If you've been working with SIBO treatment, but are getting frustrated, in today's video I'm
going to share six SIBO protocol tips to help you get the most out of your SIBO treatment
so stay tuned. If you're a returning viewer, welcome back. And 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 weekly videos on how to find your personalized diet and supplement plan
for IBS and SIBO, please consider subscribing and be sure to hit the bell to be notified when I post
a new video every week. As an IBS and SIBO health coach, I meet people daily who are struggling with
their SIBO treatment protocols and are on what I call the SIBO merry-go-round. They're using herbs
or antibiotics, but they haven't gotten better or they got better and then relapsed, or they're
just plain confused about what to use and when. So if this sounds like you, in today's video
I'm going to share my top six tips so you can navigate your SIBO treatment with confidence
so you can find your best personalized SIBO treatment plan. And really quickly,
before we dive in, if this is something that you're needing help navigating, this is exactly
what I help my clients navigate inside my calm digestion method program. Doors are always open,
so don't wait to get the help that you need. Check the description box below this video to learn more
about scheduling a call to meet with me or to grab my free guide called the roadmap to gut recovery.
Without further ado, let's get started. The first piece of SIBO protocol advice that I
want to give you is to make sure that you are using research-backed protocols for your SIBO
treatment. There's a short list of validated treatment protocols for dealing with SIBO.
And these include things like combinations of berberine, neem, oregano or allicin. Rifaximin
for diarrhea, predominant IBS symptoms. Rifaximin and neomycin, or metronidazole for constipation or
methane based SIBO and the elemental diet. Note that aside from the elemental diet specifically,
there's no diet that will actually treat SIBO and cure it. The impact of these various treatment
protocols depends on the initial level of gases you found when you did your SIBO test.
If your gas levels are very high initially, one round of treatment may not be enough to treat
your SIBO all the way. Herbal protocols need to be run for 30 days at a time,
while the antibiotics and the elemental diet is usually 14 to 21 days for effective treatment.
One of the most common mistakes that I see with people treating SIBO is that they don't use these
protocols long enough, especially the antibiotics. And often this is because their doctor is only
giving them say a 10 day course of Rifaximin alone when they have methane based SIBO and they
should be at least 14 days on Rifaximin with the other antibiotic. The best resource to get more
information on these specific protocols and the specific dosages and how often they should be
taken is to check out Dr. Allison C. Becker's website, siboinfo.com. I'll leave a link for
that below this video for you. If you have any questions about protocols, about which items
to use, how often to use them, the dosages and whatnot, this is your go-to resource for that.
And it's also a great resource to take into your doctor's appointment if you feel like your doctor
may not listen to you or your doctor isn't very SIBO literate and may need a little bit
of direction to help you get the best protocol on board. My second piece of SIBO protocol advice is
to retest after each round of treatment and then to continue treating until your SIBO is negative.
I really surprisingly regularly hear from people who have been given one round of treatment and
then have had no follow-up whatsoever with their doctor. Like their doctor gives them the protocol
with the expectation that like here take these antibiotics and that'll cure your SIBO. It really
doesn't work like that. First of all, it's vitally important to retest after your treatment round.
And there's two reasons for this. Number one, you want to see how the gas levels have changed
since you've done the treatment round, and you want to correlate this with how your symptoms
have changed. This exercise gives you tremendous information about how well that treatment works
for your body and how much SIBO and those changes in gas levels are related to your symptoms.
And the second reason to retest is to know whether you need to continue doing treatment or not.
The standard guideline is to run that follow up test about two weeks after you finish your
treatment round. Then you can take those results and use them to decide what you should be doing
next. My third piece of SIBO protocol advice is to rely on your body's symptoms and responses to
guide your next actions. Following this tip allows you to overcome all of the conflicting advice that
you're hearing out there about SIBO supplements, SIBO protocols, SIBO diets, and so on. A lot of
people ask me questions about things like, should I use probiotics or not for SIBO treatments? Some
sources say yes, some say no. Should I use fiber supplements? What should I eat before, during,
and after my SIBO treatment? And when people ask me these questions, I always bring it back
to this question. What does your body have to say about it? Most coaches will answer these
questions based on theory, like probiotics are bad for SIBO treatment don't use them.
Or you should be using a low fermentation diet before your SIBO treatment and then during
treatment, you should eat whatever you want to feed the bugs, and so on. And although these
ideas and theories are technically correct, they are theories and they don't necessarily hold true
for you. And I no longer subscribe to this method of applying theories to real people. Because as
a coach of hundreds of clients, at this point, I've seen every range of response to all kinds
of interventions for people. Some people do amazing with probiotics. Other people react
to them like kryptonite. Some people do amazing with fiber, some people cannot use it at all.
