Hope for healing SIBO & IBS

Have you ever felt 100% hopeless about your gut health?

Especially when you’ve seen multiple doctors and specialists…

Tried this diet and that…

Tested positive, then negative, then positive again…

I get it! At one point I felt a real sense of hopelessness around my own SIBO and IBS.

What changed?

First, I took responsibility for my own health. I stopped looking for a doctor to fix me and started trying to figure out how i could heal myself.

Second – I immersed myself in as much information as I could! Everything I learned was like a little nugget of hope. Some things I applied right away (and had BIG results). Other things I filed away for later on.

I don’t feel hopeless anymore – I feel empowered.

I want that for you too. So today, I’m sharing some of my favorite nuggets of hope with you!

I hope these inspire you to keep learning and never, ever give up!

Dr. Mona Morstein, ND: People Get Better

Dr. Mona Morstein: “There’s been a lotta people very poorly treated with SIBO. It’s not necessarily that SIBO is this totally impossible disease to treat. It just means it’s one of, by far, the more complicated ones, which is why, you need to do it in a very step-by-step fashion, addressing all of the components that need to heal in the gut; but when it’s done that way. I know, people get better! For sure! Absolutely! The majority get better.”

Riley Wimminger, MScN: It’s A Marathon

Riley Wimminger: “I think my biggest thing that I always tell people is that it’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint. And to have this concept in your mind that you’re just going to take an antibiotic, and then you’re going to take a prokinetic, and everything is going to be healed, maybe – maybe, you’ll have great results happen. But that’s just not what I’ve seen in most people.

So, don’t feel discouraged when that stuff doesn’t work for you. Just take it at the pace you can and start uncovering what else is going on and be patient with your body. And there will be ups and downs. But ultimately, I really see that, a lot of people, they have this upward trend. It maybe looks like this, but it goes up eventually as long as you stick with it and be patient with yourself.”

Dr. Stefani Hayes, ND: Look At The Bigger Picture

Dr. Stefani Hayes: “We think about SIBO as a chronic illness, like diabetes or something like that, that it has to be managed for potentially a lifetime. There’s every once in a while sometimes the miracle cure, one treatment and they’re better forever. But most individuals, it’s a lifetime’s worth of management, whatever that means, if it’s a modified diet or every few years, getting a re-treatment or just being conscious of the decisions and choices they make, know about some area of weakness for them, and could potentially be an area of weakness for their children.

And so just watching that and working on long-term management, I think, is where we often go.

And I think then it’s a little more empowering rather than disempowering because if the self-expectations and the negative self-talk that can come in when—cheats on the diet, it’s about finding that sweet spot where you live your life, and you enjoy your life, and you don’t struggle with the symptoms whether they be the typical IBS-type symptoms or if they show up differently like my patients have with pelvic pain or menstrual irregularities or fertility struggles.”

Dr. Michael Ruscio, DC: Reframe How You Think About Chronic Conditions

Dr. Michael Ruscio: “And we were talking specifically about how IBS is a chronic condition that has a propensity towards relapse – which is true. But what the public will go to with that understanding is “Oh, my God! This is a chronic condition. I’m never going to be able to get rid of them my entire life.” That’s not really the case.

What more so is the reality is that you can go from having IBS and from having SIBO and feeling awful—being bloated, having constipation or diarrhea and some of these associated symptoms that go along with that like insomnia or fatigue or brain fog – and then you can start feeling way better. You may have occasional times when you flare a little bit. But the example I used with Dr. Siebecker when we were talking on the phone the other day was if you had a bad knee injury in college, every once in a while, your knee may start to ache, you’ve got to do some stretches, you’ve got to do some exercises. It’s not a huge deal.

The same thing with your gut. You may have a flare every once in a while. Not a huge deal! We’re all human. There’s therapies we can use to quell that flare. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong or broken or you’re in a dire situation.”

Trudy Scott, CN: Be An Archaeologist

Trudy Scott: “There’s no magic solution. There’s no “You’ve got SIBO. This is the protocol that you need to do.” You need to try this. And if it works, great. If it doesn’t, you try this. Or you try various different permutations.

I mentioned my diet is not exactly the same as someone else’s diet who has SIBO. You may need to try LDN. It may not work for you. You may try tryptophan, and it may work for you. People will often have this fear of starting something or having to be almost a human guinea pig.

I remember you talking about being like an archaeologist, digging and trying to find solutions.”

Don’t Give Up!

Dr. Allison Siebecker, ND told me that it usually takes about four years for her patients to really figure out how to manage SIBO and IBS so that they’re not having their lives run by their SIBO.

Learning that was a relief in some ways and a real bummer in other ways. Of course, SIBO and IBS are really obnoxious conditions. We want to get better right away! But once I developed a “long-term” perspective, it gave me peace.

It is so helpful to say, “Yes, this is a chronic condition. This is something that I need to manage.” Once I tried that on as a concept, it made me less anxious because I realized that it was just a new way of being. It wasn’t my preferred way of being, but it was a new way of being that if I at least embraced it, and took the pressure off.

That’s why my company is actually called Chronic Condition Rescue because we are dealing with these chronic conditions (and you really do need to be rescued, or you need to rescue yourself).

The Way Forward For SIBO & IBS

I’ve been where you are right now – and I made it to the other side. Sure – SIBO and IBS are conditions I’ll live with forever, but I’m not hopeless. I’m empowered.

I want to guide you to the other side too – it is my calling in life to help other people with SIBO & IBS get relief.

Here’s how I can help you right now: join the SIBO Recovery Roadmap® course.

This course was made by me and my practitioner Dr. Allison Siebecker to help anyone who is struggling with SIBO/IMO. It provides a step by step SIBO “algorithm” designed to take you from testing to diagnosis interpretation to many different treatment options and beyond. It’s meant for people at all stages of SIBO/IMO/IBS healing, easy to follow, and full of all of the information I’ve spent years learning and that Dr. Siebecker has used to heal thousands of SIBO patients.

I hope you’ll check out the course and take control of your gut health with us.