If you have been struggling with SIBO (small intestine bacterial overgrowth) or are beginning your SIBO healing journey, you must know how challenging it is to get a handle on the SIBO healing game. Healing SIBO is challenging, but I found a few hacks that made my journey slightly easier.
1.Get educated
- My best tool at the moment is knowledge. Knowing what is going on inside my body makes it easier to understand what I need to do as I experiment my way to healing. You must take the time to understand what is going on. Understand what SIBO is, how it affects the body, what parts of the body is has truly affected in you, and how to heal all parts that are affected and not just the small intestine.
2. Finding out what else I am dealing with (H-pylori, candida, gastritis).
- This was my brightest light bulb after I miserably found out I had SIBO again. I had various other symptoms along with my regular SIBO symptoms that made me feel worse than I did before I started SIBO treatment. Through a few doctor visits and tests, I discovered that I also had H-pylori, Candida, Gastritis and GERD. It is absolutely important for you to find out what else you have, for you to be able to fully heal without relapses. Finding out what else you have will allow you to face all your ailments at once, giving you a higher chance of beating all of them without a relapse. Each of the ailments you have support each other, so one can easily cause the return of another putting you on a relapse downward spiral that never ends.
3. Watch how I eat
The biggest mistake most people make with a healing diet is focusing too much on what they eat and put no effort on how or when they eat. The how is extremely important. The first time I did my SIBO treatment, I did not realize that how I eat affect my treatment. These are the things I have learned
- Fruits an hour before food. If you are including fruits in your healing program, make sure you eat them an hour or even an hour and a half before your actual meal. This has to do with your stomach acid and digestion. If you eat your fruits too close to your meal, your stomach will stop the digestion of the fruits and the ingestion of its nutrients and begin digesting the food. What happens is that the fruits are left to ferment in the stomach and will be digested after food is digested. This will cause more symptoms and more problems for you
- Chewing properly. Chewing is the first step to digestion, it allows your stomach to know how much acid to produce etc etc. I did not realize how much I practically swallowed my food whole. This was usually a result of eating when I am extremely hungry so I would eat too fast, rather I would swallow too fast without fully paying attention to how much chewing I am doing. When I started chewing properly I realized that my immediate post meal feeling of indigestion and stuck-food syndrome had reduced. I no longer felt like there were chunks of food stuck in different parts of my stomach. I also noticed reduced bloating.
- Know when to/not to drink water.Drinking water too close to a meal or after a meal decreases the HCL in your stomach which affects how your food is digested.
4.Finish eating 1.5-2 hours before bed
- I had no idea how important it was to sleep on a fairly empty stomach. I would get home late (about 7:30pm) by the time I eat my dinner, it would be about 8:30pm or 9pm and I would go to sleep at about 10 or 10:30pm. Granted, my stomach would still be fairly full and waking up was never fun. I would always wake up with increased symptoms, full body aches, fatigue, bloated, with lots of belches and a whole lot of discomfort. Then I learned that if I sleep with a full stomach, the food would not get digested and would simply stay in my system and possibly ferment, yuck. This would allow the bacteria to eat their fill and cause me more grief through the night.
5.Modified keto diet
- The day I decided to restart my SIBO anti-microbial treatment, I had a terrible case of gastritis that led me to stop the anti-microbials and start paying more attention to my new symptoms. I could not eat because everything hurt which eventually led to a diet that consisted mainly of protein and seeds. Everything else caused me a lot of gastritis pain or lots of heartburn and bloating so I stopped eating everything except what my body could handle. After 2 weeks on this diet, everything changed. My gastritis disappeared, my constant bloating decreased, fatigue, exhaustion, nausea, extreme heartburn all decreased and changed how I continued to deal with my treatments.
These are a few of the things that changed how I face my SIBO and other ailments now. Granted, they are not perfect and there is no guarantee that these will work for you. Although I hope that sharing my story will help someone somewhere make a positive change towards their healing journey.
Related Posts:
4 ways you MUST prepare for the SIBO healing journey.
4 mistakes that slowed my SIBO healing game.
