Today, I'm going to show you how to use an at-home SIBO test
kit for your SIBO breath test, so stay tuned. Hey there, if you're new here, welcome my name's
Amanda Malachesky. I'm a certified functional nutrition health coach and a digestive and
allergy detective. For help going from food and digestive chaos to food freedom, please consider
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Taking a home SIBO test is pretty easy, but there are a few particular things you have to be sure to
do just right, so that you get good results. So in today's video, I'm going to give you a front
row seat to my recent SIBO test. So by the end of today's video, you'll know how to prepare for the
test, how to complete the test, how to package it up to send it back to the lab and I'm also
going to share a couple of key tips to help you make the process as easy as possible.Done
right, the SIBO test can give you some really key information about what's going on in your
gut and how to proceed, so let's get started. All right. So a SIBO breath test is probably
the most common test used to diagnose small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or SIBO.
And SIBO can be one of the underlying causes of IBS-type symptoms. Things like constipation,
diarrhea, bloating, gas, or abdominal pain, so the test can be super valuable
to help you understand some of the possible root causes of what's going on in your gut.
The test is either performed with an at-home kit like I'm going to demo today
or sometimes in your doctor's office. Today I'm going to demonstrate how to use the Lactulose
SIBO Breath Test from Aerodiagnostics Laboratory. This video is a follow-up to two of my previous
videos, where I shared about how I had recently completed two rounds of antibiotic treatment with
Rifaximin and Neomycin for my methane dominant SIBO. These were prescribed by my naturopath and
so I talk all about what happened during those treatment rounds. You can watch those videos
and so now I'm doing a retest to see whether or not the bacteria in my gut have responded.
I have had some pretty decent symptom improvements since my treatment, so if that's enough for me,
then I don't need to retest but I'm personally curious to see how my very high methane
gases have responded to the treatment, or if the improvement I'm seeing is due to something else.
The first thing you have to do is pick two days when you don't have a lot of other activities. The
reason for this is you have to do a prep diet the day before your test and so this might interrupt
your normal flow and you also sometimes might not feel super great while you're doing the prep
diet. And then the second day you need to do the test and it takes about four hours,
start to finish, in the morning first thing. You need to be awake and out of bed for an
hour before you begin the test and you have to have fasted for 12 hours before you sit down
to start the test. So decide on the start time you want to pick for your test in the morning,
and that will help you determine when to begin your fast. So for example, if you want to start
the test at 6:30 in the morning and be done by 9:30, you will have to start your overnight fast
at 6:30. So you have to complete your dinner by that time, the day before.I picked a Saturday for
my prep day and a Sunday for my test day, because my schedule is just a lot lighter
on the weekend and I have a lot more flexibility. Now that you've picked, when you're going to do
the test, you can focus in on preparing for your prep diet day. So when the day before the test,
during your eating hours, you're going to eat a limited diet that's prescribed by the lab. This
makes sure that when you drink the test solution, the results that you're seeing are only from
the test and not from the foods you ate the day before. So it's very important that you follow the
diet carefully to get the best SIBO test results. Aerodiagnostic says to eat only the following
foods for those 12 hours during the day when you'll be eating on the day before. So, chicken,
turkey, or fish, olive oil, salt, pepper, clear chicken broth, clear beef broth, eggs, white rice,
white toast, or coffee, tea, or plain water. Now, if you're someone like me, who can't
tolerate everything on that list, and you're going to have a really limited
diet for the prep diet day, my hot tip is to do your food preparation the night before.
I wanted to show you guys what I had prepared for myself to eat tomorrow, which
is basically just plain chicken and rice. This is okay, just chicken thighs baked with salt and
pepper and olive oil and the juice, the natural juice from the chicken. And so this will be my
breakfast and lunch tomorrow and then tomorrow night I will make more of this. My poor family
will be eating this for the next 24 hours and then I also have a pot of rice that I cooked tonight,
so that's my prep for my pre-test day tomorrow. Now that you've completed your prep diet,
fasted for the 12 hours overnight and woken up an hour before the test, now it's time to begin.
