The Complete Guide to Understanding and Treating SIBO

This video is about Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), an overgrowth of bad bacteria in the small intestine that can cause symptoms such as pain, bloating, and diarrhea. Diagnosing and treating SIBO involve a clinical examination, endoscopy, breath testing, and potentially a combination of medications, natural therapies, and dietary options. Treatment plans are determined by taking into account the underlying causes of the condition.

VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS

  • Dr. Isla, AKA the “Poop Guru” discussed Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), a condition caused by an overgrowth of bad bacteria in the small intestine which can cause symptoms such as bloating, nausea, and diarrhea.
  • SIBO can be caused by anatomical predispositions or medical conditions like diabetes and gastroparesis; antibiotics use; gastroenteritis/food poisoning; slow motility of gut etc.
  • Diagnosis is based on clinical assessment plus tests such as upper endoscopy/EGD to take fluid samples from small intestine for microscopic examination or breath test to detect presence of bad bacteria in gut microbiome.
  • Treatment involves addressing underlying causes first then medications (e.g., Rifaximin) with natural therapy/herbal therapy also possible but not backed up by evidence yet followed lastly with dietary options e..g low FODMAP diet, biphasic diet & GAPS diet

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Now, I’m sure you’ve heard about I B S, but have you heard about a condition called sibo? What? SIBO stands for? Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. This actually may be the main reason why you are suffering from chronic intestinal issues. Well, in this video today, we’re going to discuss what exactly is sibo. We’ll review, what is it?

How do we diagnose it, what are the causes of sibo? And at the very end of the video, I’m gonna give you my tips on what I recommend both dietary options and medical options to get rid of sibo. Guys, let’s talk about poop. How do y’all, Dr. Isla here, AKA your poop guru, trying to give you the best tips and trick so you can live your best life from the top all the way down to the bottom.

Have it already. Don’t forget to smash down, like button, live, share and subscribe. If you have it already, don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter where you can get great tips and trick like you’re learning in today’s video. So if you’re one of those individuals who suffers from chronic gastrointestinal conditions, bloating, nausea, diarrhea, even conservation, and no one can figure out why, the reason you may be having your issues is a condition called sibo, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So what this is, is it overgrowth of bad bacteria in your small intestine that can cause symptoms of pain, bloating, distension, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and constipation. What we think is going on is that there is a predominance of bad bacteria inside your GI truck.

Your gut microbiome is outta whack, and that’s a medical definition. Normally you have a balance between the good guys and the bad guys, but sometimes there are conditions which lead the bad guys to over proliferate and cause more bad bacteria leading to fermentation gas, which in turns leads to the condition called small intestinal bacterial, orgo or sibo. And there are a lot of reasons why you may be having sibo.

For some individuals, it could be an anatomical predisposition. Maybe you’ve had prior gastric surgery, maybe you’ve had adhesions or a gastric bypass or a blind limb or a blind loop. These conditions or anatomical conditions can make it more likely for bugs to sit there in ferment to produce gas, almost like a puddle water sitting outside. It’s the exact same scenario, but you may have a medical condition that can predispose you to have ceva, whether it’s diabetes, gastroparesis, scleroderma, or slow gastric motility. Maybe you take antibiotics or maybe you took some antibiotics that totally wiped out your good guys and really destroyed your gut microbiome. Or maybe you had a gastroenteritis or food poisoning and that messed up everything going on inside your GI tract to make it more likely for you to develop bad bacteria inside your gut.

Now, if you’re wondering if you have sibo, there are a couple different ways that we can diagnose you. What is clinically, yes, I can talk to you. Yes, me as a doctor actually talking to you, that’s amazing. But that’s what we do. But we can talk, talk to you against your history and understand what symptoms that you’re having.

Do you suffer from bloating, gas, ascension? Do you have symptoms that are consistent with sibo? And if you do, we can empirically treat you to see how you feel and your clinical response to that would confirm or deny the diagnosis of sibo. For some people, we can actually do what’s called an upper and dossy or an E G D where you go down the small intestine, take fluid samples from your small intestine, look at it under the microscope to see if there’s a predominance of bad bacteria. And for others, we can have you breathe into a machine called a breath test, which we can see is you actually have predominance of bad bacteria. These are three different ways we can diagnose somebody with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. There’s one important thing I’ll have to make sure you guys understand.

