Episode 372: Why Your SIBO Keeps Coming Back: The Overlooked Root Causes of Recurring SIBO & Bloating
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It’s time to uncover what's ACTUALLY going on in your gut! Are you stuck in the cycle of treating SIBO over and over, only to have your symptoms return? Today, Erin and Rachel Heintz, MS, RDN, are revealing the most common reasons that keep people stuck in the SIBO loop, including why standard protocols and restrictive diets often miss the mark, and the deeper, more nuanced reasons SIBO recurs.
You'll learn what your stool test might be trying to tell you, how stress and low stomach acid sabotage gut healing, and the critical roles bile flow, mineral status, and even meal timing play in your recovery.
Whether you're dealing with persistent bloating, IBS-like symptoms, or have been told you just need “another round of antibiotics”, this conversation will help you finally move forward.
In this episode:
Why low stomach acid and bile flow are two of the biggest root causes of recurring SIBO
Grazing all day might be sabotaging your gut's natural cleaning system (the Migrating Motor Complex)
The surprising role of serotonin and mineral imbalances in gut motility and chronic constipation
What your breath test and stool test can and can’t reveal about your gut health
Why SIBO won't truly resolve unless you address large intestine dysbiosis, immune function, and structural issues like valve dysfunction or surgical adhesions
Resources mentioned:
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Rachel:
We see a lot of these clients in our practice, and this is a client that recently started to work with me. She was treating SIBO every four to six months, going to her gastroenterologist, doing a test, taking antibiotics. After we began our work together, I found out, you know, because most foods create bloating for her, she was really limiting her portion sizes just trying to minimize bloating. She wasn't eating enough protein. She wasn't getting really full. She wasn't getting satiated. Some of the treatment that we're doing is really targeted for her specific type of Sibo, but she. She's the perfect example of if we just treat SIBO without addressing the rest of the terrain, she's just going to keep relapsing.
Erin Holt:
Welcome to the Funk'tional Nutrition podcast, spelled with a K, because we do things a little differently around here. I'm your host, Erin Holt, and I've got 15 years of clinical experience as a functional nutritionist and mindset coach, creating a new model that I call intuitive functional medicine, where we combine root cause medicine with the innate intelligence of your body. This is where science meets self trust. Your body already knows how to heal, and this show is going to show you how. If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health, be sure to follow and share with a friend, because you never know whose life you might change.
Erin:
Hi, Rachel.
Rachel:
Hi, Erin
Erin:
Okay, we're going to talk about recurring SIBO because we get this question a fair amount and then we also see it kind of a lot in practice. So we figured it would be a good, good conversation to bring to the podcast. So SIBO stands for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. I talk about it a lot here. We're going to present this in a straightforward way, intentionally, so as not to overwhelm folks. However, I do want to acknowledge that SIBO is not always super straightforward. And for my practitioners out there, we do get into a lot more of the complexity and the layers of Sibo Inside FNA, the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy. I do want to announce that applications for the fall cohort are officially open.
And I took this. If you are a practitioner that happens to be listening, I took this right out of an FNA module. So the question that I posed to practitioners who are working with sibo, I say, do you put everyone on the same SIBO protocol? Do you put everyone on the same SIBO diet? Are you taking into account that not all SIBO is the same and not all SIBO is treated the same? Are you aware not all SIBO is technically SIBO, do you get more restrictive with diet if your clients aren't responsive? What do you do when your clients don't get better on your protocol? Do you routinely consider risk factors and underlying conditions that may affect treatment and recurrence? And I go on to say that we handle every case differently when it comes to SIBO, depending on what's going on in the colon and other places with the individual. And so I just encourage folks, if you are working with SIBO, that you really want to understand the nuance and. And the complexities, because we have worked with folks who have just kind of been consistently, routinely put on the same SIBO protocol over and over. And they might get better for a little while, they might have some quick wins, but then eventually they do want that resolution. And so that's oftentimes what we're seeing and what we're helping people with. And so that's a little bit of what we're going to get into today is why SIBO might come back and some things that you could consider if you've been struggling with SIBO on an ongoing basis. So why don't we just take it from the top, Rachel? Why don't we tell the folks what SIBO is in case they're not familiar?
Rachel:
So SIBO, it's an acronym. Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth. I've heard some people call it sibo, sibo. And basically, SIBO occurs when bacteria translocates or like, enters and takes up residence in the small intestine. And it really doesn't belong there. It's very normal to have bacteria in your large intestine. We just don't want it in the small.
