I’ve about had it with this SIBO stuff.  After my initial testing in January showed that I had SIBO my test in March showed that maybe I didn’t have it any longer but the jury was out in my mind.  As of June 30th the SIBO is back and at about the same level as in January, this is not the summer sequel I was wishing for.   I had been feeling quite a bit better so expected the numbers to be down instead of back up.  I’m not symptom free and still unable to gain weight even with eating massive amount of fat so I expected to still have SIBO but at much lower levels than this test showed and figured I would need one more month of herbals to knock it down, now it is looking like multiple months still to come of treatment.

This test shows I still have a moderate level of methane, CH4, in my small intestine.  My baseline is 32 which pretty highland my max is 48 at 180 minutes.  This could be all the way to the colon so I’m betting that the high in the small intestine itself is 39 at 100 minutes into the test which would put it in the bottom half of my tract.   Previously my high was 44 at 60 minutes so the M.smithii methane producing critters were up higher in my system back then.

I really wish I knew where I was before I started the herbal antibiotic treatment so I knew for sure if this was an improvement or not.   From here on out testing will be done on a regular basis so we can really figure out if anything is working.   I’m kind of going on the assumption that my last flareup in May caused pretty high bacterial levels and that this test is an improvement from then after a month of herbals but I just don’t know for sure.  I’ve felt better symptom wise since then so it is a decent assumption.   I still believe the herbals can work (“nature never give I no bogus medication” – Roots & Herbs,  Essential I) and the AlliMed I’m taking has been shown to decrease CH4 levels by up to 44-50ppm in 30 days of use in several studies.  So, for now I’m increasing the amount of AlliMed I’m taking and have stopped the Berberine Complex and rotated in Neem Plus, another herbal antibiotic that is also healing to the intestinal lining.   I’m meeting with Dr. Melanie Keller from the SIBO Center tomorrow to discuss the herbal treatment and find out what their latest protocol recommendation is.   I’ll then coordinate with Dr. Bowen on it, keep up the treatment and retest in a few weeks.

Hopefully the Force will be with me and the tide will be turned on these bugs in the upcoming moths.   Right now I’m just thankful to be feeling fewer symptoms and feeling better than I was in May but I’d really like to see some real progress on eradicating these bacteria and archaea from my system and getting back in balance.  One step at a time – Relentless Forward Progress.