Mullen protocol one week in

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My meal-time pile o' pills

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.

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Food Allegies

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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.

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Mixing it up some more

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A new pile of Biotics Research herbs to try

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.

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Buddhism and Hunting

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IMG_6168Thirty six years ago when I started practicing Zen Buddhism I gave up meat eating, hunting and fishing to become a “good Buddhist” vegetarian.  I had an on and off thing with fishing, I stopped for years, picked it up again as exclusively a Catch & Release practice, stopped it again, then picked it back up again.  I never picked up hunting or eating meat again until this last year.   When forced out of my vegetarian diet by SIBO I decided that if I was going to eat meat then I was going to participate in the taking of that meat or fish so I began killing fish and recently, killing animals, for food.

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Saying goodbye to my FitBit

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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.

Cedar Mountain 5 Mile Run

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cedarI couldn’t run the 5-mile Watershed run last week because I was just overbooked so I moved my registration to the new Cedar Mountain run in Renton for today.  I wish the weather would have been like last week, instead it was pouring rain all night long and was still pouring this morning when I showed up at Petrovitsky Park.  There were very few runners since this was sort of a last minute event, we had 29 signed up ahead of time and had about a half dozen day of registrations show up so registration was pretty uneventful.

Luckily the rain seemed to die out just as we were about to start the run at 9:30.   The few of us gathered at the start for a brief talk and off we went.  The course started on pavement in the park and followed the road for just under a mile before heading up into single track that was some of the softest single track I’ve been on around here.  We then crossed another road and onto a bit more technical single track but still not nearly as bad as Soaring Eagle, even though it was wet and slick in a few spots with some roots and fallen trees to contend with.   The 5-milers did a lollipop at the end of this stretch on some gravel roads and more single track while the 10-milers branched off to actually run up Cedar Mountain itself.   Once I hit the turn-off I was on my own, I didn’t see another 5 mile runner until I was back on the pavement.     On the last stretch coming into the park I got passed by another runner, I was taking it pretty easy on the pavement since I’m not used to running on it at all these days.    Crossed the finish in 46:24, at a 9:05 pace,  quite a bit faster than my 9:40 pace at Soaring Eagle or my over 10 minute pace at all the other winter events.  Maybe I just run better in the mud and muck or all this running on Tiger is doing the trick and getting me into good shape again.

Getting back into hunting

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End of a good day, the dog is tired out.

End of a good day, the dog is tired out.

When I first had to go from vegetarian to Paleo I made the decision that I was going to have to take responsibility for eating animals and do some of the killing of them myself.  This started with fish last spring, when I began killing stocker trout for dinner.  It was not an easy decision to make but I felt it was the right one.  Re-reading The Paleo Manifesto this winter I got to the section on hunting and decided that now was the time to take the gathering of my own food a step further and get back into hunting for meat.

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New protocol, new foods, new happenings, …

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IMG_6040I 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.

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Winter Trail Run Series Recap

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FullSizeRenderAfter a long time away from running due to either injury or illness I used the 2014-15 Winter Trail Run Series from Northwest Trail Runs to try and get back into shape somewhat and get back into running a bit of distance.   I managed to volunteer at every single one of the seven events this year and was able to run in five of them.  I missed one due to the distance being a bit much for me at the time and another due to just not feeling well enough to run even though I had registered.   I got to run the Carkeek Cooler event with Kristen and the Absolution Run with Chris so it became sort of a family series too this year.

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About to mix it up

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candibactinI 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).

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