There really is no hard and fast reality. There's theory, there are trends, and we can use
those to guide our options and where we should be focusing our attention, but we ultimately need to
be focusing on figuring out what's true for you. The most important question you can ask yourself
is this intervention, whether it's a supplement, a medication, a diet or whatever, right for me right
now? And your body is going to give you all the feedback that you need to answer this question.
If you try probiotics and you have a bad reaction, don't keep using them. If you try a fiber
supplement and you feel really great using it, keep going with that. It really is that simple. So
really just rely on listening to your body's signs and signals to decide how to proceed. Have you had
a bad reaction to a supplement that was supposed to help your SIBO? Click like or type yes in
the comments below, or even leave me a lengthier comment to tell me all about it. My fourth piece
of SIBO protocol advice is to use what's called a prokinetic after your SIBO treatment. Once you
are done with your SIBO treatment protocol, you are not done with your SIBO management.
I'm going to say that again, once you're done with your SIBO treatment protocol, no matter
which kind of option you've chosen, you are not done with your SIBO management protocol. SIBO,
very commonly recurs. And this is because SIBO is typically a problem with your gut motility,
which is the speed with which things move through your gut. And if this isn't functioning properly,
then SIBO can just regrow after treatment. So you'll want to ask your treating doctor or
naturopath about the various options available to you to address this issue of motility. And
usually these are medications or supplements that are prokinetics. They help increase the speed or
maintain the speed, with which things are moving through your digestive tract. Without prokinetics,
SIBO is likely to recur two to three months after treatment is finished. The length of time
for remission is much longer with prokinetics and may further help your gut heal from the
impacts of SIBO. I am going to make a video about prokinetics later on here. So if you want to make
sure to not miss that video, be sure and subscribe so that you'll hear about it when it comes out.
My fifth piece of SIBO protocol advice is to make sure that you are continuing to look for your
underlying root causes of your SIBO. Related to tip number four about prokinetics, it's important
that you continue to investigate and look for the underlying root causes of your SIBO in addition
to dealing with treatment in particular. The underlying cause of my personal case of SIBO
was adhesions from endometriosis and the surgery that I had to address that endometriosis. Once
I had therapy to correct those adhesions and deal with those appropriately, I have been SIBO
free and have been able to re-expand my diet, which has been a huge win for me. Typically,
these root causes are things like adhesions or scar tissue from previous surgeries or injuries,
collateral damage from food poisoning, toxins, and the auto immunity that can give rise to,
or other functional reasons for constipation like low stomach acid, magnesium deficiency,
and sometimes infections like H-pylori or candida or other types of underlying problems.
So ultimately, work with a knowledgeable practitioner who can help you investigate
these various possibilities so that you can understand what your unique underlying
causes are so that you can address them and prevent recurrence of SIBO.
My sixth piece of SIBO protocol advice is when to start looking at other possibilities besides SIBO.
All right. Now, what if you tried treating SIBO, but you still have SIBO symptoms? Well, there's
many other potential underlying causes for SIBO symptoms like bloating, constipation, or diarrhea.
So if you've treated SIBO and the SIBO is all cleared up, but you still have SIBO symptoms,
this is a time to start looking at other potential underlying infections. So this includes things
like small intestinal fungal overgrowth, or SIFO, also candida in the large intestine,
other kinds of gut infections like H-pylori or parasites or any manner of other possibilities.
It's also important to keep in mind that a positive SIBO test doesn't necessarily
mean that those gases are what's causing your digestive symptoms. Sometimes SIBO gases can be
present, but they may not be involved with your digestive symptoms that may have another cause.
This is why it's important to be thinking about your whole picture holistically and strategically
so that you're making appropriate strategic decisions about your actions based on what
your body's telling you, based on what the testing's telling you, and based on what all
the various clues are suggesting. This is also why it's sometimes important to work
with a knowledgeable practitioner who can help you problem-solve and troubleshoot this
area and help you make appropriate decisions. Navigating SIBO treatment isn't easy and can
feel really confusing, but success is possible with the right strategy and approach. If you're
ready to approach your SIBO treatment with a powerful strategy, I encourage you to download
a free copy of my roadmap to gut recovery guide, which shares that strategy tools that I teach my
clients to help them find their personalized plan to resolve their SIBO or IBS symptoms.
You can grab your free copy of that by going to confluencenutrition.com/roadmap.
I'm putting that on the screen here, and I will leave a link for that below this video
in the description. All right, let me know if this video was useful by clicking like or leaving me a
comment and maybe even sending it on to someone who you know who might find it useful. Also,
check out this video next, you don't want to miss it. And I will look forward to seeing you next.