H. Pylori Natural Treatment: 6 Functional Medicine Strategies To Support Your Gut

In my telehealth functional medicine clinic, gut problems are by far one of the most common issues I see with my patients. From chronic bloating and gas to food intolerances and leaky gut syndrome, underlying gut dysfunction can significantly impact your daily life and wreak havoc on your overall health. While every patient’s case is different, one potential trigger that can fly under the radar for years is H. pylori.

This insidious bacteria lives in your stomach and is responsible for half of all bacterial infections in America. (1) While many people don’t have any symptoms, others can experience a gradual disruption of their protective gut lining that contributes to digestive distress and long-term health problems. But even though H. pylori infection isn’t always obvious, there are steps you can take to start healing once you know it’s there. Read on to learn more about what H. pylori is, the best H. pylori natural treatments to fight off this infection, and easy ways you can support a healthy gut microbiome.

What is H. Pylori?

Short for helicobacter pylori, H. pylori is a type of bacteria that thrives inside of your stomach. Unlike other types of bacteria that have difficulty surviving inside your stomach’s acidic environment, H. pylori is built for it. That’s because H. pylori produces an enzyme called urease that neutralizes acid levels to create the perfect living conditions. While this is good news for this bacteria, it’s bad news for your gut.

How does H. pylori affect your health?

Just because you have an H. pylori infection doesn’t mean you will experience the same symptoms or health problems as someone else with this infection. But because this bacteria lives inside of your stomach, the most common symptoms of H. pylori infection have to do with your gut: 

• Nausea
• Bloating
• Abdominal pain or discomfort
• Frequent burpring
• Gas
• Persistent feeling of fullness

The biggest problem with an H. pylori infection though is how it can develop into more chronic health problems if it goes unaddressed for too long. Since this bacteria directly attacks your stomach lining, studies have found that H. pylori infections are the main cause of chronic gastritis. (2) It is also a major cause of peptic ulcers, which develop when the protective lining of the stomach or upper small intestine becomes damaged. In severe cases, H. pylori induced damage can also increase your risk for certain stomach cancers (also known as gastric cancer) and gastric mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma (MALT).

LISTEN: Weaning Off Antidepressants, Hormone Healing, Peptides & Hidden Gut Triggers | Ask Me Anything

How to identify H. pylori infection

Thankfully, an H. pylori infection is easily identified through a urea breath test or a stool test which detects the presence of this bacteria. You can also run a blood test that looks for antibodies to determine if there is an active infection. It’s important to note that certain antibiotics, proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), and bismuth products can interfere with these tests and lead to false-negative results, so disclosing to your doctor all of the medications you are currently taking is essential to ensure the most accurate results, especially if you are using any of these to fight off an H. pylori infection.

Can you treat H. pylori naturally?

In conventional medicine, H. pylori infections are treated with antibiotics like amoxicillin and clarithromycin. Triple therapy — a combination of two different types of antibiotics and an acid-reducing drug like proton pump inhibitors, histamine blockers, or Pepto-Bismal — is also a common treatment plan designed to eradicate the H. pylori bacteria and soothe an irritated gut lining. However, H. pylori is notorious for its resistance to multiple antibiotics, making conventional treatment options less effective, especially if you frequently take antibiotics. 

But that doesn’t mean antibiotics are completely off the table. In functional medicine, our goal is to provide the most effective treatment with the least amount of side effects, and sometimes medications like antibiotics fit that criteria. Especially when it comes to certain infections like H. pylori, how soon the infection was caught, and your personal history of antibiotic use. 

With that said, there are many natural remedies that have been clinically proven to help fight off H. pylori infections and encourage healing in your gut as a result of chronic infections. So whether you end up taking antibiotics or not, natural remedies are a key part of achieving long-term sustainable healing from this infection.

Top H. Pylori natural remedies

Since everyone’s biochemistry is different, healing from an H. pylori infection can vary from person to person. You may need more targeted therapies, supplements, or dietary protocols depending on your situation, but in general, there are a few clinically-backed natural remedies that are foundational for overcoming H. pylori infection.