Erin Holt:
And the way that I describe it, it's like I've heard the small intestine described in comparison to the colon or the large intestine as sterile. I mean, that's not really technically true, but there is less inhabitants there. Really, the bulk of our microbiome and the critters and the organisms are really going to be in the large intestine in the colon. And the way that I describe it to people to get them to understand is that bacteria ferment the food that we eat. That's what bacteria does, right? And it is fermenting. It's oftentimes creating gas. And if that's happening in small amounts, no big deal. Or if that's happening where it's supposed to happen, again, nbd, not a huge problem.
But when this is happening in large amounts in areas that it's not really supposed to be happening. That's when we can see symptoms. And that's why people with SIBO can be so symptomatic. So why don't you talk about some of the symptoms that we would classically see with sibo?
Rachel:
So the classic, the, like, big giveaway with SIBO is bloating. And not just like, oh, I'm a little bloated. At the end of the day, a lot of people with SIBO will describe their bloating almost as like, they look six or eight months pregnant. Those are not always the most severe cases, but bloating can get pretty intense. Gas is typically pretty common. I've had some patients almost describe like a popping sound coming from their intestines when they get really bloated and distended. And then depending on which type of skin SIBO you have, you could experience constipation or diarrhea. Methane SIBO is the type that's most commonly associated with constipation.
Erin:
Methane gas just really slows things down quite a lot. We used to call it IBS C or IBSD or methane sibo. And now the kind of the new catch all term is IMO or intestinal methane overgrowth. Because methanes can overgrow in the small intestine, but also in the large intestine as well. And sometimes we can see some clinical, clinical clues of this on a GI map. They did add. When was it? A couple years ago. They added methanogens to the GI MAP stool test that we run.
And this is interesting. I learned this from Tom Fabian. Even when it's not flagged as high, so it's not red, it's not indicated as high. But when you're looking at the numbers, when you're looking at the E level, E7 or E8, if we're seeing that on a stool test, that can be indicative that there's higher methane levels of gas that we might be able to find on a breath test. So it can be giving us clues that, yeah, it's overgrown here in the large intestine, but maybe also in the small intestine as well.
Rachel:
And I always like to clarify it to my clients and the students in FNA that we can't diagnose sibo. We can't see if SIBO is present from a GI map because that's really looking at what's going on in the colon. But sometimes we can get clues and hints based on the pattern that it presents with the other type of SIBO is. Or there's a Couple more. But the other main type of sibo is hydrogen sibo. Hydrogen gas creates a lot of diarrhea. I've had some people who are having 10 or 12 loose stools on a daily basis with hydrogen sibo. I've had some people that have three to five loose stools a day as well.
Erin:
And then there's a third type of gas that hasn't always historically been as discussed.
Rachel:
It's the hydrogen sulfide sibo. And typically this is associated with that room clearing gas, like a rotten egg smell, kind of like a sulfury smell. A lot of these individuals, they can't tolerate like a lot of proteins and sometimes even like sulfur rich foods.
Erin:
Yeah, that can be sort of a clinical clue. If somebody's literally describing it as room clearing gas, like, that's pretty significant. It just is a really foul odor. That's sulfur, like rotten egg. You know, you pull broccoli out of the tupperware type of smell, which is not pleasant. And it can be painful too. It's not just like it's gnarly gas, but it can be actually like painful too. So how would you know what type of sibo somebody's dealing with? How do you test it?
Rachel:
We would use a breath test. So there are different types of breath tests you can do. The trio smart is a breath test that will look at all three types of sibo. Usually in our initial appointment with our patients, we'll kind of ask questions about their symptoms to kind of discern, do we need to do a trio smart test or could we maybe do another sibo breath test specifically?
Erin:
And some people will argue that there's issues with, with how accurate breath testing is. And totally in, like any lab, like, there's fallibility, there's going to be issues. But, like, I'm a little old school when it comes to this. Like, if we want a real workup of the gut, I want to see the large intestine and I also want to see the small intestine. If some, somebody is presenting with some of these overt sibo type symptoms, like, they're just bloated, they're reacting to a lot of different foods, specifically with bloating and digestive symptoms. We do want to drill into, like, what is really going on here, because that is going to help us guide the treatment plan and the treatment protocol based on what's going on. This is like, if you're like balling on a budge, there is a little bit of a way to test drive if you, you could be dealing with sibo not fail proof, but something to try. You can trial a low fodmap diet for a couple of weeks if your symptoms dramatically improve, or even a week.
