The last event of the Winter Trail Series was held yesterday at Soaring Eagle park in Sammamish, the Frost Eagle event which this year was neither frosty or mucky for once. As usual I arrived early to help with setup and registration before the run. Everything went pretty smoothly given that we had a few no-shows on volunteers and both of us doing registration were running too but we got it taken care of and both got ready to run before the start.
Sleep, Rest and SIBO
One of the things that I think was crucial to dealing with SIBO, or any chronic illness, is getting enough rest to give the body time to heal. I had been thinking of writing this post last week and then I listened to this podcast with Meghan Telpner on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast and decided that she said it all better than I could. I’d recommend anyone dealing with a chronic illness listen to what Meghan has to say.
In my case I was used to living a pretty fast paced lifestyle. If I wasn’t at work coding or managing a team at what was the world’s biggest and craziest software company I was out running, hiking, climbing, fishing, biking, etc… basically anything that would keep me in motion. So getting SIBO was a huge shift for me and hard to accept that I had to slow down and get some real rest. Dr. Bowen told me again and again, my new “job” was to relax and heal, not be be doing all the time.
Interlaken Icicle Dash 10k
A bit of mud and water today
Today was the second to last event in the Winter Trail Run Series – the Interlaken Icicle Dash. Not too well named this year, should have been the Interlaken Mud Run given the conditions of the trails after all the rain of the last few days. As usual I was there early for setup and registration which was a bit damp but not freezing cold like some of the other events have been. The warmer weather was good because I wanted to run this event after bailing on the St. Edwards run due to cold a few weeks ago.
My stand-up desk experiment
With the disc issues in my neck I began noticing that sitting was the worst thing I could do. If I was on the move all day then my leg rarely started burning but if I sat down for more than about 45 minutes the burn would come on and once it came on it rarely went away for the rest of the day. The most time I would spend sitting was at the computer which is where my worst bad habits of leaning forward and slouching come into play. So I decided to change up my workstation a month ago and bought a stand-up desk unit. With my old school 27″ iMac I was rather limited by weight as to what would work but the Ergotron Single HD unit would hold my system. I opted for the one with the extra shelf so I’d have room for my collection of input devices since I’ve gotten oddly used to using a pen tablet, touch pad and mouse.
New methane treatment coming in 2017?
Dr. Pimentel has been at the lead of SIBO research over the last few years and has uncovered the underlying causes of the illness, notably the autoimmune reaction causing the destruction of the vinculin protein that helps drive the migrating motor complex of the small intestine. For the last few years he has been focusing on methane patients quite a bit and trying to find a new solution to the illness since those with vinculin antibodies relapse frequently. It looks like he is in Phase 2 Clinical Trials now on a new drug that stops methane production in m.smithii. You can read all about it at the Synthetic Biologics site – the drug is currently known as SYN-010. This “cure” seems to really just be stopping the archea from producing methane which causes the symptoms instead of killing off the m.smithii directly. Not sure how I feel about this, it seems to be treating the symptoms instead of the root of the problem and those archea and bacteria will still be in the wrong place eating your food in the small intestine. The drug is a variation on lovastatin and statin drugs also have side effects that are pretty undesirable to me at least, especially myopathy.
Dr. Ruscio is running a similar study using Red Rice Yeast instead of a drug since that is a natural statin. Hopefully he gets good results w/o the side effect rate of SYN-010. Stay tuned.
The non-treatment side of SIBO treatment
In my recent post I went over my actual treatment protocols that I used for SIBO and briefly mentioned the other things that probably helped my treatment. I decided to do another post on just these aspects of dealing with SIBO since I think they are almost as important as the actual anti-microbial treatment. In the classes I have done for Health Coach training at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, IIN, these aspects are called Primary Foods in contrast to the actual foods that one puts in ones mouth. The Primary Foods are – Relationships, Spirituality, Exercise and Career. How do these apply to my SIBO healing? Read on.
My SIBO Treatment Re-Cap
Lately I’ve been asked by several people about what treatment I did to get rid of SIBO so I decided it was a good time to summarize so I have it in one place. Now keep in mind, what worked for me may not work for you since it seems that everyone is different when it comes to SIBO. I also had methane (CH4) dominant SIBO and didn’t show any hydrogen (H2) until my CH4 numbers were way down but having CH4 means you have H2 underneath since the m.smithii methanogens eat the hydrogen gas created by the other bacteria to create CH4.
Going a bit outside Paleo
Ever since I started my serious attempt to gain weight I had added back in some white jasmine rice as a carb source to try and put on some pounds, especially as my running mileage is increasing. I really hated the thought of eating white rice but jasmine has the lowest fermentation potential and gets absorbed quickly in the upper part of the small intestine. Still, it never sat well with me since I always felt brown rice was much healthier option. There are plusses and minuses on both sides of this and many Paleo followers won’t even go there at all just totally avoiding grains. The argument for white jasmine rice is that it has no anti-nutrients at all since the bran has been stripped away but what you are left with is a pretty high glycemic carb source. The best case for white rice in Paleo I’ve found is at Paleo Leap. They argue for white jasmine rice and against brown rice since it does contain anti-nutrients.
Winter Running Fest
photo by Takao Suzuki
The Bridle Trails Winter Running Festival is one of my favorite events each year and I’ve had to miss out the last few years due to SIBO but this year I was finally back. The run has three distances – 5-mile, 10-mile and 50k either done solo or as a team. I chose the 10-mile distance this year and figured that if needed or if the weather was horrible I could drop down to 5-miles. The weather turned out to be perfect, temps in the high 30’s and no rain for days so the trails were in great shape and not a huge mud-fest as often happens at this event. Of the years I’ve done the run the weather and conditions were the best this year far and away. Since conditions were so good I was also able to run it in my Luna Osos and Tabus with a wool Injinji sock underneath it all. For once I wasn’t the only crazy person wearing sandals, another runner who I know was wearing the same setup for the 50k.
Seward Solstice 10k
Another week for the Winter Trail Run Series, this time the Solstice run held at Seward Park in Seattle. Even though we are nearing the darkest day of the year the weather turned out to be pretty good for this one. It was cold when I arrived to help setup in the morning but it wasn’t raining and the sun was starting to rise over Lake Washington. We got setup done and registration went smoothly for the fairly large event of about 260 runners.
Two distances today, 4.2 mile and 10k. I’d done the 4.2 mile as a walk/trot a few years ago but this time went for the 10k since my mileage has been increasing. I wore my Luna Osos with the Tabus today again since the trails in general are smooth and easy though the single track, as I would find out, was pretty darn muddy and covered in a lot of fallen trees which made for quite a few hurdles. 10k meant three laps of the course so I got to jump over the half dozen trees three times. My feet and tights were covered in mud by the end but my feet stayed very dry with the Tabus.
The run went well, I started out fast and was shocked to see during the first lap I was pulling down a sub-8 minute pace most of the time. The slight uphills and some crowding slowed me down a bit and after the first lap I pulled back a tad. Ended up finishing in 52:54 which was pretty decent, my second fastest 10k ever and considering my fastest was dead flat I was pretty happy with this time. In the overall standings for the series I was at 18/202 before this event and hopefully will go up a notch after today since I did beat at least one runner that was in front of me. Next up the Absolution Run at St. Edwards on Jan 3rd. I’m only doing the 4 mile at this one though may shift to the 8 if I’m feeling up for it but St. Edwards still scares me after my hamstring injury there a few years back.