1. Switch to an anti-inflammatory diet

Although there is no single food or diet that has been proven to eliminate H. pylori, the food you eat on a daily basis has a profound impact on your digestive health and inflammation levels, since poor microbiome health can increase inflammation levels and vice versa.

Everyone’s biochemistry is unique so the foods that trigger inflammation for you might be different from the foods that trigger inflammation in someone else (an elimination diet can help you identify your personal list of inflammatory foods) however, there are a handful of foods that have been shown to help support a healthy microbiome and inflammation levels. Fill your plate with fruits, fiber-rich vegetables packed with antioxidants, probiotic foods like sauerkraut, and omega-3 fatty acids from wild-caught seafood, grass-fed beef, and nuts and seeds, and avoid inflammatory foods like refined sugar, seed oils, gluten, processed foods, and alcohol.

2. Start taking a probiotic supplement

Antibiotics can play an important role in the fight against H. pylori, but it can also contribute to bacterial dysbiosis (when the amount of bad bacteria in your gut outnumbers the good) as it doesn’t just kill off the bad bacteria, it also kills off the good. Adding in a probiotic supplement to your daily routine or switching to a higher CFU probiotic can help give your microbiome the boost it needs to heal.

Look for a probiotic that contains strains like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium that have been found to help increase the rate of H. pylori eradication while also combating the negative side effects of antibiotics. (3)

SHOP: My Probiotic Trillion supplement with Longevity RX is a powerful 4-in-1 gut health formula featuring prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics, and parabiotics. Powered by fast-acting spore-based strains like Bacillus subtilis AB-22, it helps reduce inflammation, restore gut lining integrity, and support immune resilience — all things that need a little extra support during your healing journey.

3. Eat more sulforaphane-rich foods

Sulforaphane is a compound that has been shown in multiple studies to help fight off H. pylori infection due to its powerful antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. In fact, one study found that eating sulforaphane-rich broccoli sprouts every day for 8 weeks was able to lower the amount of H. pylori bacteria and gastric inflammation. (4)

I love how easy it is to incorporate broccoli sprouts into your life as they make a great topper for everything from salads and avocado toast to tacos and omelets. You can also incorporate other cruciferous vegetables like Brussels sprouts and cauliflower into your meals as they are also abundant in sulforaphane. 

4. Target your supplements 

Antibiotics aren’t the only way to target unwanted bacterial infections, there are so many natural antibacterial and antimicrobial supplements that have been shown to help fight off H. pylori and can be a great complimentary treatment for this infection.

• Berberine: This herb first gained popularity as “nature’s ozempic”, but it is also a next-level antimicrobial. While more studies need to be done on its stand-alone effectiveness against H. pylori, initial research has found that supplementing with berberine alongside triple antibiotic therapy was able to help kill off H. pylori, reduce the side effects of antibiotics, and promote peptic ulcer healing. (5)
• Curcumin: Extracted from turmeric and known for its anti-inflammatory properties, curcumin has been found to help stop the H. pylori bacteria from attacking and damaging gastric cells, making it a powerful tool for preventing chronic gastritis. (6)
• Deglycyrrhizinated licorice: More commonly referred to as licorice root, it is frequently used to help reduce inflammation in your digestive tract. Studies show its flavonoid content can inhibit the growth of antibiotic resistant strains of H. pylori. (7, 8)

READ MORE: The 14 Best Herbs For Intestinal Inflammation

5. Consider phototherapy

Also known as light therapy, phototherapy utilizes topical exposure of LED blue light to target various conditions like psoriasis. However, emerging research has found that endoscopic phototherapy was able to significantly reduce H. pylori levels when combined with curcumin supplementation, even in cases of antibiotic resistant infection. (9)

6. Sip on green tea

Green tea is packed with catechins, a type of antioxidant polyphenol that have been found to kill off H. pylori bacteria. (10) Plus, it can even help heal H. pylori-induced peptic ulcers. Bonus points if you add in some raw honey and ginger for even more antibacterial and anti-inflammatory support.

