Have you heard you should take probiotics to help your IBS or SIBO but you're unsure
how to pick the right ones or you've had bad results when you tried?
Watch this video to learn how to choose the right tailored probiotic for your IBS or SIBO.
I'm Amanda Malachesky, Certified Functional Nutrition and Lifestyle Practitioner and Digestive
and Allergy Detective.
I help you figure out why your digestion is misbehaving and what you can do about it even
when you've been told you just have to live with it.
I'm here to share my hard blend, no-BS, creative, all-natural approaches to healing your gut
struggles.
So if you're ready to get down to work and get beyond your symptoms, be sure to subscribe
to my channel to get notified of my new video every Monday.
There's no denying that probiotics are important for managing gut symptoms and syndromes like
IBS and SIBO, but how do you do this properly?
In this video, I'm going to share what you need to know to use probiotics when you have
IBS or SIBO.
I use this exact same approach to help my gut-healing clients and I really would like
to help you too, so let's get started.
Probiotics are commonly recommended for just about everyone these days, but as always,
this blanket recommendation needs to be used with caution and customized, because everyone's
gut is different.
I've seen several clients who followed this conventional wisdom on their own but suddenly
found that their IBS or SIBO symptoms of bloating or belly pain or gas or constipation or diarrhea
were worse.
If we accept the idea that a majority of IBS cases are actually caused by an overgrowth
of bacteria in the small intestines, also known as SIBO, then feeding more bacteria
into your system can backfire and worsen your symptoms, especially if they're the wrong
kind of probiotic for you.
The first step in my practice before throwing probiotics at the situation is to do a comprehensive
assessment, which for my clients includes having them do a stool test as well as a SIBO
test so we can clearly understand what kind of dysbiosis we're dealing with.
If you want to learn more about this testing, check out my video Gut Microbiome Testing
for IBS.
Next, you need to decide on a strategy.
The stool results from the GI map test can give you an idea of the overall balance of
beneficial flora like the Lactobacillus and the Bifidobacteria, and it will also identify
the presence or absence of different bad bacteria.
The SIBO test will tell you whether or not bacterial overgrowth is present in your small
intestine.
To move forward without worsening your symptoms, we need to take this into account.
For example, some of these bacteria may be histamine producers, and if histamine symptoms
are present, like itching or rashing, we won't want to rely on a histamine-producing probiotic.
If there's a methane-dominant SIBO with constipation, we may not want to use probiotics at all for
awhile until we deal with that.
I've linked a blog article below from my friend Alison Vickery, that shares a list of bacteria
that produce histamine.
If histamine symptoms are part of your picture, you may want to cross-reference this resource
with your stool results and your probiotics to make sure you're not making things worse
there.
I'm curious to know, have your symptoms ever gotten worse by using more probiotics or probiotic
foods?
Tell me about it in the comments.
With the information we have gathered from the tests and other assessment, we can make
a more targeted guess as to what type of probiotics might be helpful for you or are least likely
to increase or worsen your symptoms.
There are five general groups I think of choosing from, and these are soil-based probiotics,
spore-based probiotics, Lactobacillus species, Bifidobacteria species, and yeasts like Saccharomyces
boulardii.
The soil-based and spore-based probiotics generally seem to better tolerated by SIBO
and IBS clients, but you have to do your own trials.
With lactobacillus and bifidobacteria, which are the really common probiotics you might
be familiar with, the strains seem to matter a lot, so some trial and error is in order.
Saccharomyces boulardii is a beneficial yeast that can help crowd out candida overgrowth
and is particularly helpful for IBS with diarrhea.
There are so many different brands and blends of probiotics out there, but the list of categories
should help you sort through the options and make a better choice.
Because no two bodies are the same and we can't predict specifically how your body will
respond, we now need to work the process of using your observation skills using a food
symptom diary to carefully track the effect.
You can grab a copy of my food symptom diary below.
If you find a positive benefit from your probiotic, you want to continue to increase the dose
until you find your personal sweet spot.
If you notice negative effects, you can either reduce your dose, stop, or continue in the
short-term with the hopes that you're experiencing a temporary healing crisis as your body adjusts
to this new routine.
This is the part of the process that lots of people skip or don't take the time to explore,
but it's really the most important part of the process.
What may be good for one person may not be right at all for you, so it's super important
to always customize your protocols.
Putting all four steps together helps you arrive at your personalized approach for probiotics.
This same approach can be used to evaluate probiotic food such as sauerkraut, kombucha,
kefir, and other pickled foods.
While they're generally beneficial, probiotic foods may aggravate your IBS or SIBO symptoms
before some additional healing's taken place, so just like you would with any other food,
evaluate how they're working for your digestion with the food symptom diary.
Now you know how to think about incorporating probiotics into your strategy for IBS and
SIBO, but what about the other pieces of your healing puzzle?
Probiotics are only one part of the overall strategy, and there are several other important
steps to get to your root causes.
I invite you to grab my roadmap to recovery guide to learn about what else you can do
to truly heal your gut and get back to what's important to you.
If you're feeling confused about your probiotics and would like some support sorting that out,
please schedule a free 30-minute assessment session with me at confluencenutrition.com/contact
and I will be happy to help you sort out what your next best steps may be, or leave a question
about probiotics in the comments below and I'll do my best to help you reach a helpful
answer.
I also have a private Facebook group called Hope for Healing Chronic Illness, where you
can get help from me and our community, so come check us out.
And if you like this video, please let me know by liking it below.
Subscribe and share it with your fellow digestively-challenged friends or family, and comment below with
"helpful" if this video helped you.
See you next time.