It doesn't have to be two weeks, but if your symptoms dramatically improve when you pull FODMAPs out of your diet, I would say really start thinking about sibo and if you're a clinician or practitioner listening to this, that is a way if somebody is hesitant to invest investing in a SIBO breath test. This is a way that you can trial it and encourage your clients to get the appropriate testing. The other thing about SIBO breath tests is that they're often covered by health insurance if you do get them through a gastroenterologist too. So that could help folks on a budget.
Erin:
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Erin:
Let's talk about the different causes of SIBO.
Rachel:
So one of the most common things that I'll see from people is they'll get an episode of food poisoning and their gut is just not the same afterwards. Food poisoning can just mess up the motility of your gut. You can get bacteria in the small intestine where it doesn't belong. This is really, really common, but not always the root cause of sibo. Lots of bacterial imbalances in the large intestine. Basically, the way that I oversimplify it almost is if you have too much bacteria overgrowing in your large intestine, it can just kind of spill over into the small intestine. We see that a lot with our SIBO clients. It's not just bacteria overgrowing in the small intestine.
It's just like too much overgrowth in general. And then for a lot of our clients, I actually see that people have a lot of mal digestion. Whether that's low stomach acid, low digestive enzymes, low bile flow. These can all contribute to sibo and create some, like, long standing issues. Sometimes it can be really hard to tell, okay, what's sibo and like, what's low stomach acid? So that's where testing can be helpful. Some people will have deficiencies or imbalances in their minerals, and that can really impact motility. Sometimes if there's not enough protein in the diet, that can impact, you know, are we producing enough melatonin and serotonin in the gut? H. Pylori can impact sibo, and then having low secretory iga, just like a weak digestive immune system in the gut, can also increase your risk of sibo.
Erin:
Okay, so now let's shift into why SIBO might not be responding to treatment, or maybe it does respond to treatment, but then it comes back. So recurring sibo. Because again, we're seeing this a lot in practice. I know that's something that you're dealing with all the time with your clients. So what are some of the things we should be thinking about?
Rachel:
So I like to think about digestion as a north to south process. And the stomach is physically located above the small intestines. So we want to make sure that stomach acid production is optimized. Stomach acid is naturally antibacterial, antimicrobial. In a perfect world, if we consume any bacteria, it's being killed off by our stomach acid. And someone might have low stomach acid. Maybe if they have H. Pylori this is an infection that can occur in the stomach.
If you're really dehydrated, you won't have enough water to literally produce acid. And you could also have low stomach acid if you don't have enough of the nutrients required. To make stomach acid, we need zinc, sodium, vitamin B6. Like, we need so many things to make stomach acid. And so deficiencies can definitely contribute to that. In addition to that, sometimes people aren't producing enough bile. So we produce bile in our liver and it's stored in our gallbladder. And what I've definitely seen is people who have had a coli, like, who have had their gallbladder removed, can be more at risk for sibo because we're just not moving things through the gut as well.
Bile is also really antimicrobial and antibacterial. Sometimes people on plant based diets might not be consuming enough taurine or glycine. These are amino acids that we need to make bile. And, you know, we just really want to support bile flow. Eating bitter foods are great for bile flow as well.
Erin:
Okay, so far we've talked about digestive juices, basically. So low stomach acid can put us at more risk for sibo or recurring sibo, low bile. And then also swimming upstream to be like, okay, well, if it's low stomach acid, why is stomach acid low? Is it a chronic H. Pylori infection? Is it because we don't have the raw building blocks for stomach acid and same deal for bile? Like, so if we're uncovering these, we're still trying to be like, and why is it, okay, so low stomach acid, low bile, what else?
Rachel:
Mineral imbalances. So potassium plays a big role in motility in the gut. And I see this a lot with some of my constipated clients. They just don't see the needle move until we're really optimizing potassium status. And then like I mentioned, we need a ton of minerals for stomach acid production. So for starters, is it, you know, is someone burning through their minerals because they're under a lot of stress? Are they maybe not eating enough of these nutrient dense foods, or do they have low zinc? Maybe because they're on a plant based diet? Maybe because they're just like burning and churning through it because they're sick a lot. That's also another factor to consider if.
Erin:
You suspect low potassium. What is your favorite way to increase potassium for folks?
