 - Start More Slowly Than You May Think 4 Tips For Introducing Probiotics Slowly & Without Die-OffĪfter my own experiences, I put together these 4 tips for introducing probiotics slowly, so hopefully, you will experience little or no die-off. …And then I connected the dots, and realized that I needed to slow it way down. I got severe headaches every day, dealt with extreme exhaustion, and had a spreading rash. Gradually, throughout the month or so that I was increasing my probiotic supplements while also consuming my super strong kefir, I felt worse and worse. I just let them keep growing and growing, which made the kefir even stronger, which caused even more die-off symptoms. I had never made kefir before starting GAPS and didn’t know that I should get rid of my extra kefir grains. Kefir is highly detoxifying, especially if you let your rapidly growing kefir grains stay in your milk. Yes, there are probiotics in food too! It may seem obvious, and I knew this at this time, but I still didn’t think about how increasing both my probiotic supplementation and food intake would cause such strong die-off reactions. This wouldn’t have been so bad - if my body wasn’t sensitive to increases, and I hadn’t been increasing my probiotic foods at the same time. Within a few weeks I was up to 3-1/2 capsules per day. I realized I needed to make up for lost time, and I was determined to do it quickly! A few months later, it dawned on me that I should have been increasing this whole time.

I started with 1/4 capsule and increased up to 2 capsules per day without too much of an issue.Īfter that, I forgot about continuing to increase the amount I was taking. With this in mind, I slowly started adding a probiotic supplement after a first round of the Intro diet. Natasha Campbell-McBride recommends getting to a therapeutic dose of probiotics (15 to 20 billion bacterial cells/day for an adult) and then holding there for about 6 months. I hope my story helps you avoid making the same mistakes I did! Making Up For Lost Timeĭr.

It took some painful lessons on my part to realize that this healing journey is a marathon - not a sprint. This is why it’s important to begin eating probiotic foods or supplements slowly. However, as we introduce them, our bodies can experience difficulty. Probiotics - an essential part of the gut-healing GAPS diet - are how we repopulate our guts with all of the good stuff we’ve been missing. That’s how it was for me when introducing probiotics while on the GAPS diet!

Should you take a break from probiotics