In December I wrote a post about our 30-Day Candida Cleanse because I thought I had developed a candida overgrowth from a round of Doxycycline taken in September/October. The symptoms were tolerable but I wasn’t my normal self starting at the end of October. The cleanse diet and the supplements seemed to be working and my symptoms were going down, albeit slowly. What follows is the health epic I’ve been going through for the last month since that post. This may be TMI for some people but I feel I need to document this whole experience so maybe I’ll keep others from having to deal with it.
Category Archives: SIBO
Small Intestine Bacterial Ovegrworth, or SIBO, is a chronic bacterial infection of the small intestine that I have been dealing with since the fall of 2013. These are not necessarily bad bacteria and are typically beneficial bacteria but they have moved up from the colon into the small intestine where they interfere with digestion and damage the lining of the intestine causing leaky gut syndrome and possibly auto-immune disorders. In my case I quickly developed a severe gluten and casein intolerance, peripheral neuropathy in my feet and malnutrition/vitamin deficiencies that contributed to a sharp drop in weight.
Symptoms of SIBO include abdominal bloating and pain, constipation or diarrhea, and a feeling that one is basically allergic to food, especially carbohydrates. Many other symptoms are also possible depending on the severity. With leaky gut one can have fatigue, food sensitivities, headaches, and “brain fog”, I had all of these at the beginning. With malabsorption syndrome one can have weight loss, I lost close to 35 pounds in a matter of a few months. If left unchecked SIBO can lead to many auto-immune disorders or fibromyalgia.
SIBO is found with a lactulose breath test which measures the levels of hydrogen and methane in your breath. These gases are not created by our human cells and can only be present if bacteria are producing them. The test, spaced at 20-minute intervals over a 3 hour period can pinpoint where the bacteria are located in the small intestine.
SIBO is typically treated with one or more rounds of antibiotics, usually Rifaxamin and, if you have methane producing bacteria, Neomycin or Flagyl. These antibiotics were too strong for me and I was in the unlucky 10% that experience severe side effects and I had to stop taking them before the full course was done. Instead I had to use multiple rounds of herbal antibiotics – AlliMed and Neem Plus – to start to drop the bacterial levels. I have also been using Metagenics CandiBactin-AR and -BR as well as FC-Cidal, Dysbiocide, ADP and Berberine HCL from Biotics Research. Diet is also important in controlling SIBO and one must stick to a low FODMAP version of the Paleo or Specific Carbohydrate Diet. The diet that worked best for me was developed by Dr. Allison Siebecker at the SIBO Center in Portland and it is SIBO Specific based on a low FODMAP version of SCD.
Some resources for those dealing with SIBO that I have found helpful include:
- SIBOInfo.com – site maintained by Dr. Allison Siebecker
- Natural Functional Medicine – site of Dr. Melanie Keller, also of the SIBO Center, who I see via Skype.
- SIBO: Often-Ignored cause of IBS – good overview article by Drs. Siebecker and Sandberg-Lewis of the SIBO Center.
- Sibo Support Group – We Cured It and So Can You on Facebook
- SIBO Discussion/Support Group on Facebook
- Western Washington SIBO Support Group – Facebook group for a local SIBO support group I am trying to put together. We are trying to meet once a month locally. If you want to join, send an invite from the page and I’ll add you assuming you live in the Puget Sound region.
SIBO App – I developed this iOS app in conjunction with Dr. Allison Siebecker of the SIBO Center. It includes an interactive version of her SIBO Specific Food Guide which can be searched, sorted and filtered. Free on the AppStore.
The following blog posts cover my ongoing journey with SIBO from the beginning.