Rachel:
I like to start with food as a dietitian, so I like to recommend root veggies and fruits to start, then maybe bringing in some, like aloe vera juice or coconut water. And then I'll sometimes use mineral mocking tails. Recently we've been loving the new Ray V product or sometimes other electrolyte blends as well.
Erin:
Okay, awesome. So we've got low stomach acid, low bile mineral imbalances. So already three reasons that somebody might not be as responsive to SIBO treatment. What else?
Rachel:
So we have this valve, it's called the ileocecal valve, and it acts as a barrier between our small and our large intestine. And it basically prevents stuff from this large intestine swimming backwards into the small intestine. And so we actually see a lot of dysfunction in our clients with their ileocecal valve. So there's a lot of massage you can do or like visceral manipulation that you can do to help that too?
Erin:
Yeah, wicked. Common valve issues. So we have these series of valves. It's not just the one, but we have these series of valves throughout our GI tube. And it's really to keep things moving in the right direction and prevent backflow from one segment of the body to the next. Because, like we discussed, the large intestine and the small intestine are very different environments. And so what the colon, the large intestine can handle is not what the small intestine can handle. And same thing for the stomach.
Stomach super acidic. Like, we want a lot of acid there. We don't want acid in the esophagus. We don't want to acidify other parts of the GI tube because it doesn't have the. The bandwidth to handle that, essentially. So these valves are super important. So it makes good sense. If the valve between the large intestine and the small intestine is loose or leaky, it's not tonified enough, then stuff from the large intestine can move into the small intestine and cause a ruckus.
So we're always trying to keep things in the body where they belong, because usually when they get to the wrong place, like, havoc ensues. So valve issues are pretty big deal, particularly with recurring sibo. Do you find that clients respond well to visceral manipulation? That can be a little bit tricky to find.
Rachel:
I think 50, 50, a lot of times for my clients, like, I'll send them resources of some ileocal valve massage they can do themselves at home. And when it works, it can work great. Sometimes I even do it. If I'm like, I feel really bloated or descend, I'll just do it on myself. And that can really help visceral manipulation. If we're sending someone to, like, a physical therapist, usually I will of course, defer to the physical medicine provider for that. But for some people, it can really, really move the needle. I had a client who went and got some visceral manipulation. She was like, I pooped eight times that day. So when it works, it works.
Erin:
When it works, it works. Also, side note, if you're listening to this and you do that work, reach out to us. Cause we're always looking for more providers in our network and to, like, collab with and send our clients to. So, okay, so ileocecal valve or valve issues. Another thing that's like a little bit more physiological in nature. What are the things could be preventing people from getting better with sibo?
Rachel:
Sometimes people can just have issues with motility. Serotonin plays a big, big role with motility in the gut. And so if you have too much bad bacteria, dysbiotic bacteria occurring in the colon or in the gut as a whole, it can deplete serotonin. And then to treat this, of course, we want to treat the underlying factors of the bacterial overgrowth. But in the meantime, sometimes bringing in things like five htp or tryptophan or melatonin can be really supportive as well.
Erin:
Amazing. And that's just keeping things moving. We need that motility to move things from north to south. You had mentioned secretory IGA before. Can you expand upon that a little bit in relation to sibo?
Rachel:
Yes. So secretory iga, the way that I describe it, it's basically like a marker of your digestive immune system function. And what we see is that if secretory IGA is low, individuals can be at greater risk for bacteria overgrowing. A lot of times they're not in a good space to go through a bacteria kill or like a removal protocol. So we want to make sure that their digestive and immune system is in a good space where they can handle and tolerate a kill protocol. A healthy microbiome, a healthy secretory iga, a healthy gut lining, reduces your risk of general overgrowth as well, both in the colon and the small intestine.
Erin:
You know, that's a really crucial part. I want to. I've been speaking into this a little bit. I think I might have mentioned it on a recent podcast, definitely on Instagram, where we're seeing this a little bit more. There's this, like, false expectation of what gut healing might look like and what a healing timeline might look like. And I think it's because we've just been so inundated with like 21 day fixes and 30 day cleanses and six week protocols. But the reality of the situation is it's like if your secretory IGA is low or suppressed, if your immune system is low or suppressed, we actually might need to spend some time, maybe even six weeks building you back up before your immune system is ready to go in and kill off potential pathogens or overgrowth. And that includes placebo.
