In today's video, I'm going to share my best IBS supplement advice to help you make sense of
all of the conflicting supplement information out there, so stay tuned.
If you're returning, welcome back. And if you're new here, my name's Amanda Malachesky,
I'm a certified functional nutrition health coach, and a digestive and allergy detective.
For weekly videos on how to find your personal diet and supplement plan for IBS and SIBO,
please consider subscribing and be sure to click the bell to be notified when I post a new video.
Literally every single day, I interact with people in internet land who are confused about their gut
health supplements. They're confused about how to choose them, how to use them, whether they're
appropriate, whether they're not. And honestly, I'm super annoyed with how a lot of the supplement
information is presented out there, because it leaves out some really crucial information to help
you be the most confident that you can be in using these supplements, which can be helpful for you.
So in this video, I wanted to share some of the hard-won gut supplement wisdom that I've acquired
after coaching hundreds of IBS and SIBO clients over the last several years. This is a view that
can be kind of hard to access while you're in the throes of dealing with your own personal
IBS or SIBO problem, so I want to illuminate some important things for you and help you
just get to a lot more confidence and success with your supplements. So let's get started.
So first things first, very briefly, let's just clarify exactly what a supplement is. So for the
purpose of this video, I consider a supplement a capsule, a tablet, a tincture, a powder, a gummy.
Or, this is really important, a food that's being used as a medicine. So for example,
if you're drinking a 16-ounce glass of celery juice every morning, I consider that a supplement.
Or if you're using Slippery Elm powder for pain in your gut, that's a supplement also.
So the very first piece of gut supplement advice I want to give to you is to ask this question,
does the supplement I'm planning on using have evidence to suggest its use for either
my symptoms or my condition? A lot of people on the internet will suggest all manner of
supplements and other kinds of things to help your gut health. But one of the ways that you can
make sure that you are keeping yourself safe and using things that really are going to be helpful,
is to rely on things that actually have scientific evidence in the form of studies
being done on them to back them up. The very best evidence of all is something
called a meta-analysis. This is where data from several studies is compiled into one
large study, to look at the data altogether and look at trends across multiple studies.
So if we think of gut supplements that have a lot of evidence, especially those with meta-analyses
to support their use, there's really actually only kind of a short list of things. And these include
things like probiotics, and L-glutamine. Also, the herbs neem, berberine, allicin and oregano
oil have been shown to be just as effective as the antibiotic Rifaximin for SIBO treatment.
Then there are supplements that have moderate evidence and by this, I mean, there's maybe
multiple single studies that have been done, but there may not be meta-analysis data to say,
yes, this is clearly helpful for gut conditions. And things in this category include things like
digestive enzymes, Slippery Elm, zinc carnosine. So these are supplements where there has been a
clinical study or two, or three, or several done that show that these items are helpful,
and there's evidence to suggest that they perform better than a placebo.
Now there's lots of other gut supplements that are commonly in use that don't really have clear
evidence in the body of research out there. And the supplement to support stomach acid,
called Betaine HCL or Betaine Hydrochloride, is one of these. There's really not any studies
that's been done on it. However, we have a ton of anecdotal evidence from naturopaths,
and functional medicine doctors and so on, who use this in practice and have found that for
some patients it makes a difference. So in this situation, you can still test
supplements like these out, but you want to approach it from the perspective of,
okay, I'm doing this as an N equals one experiment, to see how this affects me.
It might be helpful. It might not. There's not really evidence to suggest that it will be,
but I'm still going to try it anyway. I think it's just helpful to have that perspective in mind.
And I'm going to talk about how to evaluate these kinds of outcomes for yourself in the next
part of this video. My second piece of gut supplement advice for you is to be clear about the
gut symptom, or gut symptom mechanism, that the supplement you're trying is supposed to address.
A lot of people sharing information about gut supplements on the internet will share things
in the form of a laundry list. The post will say something like, five supplements to heal a leaky
gut. Or, three supplements you need to heal your gut. And I'm not really a fan of these
lists because they tend to just be kind of random laundry lists, that don't really dive into whether
or not you really need these specific supplements. When you're deciding which supplements to use,
it's really crucial that you choose them based on some kind of question that you're
trying to answer for yourself about those symptoms, or the underlying mechanism of
your symptoms. And what do I mean by that? For example, let's say that you think that
your gut symptoms started after a bout of food poisoning, or maybe from a course of antibiotics
that you took. So the presumed mechanism of that problem was a shift in your gut microbiome.
So in this situation, adding a supplement like probiotics would be a reasonable
experiment to try. Because the problem that you started with was a change in
the gut microbiome. And those probiotics may help restore that positive gut microbiome.