Time to get up and start the SIBO test process. All right, it's Sunday morning.
I'm getting ready to do my test. Let's open up the test box and take a look at what's inside.
Okay, so we are opening up. We got the test requisition here. This sheet gives
us the preparation instructions. So no sleeping or vigorous exercise for at least an hour before the
test. So that's why I'm up right now, early in the morning. You want to be off of antibiotic therapy
or have not had any colonoscopies, barium studies or enemas. No smoking for at least an hour before
or anytime during the test. And for the first 12 hours of the 24 hours before, you need to limit
your consumption of the following foods. So,
this is why I'm about to do my test at 7:30 in the morning, because we had dinner at 7:30 last night.
Okay and then this is the instructions for how to use the test apparatus. So I'm going to be
showing you guys what's in there. There's a shipping label and in here we've got,
these are the little labels that go on the little test vial. This is the little test apparatus, so
I'll show you how this works in a minute. There is the test solution; the lactulose.
Here are the little test vials, and then these are the little bags for sending them back.
So it's nice to just fill some of this, as much of this out as possible, before you actually do
the test. So you can fill out the date. Right now while you're just filling out all of these
stickers, but you don't want to fill out the time because you'll add that specifically
when you take the test sample. Okay people, let's do this. I
am going to start my test by taking my baseline sample. Very important that you do this before you
take the rest of the test or you won't have a reference point on the test. So I'm going to take
this funny little thing here. I'm going to blow into it. I'll show you what it looks like.
So you blow until it inflates the bag and then you take the little vial. There's a little needle
in here and you poke this vial in there with the rubber stopper in and you just do an out-breath,
pop it on there for four seconds and take it out. So I will demonstrate right now how to do this.
There you go and then you're going to write the time for your sample and put it on the vial.
Now I'm going to put the lactulose solution into my eight ounces of water as instructed on the
test instructions and then bottoms up. Here we go.
There you go. It doesn't taste bad. It just tastes mildly sweet and then I'm going to
start my timer for 20 minutes and I will take the first sample then and then I'll do repeat
that through the whole test every 20 minutes. All right. We're moving along here. It's 8:34.
I'm up to sample number four. Here we go. Doing a sample number four. All right, I'm down to my last
test in 20 more minutes. So, I'm pretty hungry. I haven't eaten anything since dinner last night.
So, what I'm going to do in the next 20 minutes is I'm going to heat myself up some breakfast so
I can eat as soon as I'm done with the test and then I will demo packaging up the test.
So I have finished collecting all of my samples and I put them in the little bubble packs
and wrap them up and so I'm going to put them in the test box. I'm going to make sure I include my
test requisition that has my payment information on it and then basically you just close the box
and I will tape it up and put the included shipping label on
and then I will drop it off at FedEx tomorrow. So that's how you run the lactulose SIBO breath
test. Pick the two days you need to do the prep diet and the test. Do the prep diet for 12 hours.
Do your 12 hour fast overnight. Wake up an hour before the test and then run your test as
instructed from the kit. Package it up for the lab and you're ready to get on with your day.
If you're really struggling with your digestion and your food and you're ready for some
professional help, I want to let you know that I'm very soon going to be launching a new eight
week online program to help you go from food and digestive chaos, to freedom and confidence with
your diet and lifestyle practices to support you. Enrollment's going to be very limited in this
initial round, and I'm moving towards primarily working with clients in this way, so if you're
interested in working with me and want to learn more about what's going to be inside the program,
leave me a comment below this video and I will be sure and get back to you about that.
So I hope this video helped you feel really confident using the SIBO breath test.
It's not really complicated but there's a few little details that you need in order to succeed
and if you liked this video, please consider liking,
sharing or subscribing and I will see you all next time.