We want to set you up for success so that you're not getting a quick win and you're getting like, okay, my symptoms are better, but now they're back, oh my gosh, what do I do? And so sometimes that secretory IGA can be a little bit of a clue to us as practitioners that like, gosh, this person needs a little bit more support. Their immune system needs some tlc. We need to build them back up because we're about to ask the immune system to do a big job by clearing out this overgrowth. We got to get them to a point where they can actually do that. So super important message there.
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Erin:
Okay, so we talked about ileocecal valves being like weak or leaky. There's other structural issues that we can see kind of prevent long term resolution of sibo. What else?
Rachel:
So for women with endometriosis, sometimes endometriomas are endometriosis lesions. They can create structural issues and blockages interfere with how food and bacteria moves through the gut. And it's tricky because with endometriosis we know that there's a big LPS microbiome component involved with managing endo and vice versa if there's lesions of endo in the gut that can interfere with treatment and then surgical adhesion. So sometimes people will just have a lot of abdominal surgeries and they have scar tissue that can really impact motility and how things move through the gut as well. Some people it'll be like, oh yeah, I had a C section or I had this surgery done and three to six months later, you know, their gut issues started and they just haven't cleared. So sometimes visceral manipulation and physical medicine can really help with that, but not always.
Erin:
What other things would you be considering or trying outside of like visceral manipulation? Like hands on bodies in those situations.
Rachel:
Hands on bodies. I've definitely recommended a lot for when I'm concerned about the surgical adhesions. And then in certain cases, I've had some clients who have needed to have their adhesions in the scar tissue removed surgically as well.
Erin:
Yeah, I mean, obviously we like that's a pretty extreme or can be extreme. But I do like, I want to float that out there to you. Like if you just can't move the needle. Sometimes you need a little bit of an assist. I'll float this out there, too. I interviewed Tiffany Cru Shank. She is the founder of Yoga Medicine, which is a yoga subscription that I have. And she does a lot of myofascial release.
So through for the whole body. She's an athlete, and she works with athletes, but she also. She's an acupuncturist, and so she sees a lot of endo patients in her own clinic because she really focuses on women's health and fertility as well. And I will say that acupuncture can be helpful, but also myofascial release. She'll. She teaches a lot of myofascial release through the abdomen. So it's something you can do at home. So one of the things that I will do, because I definitely tend to carry tension in my abdomen, is get. One of those, like, Pilates balls. I know listeners can't see my hands, but Rachel can Is those.
The Pilates balls, they're like, this big and they're soft. I actually got one at, like, a child's toy store before, but they're soft and they're squishy, and they're about the size, I would say, of like, a very large grapefruit or like a small watermelon. And you can make. Move that around your abdomen. You can also fold towels up certain ways, but that can be really helpful if you just have stickiness and stuckness throughout the abdomen. That can be hugely beneficial in my experience. And then we also have to talk about the MMC or the migrating motor complex as well.
Rachel:
So the migrating motor complex, the way that I describe it is it's almost like a brush or a broom that, like, sweeps the stomach and the intestines, and it keeps food and bacteria where it belongs. It keeps it moving through the digestive tract. And the MMC only becomes active when you are not eating. So if you're someone who's constantly grazing, if you're eating every 90 minutes, every two hours, your MMC is never really getting activated. And then we're just not getting that, like, proper deep cleaning of the intestines. Of course it'll happen overnight while you're sleeping, but I really like to Recommend A good 3 to 4 hours between meals to really allow your MMC C to activate and just, like, get the gut cleaned out.
Erin:
Yeah. And it's like Rachel said, it's not like you have to, like, do intermittent fasting for this thing to work. It's really Three to four hours in between meals. And so that can be really helpful for folks that are is going through SIBO treatment, especially if you tend towards that sluggish motility to. Rather than eat throughout the day, like, eat three to four meals with plenty of time in between to support that migrating motor complex. Otherwise, we're not using that, like, scrubby brush to, like, clear out the small intestine and remove the bacteria like, it really should be. One thing I'll float out. There is sometimes there can be underlying autoimmunity, and so this can be part of the reason that symptoms are returning.
Rachel:
So when we get food poisoning, there are certain bacteria that cause food poisoning. Campylobacter, salmonella, E. Coli. Sometimes we see these elevated on. On a stool test. But these bacteria can release a toxin called CDTB toxin into your body. And what happens, or what can happen is a process of molecular mimicry, where this toxin looks very similar to vinculin, one of your body's own proteins. So when the toxin comes in from the bacteria, your immune system's like, oh, this shouldn't be here.
