Let me guess, you’re like “what the hell is SIBO?” right? That’s what I said when I recently found out I tested positive for methane and carbon gas residing in my small intestines causing bacterial overgrowth. Funny side note: people with severe SIBO lose weight and ultimately cannot gain weight because they are malnourished. I, of course, get the not serve kind that makes you gain weight- and impossible to lose a pound and keep it off. My grandfather would call this Sod’s law, it’s the British version of Murphy’s law…like of course I get the version of SIBO that makes me bigger!
I think it’s been a resident for 3 years - at least that’s when the symptoms began. I didn’t give the changes much attention and managed the slow but steady increase in my body shape and the pain in my stomach and other weird bathroom stuff I’ll spare you from. I kept thinking with my background and profession that I could figure it out on my own. The breaking point was hitting 164 lbs, a gain of 24 lbs. Wille Victor to the rescue!
Willie is the founder and nutrition consultant of Essentials for Health (in Corte Madera.) She is guiding me through this process and I can’t say enough good things about her! http://essentialsforhealth.info/
I have an appointment with a gastro doc in Mill Valley (Dr. Jolley) that Willie works with this week. I cannot wait to begin the antibiotics (xifaxan) and hopefully be on the other side of this. The more I read about SIBO the scarier it is. There’s a school of thought that SIBO is just the symptom to an underlying cause . One culprit can be mold which we have in our current rental. Oh, let the journey begin…
I decided to document this experience and hopefully it will help some of you out there struggling too.
PS Another great personal SIBO journey: https://siboslayer.wordpress.com/