Originally I blamed this whole nasty illness on a single round of Doxycycline in the fall of 2013. That was the one incident that I could point to when I suddenly started having some serious digestion issues but now a year plus later and a lot of learning I think I can say that the Doxy may have been the straw that broke the camels back but wasn’t necessarily the whole story. I had started having issues with dairy by the summer of 2011 and at that point switched out milk in my lattes for almond or hemp milk so something was definitely not right almost 4 years ago. I’d occasionally eat pizza or ice cream (or both in the same night) and pay for it for a few days. I had an incident of what we thought was gallbladder problems back in 2010 after a trip to South Carolina where I ate a bit too much fatty foods so maybe this started almost 5 year ago. So, while my digestion was usually pretty good these were signs that something was up starting in 2010. I can point to a few things now that probably contributed to the SIBO, the parasite and the leaky gut that really caused all this to ballon out of control and impact my entire body.
1. Thirty-five years of a mostly vegetarian or vegan diet. I know that no one who is vegan or vegetarian wants to hear this but I’m convinced it helped set me up for a leaky gut and some of the deficiencies I have been dealing with. I had a very grain and legume heavy diet and both contain nasty lectins that over time can cause a leaky gut and thus autoimmune disorders. Dr. Sarah Ballantyne dedicates 14 pages in The Paleo Approach to explaining the biology behind exactly how grains and legumes deteriorate the intestinal lining over time finally allowing proteins and bacteria to slip outside the lining and cause an autoimmune reaction. This, I’m certain, is how I became gluten and casein intolerant and why I’m also cross reacting to other foods such as eggs and coffee now.
2. Travel to third world countries. I’ve spent a fair bit of time in the Yucatan, Baja, Belize and the Bahamas and on several trips got sick from food poisoning though my worst incident happened in Victoria, BC of all places. I had Montezuma’s Revenge once in La Paz and felt like hell for days. I got really sick from a roadside stand on Exuma one year. I always tried to be careful with the food and water but it is nearly impossible to not end up getting something once or twice on these travels. I know that the blastocysts parasite I’m dealing with came from one of these trips and isn’t helping my SIBO any and is another potential cause of leaky gut. This critter has been housed in my intestines for at least 4-5 years now, maybe closer to a decade. The current thinking about SIBO from Dr. Mark Pimentel is that SIBO (and IBS) is really an autoimmune disorder brought on by a bout of food poisoning that ends up impacting the vinculin protein that drives the Migrating Motor Complex, the set of muscles that move the small intestines cleaning wave. There should be a blood test coming early in 2015 to tell if this was really the cause of my SIBO or not. If so, then the big issue is what the treatment will ultimately be and Dr. Pimentel and his team at Cedar Sinai is working on that right now.
3. Long distance running. Just as my vegetarian/vegan friends don’t want to hear point #1, my running friends don’t want to hear this point. I have always run but for most of my life stuck to 10k events, maybe doing one or two half marathons a year. Starting in 2011 though I amped it up and began running longer and longer distances. I was doing a half marathon or more a week and putting in 5-10 miles several other days a week. I ran marathons and even a 50k. Well, turns out that too much exercise can contribute to a leaky gut and if I was already susceptible due to the other factors. Again, Dr. Sarah Ballantyne explains all in her book but luckily also in this blog post on Why Exercising Too Much Hurts Your Gut. Coincidence that all this came on after I increased my mileage a lot, I doubt it.
4. Too many antibiotics over the years. While I can point to that one round of Doxy, I was ignoring the many rounds of Cipro, Tetracycline, Z-Pacs and all the other antibiotics I’d taken over the years. At one point I was having recurring prostate infections and sometimes they would not go away. In one case we had to go nuclear on it and I was on high dose of Cipro for 45 days non stop. Well, one dose of antibiotics a year alters the gut micro biome quite a bit and it takes a long time to recover. Two doses within a given year alter the micro biome enough that the changes can be permanent. My gut biota was wiped out and permanently altered from the accumulation of all these antibiotics and that last dose just put me over the edge finally. As Dr. Bowen has said, the gut can take a lot of insult but one too many and it will have a hard time recovering. I had that one too many.
Bottom line, I think my gut was set up for a major disaster by the fall of 2013 due to a combination of all these factors and that last 14-days of Doxycycline just pushed it over the edge. Going forward I’m staying away from antibiotics unless I have a life threatening situation where I need to take them. I’m going to keep my running to levels more like I traditionally had which I need to do anyway because of my feet. My Paleo Autoimmune Protocol/SIBO Specific diet takes care of the grain and legume issues (as well as nuts which I’m avoiding at the moment too due to phytic acid). I’m unable to really travel at the moment but when I’m able again I’m going to be sticking to places where I can rent a condo or house and do most of my own cooking instead of being at the mercy of lodges and questionable restaurants. Now to just come back from this latest setback and try to deal with this the SIBO and the blasto once and for all and use 2015 to really start getting my health back.