Today I finish up another week of the Mullen protocol which means I’m half done with the second round and half done with the entire 8 week protocol. I definitely have improved since last Saturday when I was having issues with the S.boulardii but I’m not 100% over this yet. I am starting to think that my issues may not be the SIBO as much as either the blasto or some other basic colon imbalance at this point since I don’t start having any discomfort until about 2.5-4 hours after eating dinner at night which makes me think things are lower down. Every night when I’m about ready to go to bed some churning starts down deep and bugs me into the night, last night I woke up at 12:30 and my gut was still going. Maybe all these antimicrobials have finally just done in the flora I need but I’m still afraid to add in probiotics to see if that makes a difference, at least not until I get a clear test. I was hoping to get in a call to Dr. Keller to discuss this next week but there are no openings until May 1st and I’ll be almost past my next break week by then.
Category Archives: Health
Is S.boulardii the devil?
Finishing up break week this week and it hasn’t been as easy as my last break week was. This time I took S.boulardii 2x a day and as the week has gone on I’ve had an increasing amount of gut distress. It started out a few hours after dinner mid-week, I figured it was the sweet potatoes I ate for dinner that night since the are a bit on the risky side. Next day same thing even though I stuck to true low FODMAP AIP. By yesterday it started after lunch and by an hour after dinner I was not feeling well at all and the gut churn continued until I fell asleep and was still going strong at about 1 a.m. when I woke up. I’m stopping the little yeastie beasties today in hopes that they will start to clear out of my system in over the next few days.
Starting a break week, neuropathy, sleep and chili recipes
Two weeks of the Mullen Protocol done today, now I get to take a break from the giant handful of pills with each meal. For this week I’ll just be doing two capsules of Saccharomyces Boulardii a day, assuming I can tolerate it. This is a yeast that is not a typical gut flora component and will just build up while taking it and then go away after a few days stopping but it will keep bad stuff from overgrowing while I’m not on the antibiotic herbs. We’ll see what happens. I am still doing my basic prokiinetic regime too with Iberogast at each meal and then at night MotilPro and 4.5mg of LDN. I’m down to 250mg of Mag at night which seems to be plenty these days to keep things moving. After the week break I’m onto Round 2 starting on the 12th. I’ve still got just about 6 weeks until I re-do my SIBO test in May.
Nightshades revisited
After my food allergy test I decide to start adding back in a few new foods to se what happened and in my last post mentioned I was adding in nightshades. Last week I had some eggplant, that seemed OK. On Sunday I had Venison Chili which was AWESOME. I had another bowl of the chili last night to finish it off. The results – today my weird arm symptoms and general brain fog are back with a vengeance. My upper arms feel like I just did about 100 push-ups, like they did months ago before I bit the bullet and went AIP. My head just is not all there and I haven’t experienced this for months on AIP either. So, I think the answer to the question on the tomatoes is Not to Eat for me.
Mullen protocol one week in
My meal-time pile o’ pills
I am now a week into the protocol devised by Dr. Gerard Mullen from John Hopkins. It is sort of funny that I end up on his protocol given that when all this digestive hell began 18 months ago one of the first books I read was The Inside Tract by Dr. Mullen. That book was the first clue that maybe diet changes could solve this problem ultimately. Obviously there are times diet can’t do it all and thus Dr. Mullen developed this protocol and has studied it and proven it more effective than the standard anti-biotic treatment for SIBO.
Food Allegies
A few weeks ago I did a huge food allergy test, the Cyrex Panel #10, to see what I was really allergic/reacting to. Originally I had planned to do Panel #4 for gluten cross-reactivity but didn’t want to have to eat some gluten-free bread to challenge my system first so Dr. Keller recommended this test instead plus it covers way more foods than the cross-reactivity test. I cared most about a few foods – eggs, coffee, chocolate and rice, all of which are on the cross-reactive test too but also nightshades and some other things that were also covered on the Panel #10. I had been trying to test some of these foods using the Bulletproof FoodDetective app on my iPhone but results seemed kind of inconclusive using the heart rate change test.