There’s so much out there on the internet blaming all sorts of conditions on sibo. And a lot of people are proposing different crazy treatments, different options, and blaming SIBO for everything. And here’s the thing you need to know, is that in my opinion right now, we don’t have a lot of good evidence that SIBO is a cause for a a tremendous amount of gut conditions.

Now, there are certain individuals in which we do know it does to the fact, especially if you have ibs, but there are other conditions in which we don’t know, and there may be people out there who have maybe more nefarious reasons why they want you to be diagnosed with sibo. Then you get down this vicious cycle, people thinking they have SIBO not feeling better, try different treatments, try different options, try different supplements, and nothing seems to work because they actually may not have this condition. So make sure if you’re wondering if you have SIBO or you want to be tested, that you actually get tested by a medical professional, I am 100% convinced this is the best way for you to know what’s going on. An even better way to get diagnosed is to see a gastroenterologist who takes care of this every single day.

So now that we talked about sibo, how do we treat this? Well, the first thing we have to do is we have to fix the underlying cause. SIBO can be a chronic condition that can come and go and come and go and relapse. Now, one of the things we try to do is fix the underlying cause. Do you have a medical condition that predisposes you to sibo?

Let’s see if we can treat that. Do you have an atomical reason while you have sibo? Let’s see if we can fix that. Do you have a slow motility of your gut? Let’s see if we can fix that. These are ways that we can do to help fix what’s going on and then make sure you do or do not have cibo Number two, that we can also give medications for sibo. In fact, there is an antibiotic that we use that’s gut specific to get rid of the bad bacteria. It’s called rifaximin or Xifaxan. Now, unfortunately, this is not FDA approved yet to treat cibo, so sometimes it can be hard to get the treatments for this, but this works effectively for patients who have sibo.

Now, there may be other antibiotics you can use help eliminate the bad bacteria, but these medications tend to be the best option number two is natural therapy or herbal therapy. Now, I’ll tell you, only stress this, we don’t have a lot of good evidence for this. There are some herbal therapies that do work for some individuals and there are others that don’t.

If you want more information on that calm bol, it’ll let me know. I can do a video specific for that. Then number three, there’s dietary options as well. One of the best sites we have found to treat SIBO as a low FOD map diet FOD maps are fermentable, oligosaccharides, monosaccharides, di saccharides, and polyols, which can tend to ferment, produce a lot of gas and cause a lot of dissension as well. What we have found is that diet that’s low in FODMAPs can help minimize or eliminate SIBO symptoms, and in fact, even can help control IBS Now. Now everyone responds to this, so make sure you do this under the supervision of nutritious, cuz it can be hard. Now, another diet that works is called a biphasic diet.

Now this diet consists of two phases, hence the word buy. The first phase is a low carbohydrate, high fat diet. The next phase is a high fiber, moderate carbohydrate diet. Now this side is supposed to help treat SIBO and promote gut health, and we don’t have a lot of evidence to confirm. This actually helps out when it comes to sibo, but it is a diet. Where’s fun? Another diet is called a GAPS diet. This is a diet that’s based on the premise that SIBO is due to leaky gut and once we don’t have that much evidence behind the site, but I’ve had patients tell me they’ve responded to having this diet and it helps out. So here’s my call to ask you for you.

If you’re wondering if you have SIBO or if you’re suffering from symptoms that are similar to sibo, come see someone like me who could diagnose you accurately and maybe put you on a better treatment plan than seeing someone who may not specialize in this particular condition. Guys, thank you for watching. If you haven’t already, forget the smash the like button, like, share, and subscribe. And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to subscribe to my channel when you get great tips and tricks like you’re learning in today’s video. Guys, thank you for watching. Don’t forget, let’s talk about poop. Thanks everybody.