Conversely, if you think that the problem going on with your gut is that you have low stomach acid,
using something like oregano oil obviously wouldn't make sense. Because oregano oil
doesn't do anything to help address your low stomach acid. In the end, just make sure that
the supplement you're trying is likely to address the problem that you're actually trying to help.
And if you're not sure about this, find someone knowledgeable to ask.
I'm curious to hear if you've ever been confused by your gut health supplements. If so,
leave me a comment below this video, or just click like below the video.
So my third piece of gut supplement advice is the gold of this video, I promise you. And that is to
try only one new supplement at a time. To start with less than the full dose, and to slowly
increase the dose up towards a therapeutic amount. So once you've settled on a supplement to try,
you can save yourself a lot of heartache, and trouble, and trial and tribulation
by following this method. And this involves starting one new supplement at a time, again,
starting with less than the full amount, and working your way slowly up to the full,
therapeutic amount. A lot of supplement problems start when people start multiple supplements at
one time. So maybe your doctor, or your naturopath, or your functional
medicine doctor has given you a really complex protocol on a sheet of paper, and they want you
to start six new supplements altogether at once. Or you heard about or read about something online
that is supposed to address a condition that you have, or you think you have,
and you're just ready to dive in and get started. But especially in these situations,
it's crucially important that you proceed carefully. Because otherwise, you're not going
to get good information from your experiments. The goal here is to learn what you need to do
to manage your symptoms so you can live well. The goal isn't just to take a bunch of pills and call
it good. If you start multiple supplements at a time and you have a bad reaction, you won't
know which supplement is causing the problem, and you'll have to quit the whole protocol.
Some of those things may have been valuable for you, but you won't know.
Also, if you see amazing results, you also won't know exactly what was responsible. This
information about what makes your symptoms better, and what makes things worse, is the
most important information for you to create your personalized plan to move forward with your IBS.
And it can also take a little bit of time to really get familiar with the effects and
impacts of supplements as you start taking them. A lot of people want to just rush through this,
and just go straight to the end, and oh, I'm just going to take this whole huge amount. But again,
you don't get the information you need about the impact of that supplement on your body
if you rush things or go too fast. So start low, go slow, and really explore
how that supplement is impacting your body. It takes longer, but the information that you get
from this process is better than the flare and failure option, which can totally derail you.
My fourth piece of gut supplement advice for you is to be clear about the possible
contraindications of supplements before trying something new. Just like medications,
supplements can have negative side effects and they can have contraindications.
Or times and places where you shouldn't use them. I very often see people preparing to take
supplements for things going on in their digestive systems that really are inappropriate for their
particular situation. One of the most common examples is the stomach acid support question.
A lot of people hear that low stomach acid can cause all kinds of problems with your
digestive system, and this is true. But there are three really important situations
where stomach acid support should not be used. That's if you have active ulcers or suspect that
you might, if you have an H. pylori infection or you suspect that you might. And then we just
recently learned from Dr. Pimentel that it looks like stomach acid can actually make SIBO worse.
Now there may be exceptions to this rule, but it's important to understand where you stand on this
before you dive into supplementing with something that may not be helpful, or even harmful.
Here's some other examples: fiber and prebiotics are often contraindicated for
people in certain IBS situations, particularly if you already suffer from bloating or constipation.
Certain lactobacillus and bifidobacteria probiotics are contraindicated if you have
histamine intolerance. Digestive enzymes and bile acids can be really aggravating if you suffer
from heartburn or reflux. And so on and so on. Every single situation needs to be assessed on
a case-by-case basis to make sure that you are really inviting in supplements that are
appropriate for your situation, and aren't likely to cause really clear side effects or negative
consequences for you. Ultimately, be sure to understand when not to use supplements before
you start trying something new, just to make sure that they're currently appropriate for you.
As you can probably tell, teaching people how to use gut supplements properly is something
I'm really passionate about. Because when you learn how to do this task well, you stand to
make much better progress with your IBS symptoms. So if this is something that you're needing some
help or support with, I strongly want to encourage you to download my free
Roadmap To Gut Recovery guide. Inside that guide, I share the same strategy that I use
to help my clients find their personalized plan for calm digestion, including using supplements.
You can grab your free copy by heading over to confluencenutrition.com/roadmap.
And I will leave a link for that below this video. All right, let me know if this video was helpful
for you by clicking like, or by leaving me a comment. And if you haven't already,
please do subscribe and maybe even send this video on to someone who you think could use it.
Hope you're all having a wonderful day, and I will see you next time.