Avoid These Diets If You Have SIBO or Chronic Illness with Lindsey Parsons

Food sensitivities start popping up because people start eliminating more and more foods thinking, oh, it's this food. No, it's that food. It's this food. Wait, let me try, let me try keto. Let me try carnivore. Let me try more and more restrictive diets until finally they're down to eating 5 foods. And then the worst thing happens because if you're eating a diet of all meat and fat, you are absolutely feeding all of the pathogenic bugs in your gut.

Hi everybody, welcome back to my channel. So for those of you that do not know me, I'm Dr. Diane Mueller. I'm known as my Lyme doc or the Lyme doc, and I'm doing something that I haven't done on this channel before, which is I am bringing you guys a guest. I'm bringing us in a gut health specialist who works on helping people heal gut health, helping people reverse autoimmune disease naturally. She hosts her own podcast, which we have— I've also been on, and it's called The Perfect Stool. So we'll link how to find her podcast below this video. But I just wanted to introduce you. We have some really— this is really important when it comes to Lyme and mold because We see so many times the, the most common thing that's done for Lyme and mold is that people are killing the microorganisms, detoxing the infections, or detoxing the toxins, I should say. And oftentimes people are not talking about what we talk about on this channel, which is finding the— like fixing the damage that Lyme and that mold have left behind. And we know that Lyme and mold both can inflame the vagal nerve. We know that they can both cause a lot of problems with the microbiome in the gastrointestinal tract. So I wanted to bring Lindsay on today to talk a little bit about gut health. We're gonna talk about some tests, some supplements to consider, and really think about this. If you're listening from the Lyme mold perspective, really think about this from the perspective of we want to heal all your body. We want to heal the damage from the Lyme and the mold, and the gut is a really important part of it.. So without further ado, thanks for joining me today, Lindsay.

Thanks for having me.

Well, tell us a little bit about your background, if you would. Like, how did you get into working with the gut? Can you just, like, intro yourself a little bit that way?

Sure. Well, because I, I myself have had gut health issues, so I have what's called post-infectious IBS, which comes from an episode of food poisoning and then creates repeated courses of small intestine bacterial overgrowth or SIBO. That just keep coming back because it's autoimmune and the autoimmunity is against your own migrating motor complex, which helps clear out bacteria from the small intestine after you eat. So, when you don't have that migrating motor complex working, you just sort of have a stagnating pond in your intestines that just tend to grow bacteria. So, having gone through that and having learned how to manage it and deal deal with it, that brought me into the world of gut health.

Yeah. And it's so common, right, that we have SIBO migrating motor complex issues. I think it's, it's, I mean, almost, I would say at this point, I don't know the statistics, you might know more than I do, but at this point I feel in my, like my practice, it's almost everybody that has like a blanket IBS diagnosis where they've like done a lot of standard conventional tests, ruled out the Crohn's, the ulcers, those kinds of things. And they just have that IBS label. So much— so many people do have this type of SIBO, SIFO, migrating motor complex issue. Is that what you see?

Yeah, yeah. Either they have, they have SIBO or they have EMO. Now they've renamed all the different SIBOCs now intestinal methanogen overgrowth or EMO, and then there's ESO, intestinal sulfide overproduction, or hydrogen sulfide SIBO. But yeah, one or the other of those things, they've, they've They've usually got it.

But we love that.

Not everyone comes from food poisoning, but yeah.

Right, right, right. Please continue. I'm sorry I interrupted. What were you going to say?

I was going to say not everyone comes from food poisoning. Not everyone is autoimmune. Not every case. And more often than not, it's the ones with loose stool or diarrhea or some kind of alternation that are more likely to be in the autoimmune camp. But a lot of people have just not been able to quite clear out the infection, whatever it is.

Yeah, it's so common. And how much do you feel that when we see the antibiotic use, because, you know, a lot of people on my channel have heard me talk like I am not a big fan of unless, you know, unless there are certain situations, but I'm not a big fan of antibiotics oftentimes as the main thing we're doing, especially for chronic Lyme for a lot of different reasons. But one of the things I've seen is like with antibiotic therapy for chronic Lyme, It's very common people do triple antibiotic therapy where they are doing 3 different antibiotics sometimes for 4, 5, 6, 7+ months. And you and I both know very well this destroys the microbiome and therefore so much of our immune system. So what do you see in your work as far as like long-term antibiotics that people are on? Because it does happen a lot, especially in the Lyme community. We know that it disrupts the microbiome. I think a lot of people are aware of that, but what are some other things that maybe people are not aware of as far as long-term implications from this antibiotic use?

