By now, we all know how important gut bacteria is for, well, just about every aspect of our health. And we all want to encourage a rich and pleasing variety of gut bacteria, gut bacteria with kind of diversity that is destroyed by antibiotics. How bad is the damage? Researchers at the University of Copenhagen recently gave three broad spectrum antibiotics to 12 young healthy men for 4 days, then tracked the changes in their gut bacteria for six months. Over that time period, the researchers found, most of the gut bacteria returned to its previous health, but some did not. Science Daily reports on the study, which found that after six months, study participants were still missing nine of their common beneficial bacteria. They also found that some new potentially non-desirable bacteria had moved in. What to do? Remember that your gut bacteria are biotics, and think carefully about taking something called “antibiotics.”