Did you ever take PPIs for GERD? If not, you need to ask yourself why your digestion is so slow and inefficient that enough undigested food could make its way to the lower end of the small intestine and stay there long enough and frequently enough for bacteria to feed and work their way up. Even if you did take PPIs, why? What caused the GERD? Assuming you could “reset” the flora in your entire GI tract, would it solve whatever that problem is? What if your metabolism is still crap and the food still trawls its way through your shiny new intestines? How long is that going to last?
Floggi wrote: In other words: does SIBO exist?
Doctor’s knowledge in all countries is very comparable, you know…
Doctors are about as up-to-date on research as the magazines in their waiting rooms. SIBO is being explored as a cause of IBS in one of those situations where tens of thousands are spent on research to state the obvious. It’s linked to a few diseases if you look at the research. Hypothyroidism is one of them, which fits in with what I was suggesting above about metabolism.
Looking at #4 on the list makes me wonder how accurate GHBT actually is though. #12 speaks positively of them but has the line ‘hydrogen breath tests, in spite of their low sensitivity, are popular for their non-invasiveness.’ Seems like they’re chosen for their patient-friendliness, unless maybe the suffering patient needs an accurate diagnosis…
Latka wrote: I got really scared of taking probiotics when it made me extremely bloated. I had to consider the possibility that by taking them orally, (and perhaps due to a slower transit time, who knows?) I ended up introducing too much of this stuff in the small intestine?
I read online that bifidobacterium from probiotics can exasperate SIBO, but I’m not sure if that’s been proven or just observed. It seems plausible if the small intestine has been allowed to become a microbial Wild West that allows bacteria to deputise themselves and start taking over your food supply.
You said your hypothyroidism treatment isn’t working out well, right? I think you really need to focus on that and getting your metabolism in gear. Remember the study I posted about SIBO and hypothyroidism? There’s a nasty list of GI symptoms here too. I don’t think any attempts at normalising flora stand a chance while your body isn’t interested in helping you. It’s not all doom and gloom if you read the last line of that abstract ‘Symptoms usually resolve with treatment of the thyroid disease.’ 🙂
