This is a question that has come up a LOT on the Facebook SIBO group and I thought I’d give my opinions on the matter having been a vegan and having suffered through SIBO. I was on the spectrum from vegan to pescatarian most of my adult life, I think the last red meat or poultry I ate was at 18 years old until I got SIBO at 53. This was a decision made for religious reasons as well as moral reasons to try and help save the planet and it wasn’t one made lightly. Originally I was hard-core vegan living on rice and soy for the most part then switched to adding dairy and eggs to my diet with some occasional fish. For many years we lived this way, eating fish often when traveling, otherwise maybe a few times a month. Sometime a few years before I got SIBO I started having problems with dairy and went back to being vegan.
So, when I got my diagnosis of SIBO and was told to change my diet to include meat I really resisted. When I found out about the antibiotic treatment I figured I could eat fish for a few weeks and then be back on my merry way to a plant based diet. Well, that didn’t work out as planned and the antibiotics made things worse for me. I had been living on fish and then decided to add in poultry. Poultry led to pork and then finally to beef since I just needed more variety in my diet given I was living on meat, fat and a few vegetables that I could tolerate.
What I noticed when I added back in meat especially bone broth is that my body loved it. I obviously needed the nutrients I was getting that I was missing in a totally plant based diet. When I got sick I was about 6 months into a torn hamstring that would not heal and I tried everything. We were about to do prolotherapy on the hamstring to see if that would kick in healing but once I started eating red meat the hamstring was healed within a week. Obviously the plant-based protein I was getting couldn’t compete with animal protein in helping mend that hamstring injury. While I was sick as a dog with SIBO I still felt much better with good protein in my body than when I struggled for months prior to my diagnosis trying to remain vegan with SIBO.
The high-carb diet required of veganism just does not mix well with SIBO given that all that food just feeds the bacteria which then create a ton of gas from it. When I was still trying to eat grains and beans I would feel pretty good in the morning and as the day went on just slowly felt worse and worse until after dinner I felt like the guy in Alien who was about to have the creature burst from his belly. There was no way for me to continue eating vegan and get enough nutrition and not feel miserable. Beans were obviously out, they cause enough issues without SIBO, and so were most grains, I just couldn’t tolerate them and that is probably the case with most SIBO patients. Soy was also out for me and without the complimentary protein of beans and grains or the complete protein of soy there is just no way to get enough protein on a vegan diet.
As I kept trying to remain true to my diet I just kept building up food sensitivities and getting sicker by the day. My weight was plummeting by 1-2 lbs a day, my skin turned gray and my body was outgassing all sorts of toxic stuff. By the time my doctor told me I had to stop eating that way I was down close to 40 lbs, very sick and only able to tolerate a few vegetables any longer. Without adding in meat for protein and good fats I would have just withered away to nothing.
All in all, my opinion is that SIBO and veganism do not mix well and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that vegans have a higher percentage of SIBO than non-vegans due to the high carb nature of the diet. There may be some people who don’t have as many food issues and could stick to a vegetarian or vegan diet but in all the people I know personally with SIBO I have yet to meet that person since many are down to a handful of foods that they can tolerate and usually that includes meat, fish and poultry with very few vegetables and very limited or no grains.
Now three years later and with my SIBO gone I’m still eating a meat-based diet but do now eat some meatless meals and hope to start doing a Paleo #MeatlessMonday along with our usual #WildGameWednesday. I still believe that factory farming of animals is a horrible practice for the environment and the animals so I only get meat raised by people I know locally that are ethically treated and used as part of a biodynamic farming system or I hunt it myself, taking full responsibility for the animals life. Last year we supplemented having to buy beef/lamb by my shooting and butchering a mule deer and cut way down on poultry with the addition of about two dozen pheasants to our freezer. I am hoping this next year to add turkey to the list of hunted animals, get more upland birds to cut down further on chickens and get enough big game to offset having to buy any beef or lamb. I’ll also raise quail again this year for both eggs and meat (and training birds for the dog). Add gardening and foraging to the mix with our local CSA and, while we can’t be 100% self-sufficient in our food supply, we can go a long ways towards eating mostly locally and all organic.