Seeking help from a functional medicine practitioner

When it comes to H. pylori and its effects on our health, we are truthfully still learning a lot. Since your gut health is foundational to your overall health, we are continuing to uncover how H. pylori infections can potentially contribute to chronic health problems beyond digestive distress. 

That’s why it is so important to incorporate these natural remedies and other gut-supporting tools as much as possible if H. pylori is a factor in your health case. Between taking a probiotic supplement, following an anti-inflammatory diet, and eating more sulfur-rich foods, there are several things that you can include into your daily routine.

If you suspect an H. pylori infection is behind your symptoms, a functional medicine practitioner can help identify and address this infection with the right tools. In my telehealth functional medicine clinic, we specialize in comprehensive lab testing and tailored dietary, supplement, and lifestyle protocols to address infections just like this one so you can reclaim the health you deserve.

As one of the first functional medicine telehealth clinics in the world, we provide webcam health consultations for people around the globe. 

Photo: Unsplash.com

Sources

• Borka Balas, R., Meliț, L. E., & Mărginean, C. O. (2022). Worldwide Prevalence and Risk Factors of Helicobacter pylori Infection in Children. Children (Basel, Switzerland), 9(9), 1359. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9091359
• Smyk, D. S., Koutsoumpas, A. L., Mytilinaiou, M. G., Rigopoulou, E. I., Sakkas, L. I., & Bogdanos, D. P. (2014). Helicobacter pylori and autoimmune disease: cause or bystander. World journal of gastroenterology, 20(3), 613–629. https://doi.org/10.3748/wjg.v20.i3.613
• Wang, Y., Wang, X., Cao, X. Y., Zhu, H. L., & Miao, L. (2023). Comparative effectiveness of different probiotics supplements for triple helicobacter pylori eradication: a network meta-analysis. Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology, 13, 1120789. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1120789
• Yanaka, A., Fahey, J. W., Fukumoto, A., Nakayama, M., Inoue, S., Zhang, S., Tauchi, M., Suzuki, H., Hyodo, I., & Yamamoto, M. (2009). Dietary sulforaphane-rich broccoli sprouts reduce colonization and attenuate gastritis in Helicobacter pylori-infected mice and humans. Cancer prevention research (Philadelphia, Pa.), 2(4), 353–360. https://doi.org/10.1158/1940-6207.CAPR-08-0192
• Hu, Q., Peng, Z., Li, L., Zou, X., Xu, L., Gong, J., & Yi, P. (2020). The Efficacy of Berberine-Containing Quadruple Therapy on Helicobacter Pylori Eradication in China: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials. Frontiers in pharmacology, 10, 1694. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2019.01694
• Kwiecien, S., Magierowski, M., Majka, J., Ptak-Belowska, A., Wojcik, D., Sliwowski, Z., Magierowska, K., & Brzozowski, T. (2019). Curcumin: A potent protectant against esophageal and gastric disorders. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 20(6), Article 1477.
• Murray M. T. (2020). Glycyrrhiza glabra (Licorice). Textbook of Natural Medicine, 641–647.e3. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-43044-9.00085-6
• Fukai, T., Marumo, A., Kaitou, K., Kanda, T., Terada, S., & Nomura, T. (2002). Anti-Helicobacter pylori flavonoids from licorice extract. Life Sciences, 71(12), 1449–1463. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0024-3205(02)01864-7
• Darmani, H., Smadi, E. A. M., & Bataineh, S. M. B. (2020). Blue light emitting diodes enhance the antivirulence effects of curcumin against Helicobacter pylori. Journal of Medical Microbiology, 69(4), 617–624.
• Wang, Q., Yao, C., Li, Y., Luo, L., Xie, F., Xiong, Q., & Feng, P. (2023). Effect of polyphenol compounds on Helicobacter pylori eradication: a systematic review with meta-analysis. BMJ open, 13(1), e062932. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2022-062932