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.
Through December and January I stuck closely to a low FODMAP AIP (Autoimmune Protocol) diet which seems to be working well for me. I’ve also stayed away from the devil weed completely. Protocol wise the biggest thing we did was try to kill the blasto at the same time which failed, and increased my prokinetic usage. Since giving up on the Purge the Whorl for blasto I’ve been sticking to the following:
Meals:
- Iberogast 20-drops before eating
- 2 AlliMed
- 2 Neem Plus
- 2 Berberine Complex
Between one set of meals:
- 3 MotilPro (well, I make my own but the same stuff minus B-6)
- 250mg of Triple Mag
Bedtime:
- 3 MotilPro
- 500-800mg of Mag depending on how I’m feeling
At the moment I feel pretty good but not 100% better, more like 90% better. I’ve had bad days mixed in over the last month but can usually attribute it to something I ate. The last was wine I’m pretty sure, I can’t even seem to have one glass now. So, there goes alcohol for me too. The increased motility regime has me going to the bathroom very regularly now, at least 3x per day over the last month. I’m also not getting bad symptoms at the end of the day like I was before making that change. In the last 30 days I’ve only had 2 days with symptoms that hit a 2 on my scale and about 8-9 days of “very mild” symptoms, the majority of days are symptom free.
I’m eating a much fuller diet these days too. Finally I can eat a LOT of winter squash which is great. I can eat zucchini with the skins left on! I can handle rutabagas and broccoli now too, the first cruciferous veggies I’ve been able to eat in a long time. If I have eggs once a week or so I seem OK with them even though would still like to get tested on this one. Basically I don’t feel deprived at all even with the rather limiting AIP diet. Also back to working out and running on a regular basis though keeping my mileage low. I’m running 3-4 miles now 3 days a week and doing weights 2-3 days a week. Hoping this puts on some muscle mass but so far my weight seems to be stuck around 156-157 for the last few months.
Our venture to Portland falls on the one year anniversary of my diagnosis with SIBO exactly and about 16 months into this whole adventure. Looking forward to the trip though, we are going to have dinner at The Imperial where Top Chef finalist Doug Adams is chef. We are also going to have lunch at The Cultured Caveman with one of my online SIBO friends from Vancouver, looking forward to meeting her in person and checking out my first real Paleo restaurant.
Also looking towards later spring when a new blood test should be available which will tell me if this is really an autoimmune condition I’m dealing with where my immune system has attacked my enteric nervous system thus permanently slowing down my gut. If that is the case then I’ll know that I won’t clear this with antibiotics ever, I’ll just have to manage the disease as best I can and hope that Dr. Pimentel figures out a long-term cure for this. It wouldn’t be the best news but at the same time I’d know for sure what I’m dealing with here and stop hoping that next month I’m finally going to test clear.