In general after surgery you are given antibiotics. The antibiotics destroys not only the bad bacteria that might be lurking in the hospital but also your good gut bacteria. So it is important to reestablish the colonies of gut bacteria afterwards using probiotics after surgery.

I read an article this morning that reinforces the reason why this should be done.

Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) is a bacterium that causes a life-threatening infection. According to the CDC, it is responsible for about 500,000 infections and 15,000 to 29,000 deaths every year in the United States.

Though the bacterium can infect healthy individuals, it is of particular concern to those who are hospitalized or are taking antibiotics. Antibiotics can wipe out the normal flora of the gut, and C. difficile is happy to fill the vacuum. An infection with this pathogen can cause horrible cramping and 10 to 15 episodes of watery diarrhea per day.

The epidemic has gotten worse in recent years, and a team of researchers led by James Collins and Robert Britton of the Baylor College of Medicine wanted to figure out why. In the year 2000, the FDA approved the addition of trehalose, a type of sugar, to food. Europe followed suit the next year. Within just a few years, the C. difficile epidemic exploded. Was that merely a coincidence? Dr. Collins and Dr. Britton believe it is not.

Their research indicates that trehalose appears to be a good growth media for two particular strains of C. difficile (RT027 and RT078) that are causing epidemics all over the world.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/01/04/food-additive-may-be-worsening-clostridium-difficile-epidemic-12367

In nature, trehalose can be found in animals, plants, and microorganisms. In animals, trehalose is prevalent in shrimp, and also in insects, including grasshoppers, locusts, butterflies, and bees, in which blood-sugar is trehalose. In plants, the presence of trehalose is seen in sunflower seeds, moonwort, Selaginella plants, and sea algae. Within the fungi, it is prevalent in some mushrooms, such as shiitake (Lentinula edodes), oyster, king oyster, and golden needle. But recently this sugar has been manufacturer into an artificial sweetener. It is found in foods such as nutrition bars and chewing gum. It is not that you need to ban the use of trehalose or foods that contain trehalose from your diet. Rather it is important to restrict this type of food until you reestablish you good gut bacteria after being treated with antibiotics.

The findings suggest that when the food industry widely adopted the sugar, called trehalose, into food manufacturing, it played a major role in the emergence of super-strong strains of C. difficile.

Thank you for that info! I'll be on the lookout, especially since a lot of the protein bars and shakes have so many weird ingredients. I wonder if it goes by any other names in manufacturing.

They use a lot of it in ice cream too. Wonder if they use it in Halo Top that so many eat?

Thanks James, I just read a similar article this week about trehalose. Uggggh! We have 2 friends families who've had the dickens of a problem with C-diff because of their parents falling, being hospitalized, then colonizing the bacteria and bringing it home with them. It made it through the whole family 2 times for each family. It's a bad, bad, bad, bug!!!