After my test on last Friday which showed I had dropped to the lowest levels yet in my SIBO journey I met with Dr. Keller yesterday morning to discuss what to do next. We started out reviewing my results and asking about my symptoms. In general, most days my symptoms are way down. Compared to last year at this time I’m 95% better, able to eat more, and have very few symptoms. I had even eaten a bunch of semi-illegal food over the weekend in Portland, probably even getting glutened by accident on Sunday night, and felt fine. In fact, I walked all over creation, ate restaurant food and managed to gain weight! Hearing this she thought maybe it was time to lay off the anti-microbial herbs instead of beating this thing to death over the last few points on the graph.
Instead, focus on the motility aspect of the problem which is really the underlying issue. In light of this she wants me to take the IBSChek test as soon as they get them in, this will let us know if I have the auto-immune version of SIBO and if so, I’ll know that I’m going to be dealing with this for the next 6-7 years while my cells regenerate or new neural pathways are formed to overcome the motility issues. In the meantime we are going to modify my motility supplements:
- Iberogast – at each meal
- MotilPro – 1 hour after dinner take 3 pills
- 2mg TR Melatonin – 1 hour before bed
- 4.5mg LDN – at bed time
If needed I can add more ginger (MotilPro) between meals. I already do strong ginger tea after breakfast so really it would mean maybe adding in ginger after lunch.
She took a look at my methylation report from 23andMe and Genetic Genie. She thought that my COMT/MAO mutations may be playing a role in this. I need to do a temperature check throughout the day for a few days so that I can see if I need to supplement with T3 hormone for a while to get my thyroid working properly. This could be tied in with my sleep and metabolism issues.
We talked about adding in fermented foods and/or probiotics and she is still kind of against them. I’d already been doing some sauerkraut over the last few weeks and even tried some kombucha yesterday since it seems that my large intestine could use a bit of repopulation. I may try a soil-based organism probiotic at some point but for now will do small amounts of fermented foods with caution. If my symptoms return I’ll go back to CandiBactin for a while.
She also brought up adding grains back into my diet and doing the Array #4 test for gluten cross-reactivity if I wanted to do this. Her advice was to start eating the “safe” grains and pseudo-grains while taking CandiBactin then doing the test. I’m not really ready to go there yet, I’d rather do more carb rich vegetables and stay Paleo than add in these grains.
She did physical exam of me too and found my Ileocecal valve (ICV) wasn’t working too well, same thing Dr. Hall found a few weeks ago. She listened with her stethoscope and drummed my abdomen a bit before deciding to work on my stomach area. She had me doing deep breathing while doing some release work around my stomach/diaphragm. It wasn’t super painful but not exactly pleasant either. After she did this for about 15 minutes my ICV was working properly so it seems that I may have had a pressure problem from the upper valve not working properly. She gave me a few exercises to do to help with this issue and I’ll probably continue to get some visceral work done on my ICV from Dr. Hall and/or Marty to see if we can keep that valve working properly.
All in all, a very full 90-minute meeting with Dr. Keller. Hopefully things keep going well and I don’t need to go back on herbals. I will be getting more results from my metabolic, thyroid and ASI tests on Friday plus should be doing the Organix test this week and the IBSChek test and temperature check soon. Once I have all that information together we’ll meet via Skype and figure out what, if any changes to make to the plan.