Mixing it up some more
A new pile of Biotics Research herbs to try
Three weeks ago I switched from my AlliMed/Neem/Berberine protocol to a new one using Metagenics CandiBactin-AR and -BR. This was some potent stuff and I definitely felt a change within 24 hours. First, it gave me diarrhea, something that I never or very rarely have dealt with through the course of SIBO since I have the constipation type. This lasted about 2-3 days and then shifted to where I had more solid stools but they were like ruins, they sort of fell apart on flushing. I called Dr. Keller and she said this seemed to be a normal transition people went through so I wasn’t too concerned. I finished up the 15 days of CandiBactin treatment and as the time went on noticed I could suddenly eat a bit more food and my symptoms were for the most part gone.
Saying goodbye to my FitBit
Last year I bought a FitBit Flex to track myself closely. At the time instead of trying to get in shape and do my 10,000 steps per day I was actually trying to rest as much as possible and push in as many calories as I could to stop the weight loss so I was using it as an Un-FitBit. At the time I was trying to stay at less than 2 miles per day of total movement, tracking every calorie I put in, tracking weight, my sleep, symptoms, and journalling most days about how bad I felt. In December I finally stopped tracking food figuring I had a pretty good idea when I was getting enough calories. A few months ago I stopped paying attention to steps since I started running again and use my Ambit again for runs and rides now. Lately I found all I was looking at was sleep and now I pretty much know my sleep habits and tend to get enough sleep most nights even if I do have an hour of being awake in the middle of the night at some point, I’m OK with that.
So today I exported what data I care about and took off the FitBit. Will I buy another health tracker? For now I doubt it. The Apple Watch is just not as good as the Ambit for running and would just mean one more thing beeping at me. The new FitBit Charge and Charge HR are nice but do I really care about my heart rate all day long? Like Bill Maher said this week, I’ll care about it when my heart is pounding out of my chest. I can wear my heart monitor with the Ambit when I really want to know but even then I find I don’t really want to know when running trails. The FitBit is finding a new home with Cadence, it may give her some incentive to move around a bit more.
New protocol, new foods, new happenings, …
I finished three weeks of my usual AlliMed/Neem/Berberine treatment this week and even had stopped the Berberine for the last week to give my gut a break from it before switching over to a new protocol for the next 15 days. Yesterday I began the Metagenics CandiBactin-AR and -BR herbals, a potent combination of oregano and thyme oil and berberine. The oregano appears to be especially potent, within minutes I’m burping up what seems like an entire heavily spiced Italian meal. I had some definite gut rumblings going on yesterday after the first dose and again after the second evening dose so we’ll see how well I can tolerate this but I figure it is worth powering through for 15 days to see if it can help eradicate the last of the SIBO. One nice thing is that this is a lot less pills to swallow, only 4 pills at breakfast and dinner instead of 6 pills at each meal.
About to mix it up
I had my follow up call with Dr. Keller today about my test results. While not my lowest numbers ever this was in a few ways my best test in that I did not have an early peak like previous low tests and it had a very typical SIBO curve to it instead of multiple spikes in the graph. So, what to do next. She agreed with my basic thought that we had to mix it up a bit and that maybe the AlliMed/Neem/Berberine combo I’ve been doing is only going to get us so far. I am going to continue on that combo for another 25 days giving me a total of 30 days on it but then I’m going to try a new protocol. This one comes from the John Hopkins study and uses Metagenics CandiBactin-AR and -BR. This uses Berberine again but combines it with Thyme and Oregano Essential Oils in the -AR blend. I’ll do 2 pills each/2x a day with meals for 15 days. Then I’ll retest around the end of March. Depending on the outcome then it may mean going to the larger John Hopkins Protocol and using Biotics Research products A.D.P. (Oregano oil), Berberine HCL, FC-Cidal and Dysbiocide (the best named gut product ever).