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.
Tag Archives: SIBO
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.
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).
Test #7 – Better but not quite clear
On Wednesday Catherine and I made the drive to Portland so that I could do a SIBO test at the NCNM Clinic on Thursday and not have to wait 2-4 weeks to get the results back. I went into it feeling that my numbers were going to be down but not quite all the way down since I was still having symptoms off and on over the last month. Not many though, I only reported symptoms on 8 days in 30 which is a record for me over the past year.
The test was later than I usually do it so I packed along a lunch knowing I’d be about 18 hours w/o food by the time I finished. I sat in the lab area for the test along with one other woman and got to chat with the lab techs and Dr. Keller who I got to meet in person for the first time. After my 3 hour test I chowed down lunch while the results were getting finalized and put into the report. Well, turns out I was right, numbers down significantly but I still have SIBO. The test was another technically “negative” test according to the machine output but Drs. Siebecker and Pimentel have changed the positive criteria to be any methane >=3ppm so I’m well above that. Still, I dropped from a high of 33 methane, 9 hydrogen and combined high of 42 to a high of 13 methane, 14 hydrogen with a combined high of 24. That is a good reduction in methane of 30 ppm and the increase in hydrogen is expected as the levels of methane go down. This is really the best result I’ve had in that there is only one real spike in the graph, it is lower down, and the hydrogen is starting to show up finally since I was usually a high of 2-3 on hydrogen.
Yet another round of treatment done
Today I am finishing up my 5th major round of herbal antibiotics since starting them in June of last year. I did start out slow by ramping up in June so really didn’t hit full strength until July so that means I’ve been taking pretty heavy doses of herbals for seven months with maybe a 4-6 weeks off of them at times while testing and waiting for results. It has been a very up and down and back up seven months. My numbers were high in May, high in June, weird in July, very low in September after Round 3, up again in November after my 4th and what I hoped was my knock-out round and since then I’ve been very strict with diet and we’ll see what it gets me. I head to Portland this week to do the test in person at the SIBO Center so I don’t have to wait 2-4 weeks for the results to come back.
B.hominis – to treat or not?
I really tried to use the Purge the Whorl to help clear my b.hominis parasite while doing my current SIBO herbals but it just was not meant to be. The first time I tried I got sick off 1t. and the nausea lasted about 2 days. I waited a week and tried again but decided to slowly ramp up from 1/2t. 1x a day up to 1t./3x day over the course of about a week. I lasted 3 days on the full dose and then got really sick from it. The stuff is vile to say the least, it deserves the Mr. Yuck sticker on the bottle. It was never easy to choke down and then just made my stomach very upset.