I re-did my stool test a year later in hopes that I had wiped out the blastocystis hominis infection as well as fixed up my colon flora a bit and the results are in – no more blasto! This is huge, I am finally parasite free. That means my various treatments have killed off blasto and entamoeba histolytica (Montezuma’s Revenge) over the last 18 months. I’m pretty sure the Mullen protocol at the end did in the blasto, that was a huge mix of anti-microbials and anti-parasitics.
The rest of the results were kind of mixed. I am still showing a low microbial diversity and still have an excess of m.smithii in my colon, in fact more than last year when I was at 8.9E7 and am now at 1.6E8. The good news though is that my Lactobacillus is finally high as is my Bifidobacterium and these were very low to almost non-existent a year ago. I had no pathogenic bacteria that got flagged for needing treatment this time at least.
The one thing that went down though is my butyrate and short chain fatty acids (SCFAs). I was in the yellow zone on these last year and am now solidly in the red zone, in fact I’m pegged on the low end of the red zone. Last year my total SCFA count was a normal 55.4 (need > 23.3) but this year it is at 8.3 so pegged at the bottom of the red part of the chart. My butyrate last year was at 4.9 which was in the yellow zone but this year is at 1.3. My % of butyrate in overall SCFAs has increased but my overall count has just gone way down. This needs to be addressed but much of it can be explained by my being on a low FODMAP diet for over a year I’m sure. I need some more starch to feed the bacteria in my colon
What to do? Well, we are going to try some stronger digestive enzymes to see if that helps the situation at all. I’m debating supplementing with butyrate directly to see if that helps too. I think just adding to dietary diversity will help these normalize out in the long run, if I get some resistant starch in now to feed the bacteria that should help. Time for some more research but overall this is good news.
On top of this I’ve been able to add in a bunch more foods over the last few weeks. On my Oregon trip I ate a ton of raw veggies, not just salad greens but broccoli, zucchini, carrots and a few others I’m forgetting. This last week in Mazama I had pears and apples plus a few other nuts I hadn’t tried yet. I also ate a peach today for lunch. I’m finally to where I’m at a pretty full Paleo diet and not just stuck on low FODMAP AIP which is awesome. I’m even considering trying some goat dairy and some pseudo-grains at this point. I think if East 20 Pizza had a gluten-free crust I would have tried pizza while in Mazama but they didn’t which may have been a good thing.