Erin:
And it creates an antibody, which is very normal natural immune reaction. But when it creates an antibody to this toxin, it can mistake vinculin for this toxin and create antibodies against your own body's tissue, your own body's protein, which is autoimmunity. That is the mechanism of autoimmunity. And this immune response or this autoimmune response can lead to nerve damage in the gut, specifically with the interstitial cells of Kajal or Cajal. I never know how to say that. It's like all these things you, like, read in your, like, textbooks. You know what I mean? And you're like, when do I have to say this out loud on podcasts? And I'll probably get it wrong, but essentially, these things are the pacemaker cells of your GI tract. They set the pace.
They set the pace of the mmc, the migrating motor complex that Rachel was just talking about. And it creates those motions that. That scrubbing brush, that wave, like, that clears out the small intestine. So, of course, if that's not working effectively, like Rachel just described, what we can be more prone to. SIBO and some IBS like, symptoms that go along with SIBO because we just have that impaired motility. So I would say we're not, like, running this lab all the time, but if somebody is like, dude, I just cannot clear this, and we suspect MMC issues, this might be a lab that we would pull in, the one that I know about is called IBS Smart. I believe there are two on the market. But though IBS Smart Smart, I think it was co founded by Dr.
Mark Pimentel, if I'm remembering the getting the lab correct. So it's looking at two different antibodies that anti cdtb, which is that antitoxin that the bacteria produces, and then anti vinculin. So if we see anti vinculin, we know that there's an autoimmune process that is happening. And so that's just going to be a little bit of a different treatment than somebody with straightforward sibo. So I will float that out there to you. If you've been struggling with sibo, so that isn't clearing, that could be part of your overall picture. I'd love to close out with like a real world example of a client that you've worked with that was dealing with recurring sibo.
Rachel:
We see a lot of these clients in our practice. And this is a client that recently started to work with me. She was treating SIBO every four to six months, going to her gastroenterologist, doing a test, taking antibiotics. She wasn't testing every four to six months. She would just kind of take antibiotics. And after we began our work together, I found out, you know, because most foods create bloating for her, she was really limiting her portion sizes just trying to minimize bloating, which I completely understand. When she was limiting her portions, though, she wasn't eating enough protein, she wasn't getting really full, she wasn't getting satiated. And so she's eating every two to three hours.
Sometimes it was like every 90 minutes. And so she was never really getting that migrating motor complex activated throughout the day. The only time I was really getting activated was when she was sleeping at night. So she had come to me with another relapse of her SIBO symptoms. And we decided, let's do some stool testing, let's see what else could be going on. And her stool test revealed that she had too much bad bacteria in her large intestine. And then she had low digestive enzymes which were really contributing to her bloating. So we got her on some enzymes.
She started to feel she's not perfect. She's still having bloating, but a lot less. We're addressing the dysbiosis in her colon and she's feeling a lot better. Some of the treatment that we're doing is really targeted for her specific type of sibo, but she's the perfect example of if we just treat SIBO without addressing the rest of the terrain, she's just going to keep relapsing. And so it's a little bit more of a complex process than take the sibo antibiotics for two weeks and you'll be perfectly fine. But she's really progressing well. And I think she's been under care for like two and a half months.
Erin:
Oh, that's amazing. To feel better in only two and a half months. One thing I'll float out there just in my own experience because I was somebody that had like labeled myself, this is years ago as recurring sibo. And so I would just start to go to my naturopath, like when I felt the symptoms creep up. And I wouldn't even test at that point because I'm like, I'm symptomatic. And she put together, she's an herbalist as well, so would put together specific herbs for me that I knew I did really well with and would just like immediately get on those. But I had identified, like self labeled myself as a recurring sibo case. And I just always like, you know, it wouldn't be my show without saying this, like, really be careful of your self identity because anything that you attach the words my to your body's not going to let it go.
So my sibo, my recurring sibo, my proclivity towards sibo. So if you start to like identify that as part of your story, part of your picture, it's going to be really hard to clear it and just keep that in mind as well. So thank you, Rachel, for coming on the show. I hope that this gives people some options into other avenues they can explore if they are struggling with ongoing sibo. And as always, if you need support here, you can reach out to us. My team and I, including Rachel, are happy to help.
Erin:
Thanks for joining me for this episode episode of the Functional nutrition podcast. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. If you got something from today's show, don't forget, subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.