Well, I mean, like you said, it disrupts the microbiome. You see a lot of times you see Candida. That's a, that's a big one, of course, because if you start wiping out the bacteria, then the yeast overgrow, and then you just see a general dysbiosis. So there's, there's a whole cycle that happens when you're on antibiotics. Where you are killing the butyrate-producing bacteria, and butyrate being a short-chain fatty acid that's super important for feeding your colon, the colonocytes, the cells lining your colon. And the butyrate-producing bacteria like the Faecalibacterium, the Blausia, the Roseburia, the Enterobacter, these are all keystone species that everybody needs in their colon, and they produce butyrate and they feed those cells. So when you take antibiotics, those bacteria are the most susceptible to antibiotics. So you tend to have this decrease in butyrate producers. Your colon's like, well, what am I supposed to eat? So it pulls in oxygen. So then you get this oxygenated environment in the colon, which favors the facultative anaerobes, the ones that can live in the presence of oxygen. And those are the, tend to be the proteobacteria, in particular the Enterobacteraceae. E. coli, Klebsiella, Enterobacter species, Citrobacter, and then you can see some hydrogen sulfide producers like Proteus and then Morganella. So these are, these are the kinds of species that tend to overgrow in those situations. So you get this dysbiosis and it often then looks like loose stool, but you can also, some people react to sort of in a different way to antibiotics and they have an overgrowth of methane-producing bacteria and they get the methanobacterium. Methanobrevibacter smithii, which overgrows and that creates a slow colon and constipation. But you usually see underneath that some of these other proteobacteria or hydrogen-producing bacteria overgrowing because they're supplying the food for the methanogens, which are archaea, not bacteria. So, so yeah, and then you also can see the hydrogen sulfide SIBO happen where you usually have urgent diarrhea. But I've also seen, you know, in combination with M. smithii, I see some and sometimes constipation with that too. So, long and short, you see dysbiosis, and sometimes people find it hard. And then, also, food sensitivities start popping up because people start eliminating more and more foods thinking, "Oh, it's this food. No, it's that food. It's this food. Wait, let me try keto. Let me try carnivore. Let me try..." More and more restrictive diets until finally they're down to eating 5 foods. And then, the worst thing happens because if you're eating a diet of all meat and fat, you are absolutely feeding all of the pathogenic bugs in your gut. You are not feeding the fiber that the butyrate producers need. You're doing— you may be providing ketones and you may feel better because of the ketones that come in the— on the diet, but you're destroying your microbiome in the process.

So let's talk about that because this is such a common thing I see, right? It's like the number of times people come to my office and they are on a combination of low lectin, low oxalate, you know, autoimmune paleo, you know, mast cell, like a low histamine diet, and exactly this exactly what you said. It's like, okay, you do all of these things in combination, and I get it, right? Because it's for the exact reasons that you're talking about. Plus, in this population, so many people are— they have something like mast cell activation, which is making them even more reactive. So I get why people do it, and I also tell people the same thing. It's like, you're on 5 foods, you're going to start reacting to those foods. This is just a bad thing all around. So it's not a long-term plan. So from the standpoint of what you just said around, okay, well, now you're on the, you know, if you're doing like a high protein, high fat diet, that's going to further cause a lot of the dysbiosis. How do you begin to like bring in some of these other foods? And what do you recommend from a standpoint of making sure you're, you know, really working with both the aerobic and anaerobic bacteria to bring that healthy balance? From a, from a dietary perspective?

Yeah. So often it does help to intervene with supplements before you start expanding the diet. So, um, giving butyrate itself, usually in the form of tributyrin, to the colonocytes, really to the body essentially, so it can start closing up that, making that colon hypoxic or oxygen-free again. So once, once you start feeding it butyrate, then it doesn't have to keep pulling in oxygen. So you're already going to start turning around what the environment in the colon is like. You can also, if, if you know, you have got extreme diarrhea or that kind of thing, probably there's a pathogen of some sort, not just a pathobiome, but like a full-on pathogen. So you probably want to get something like the SBI powder or serum bovine immunoglobulin powder to try and start adhering to those pathogens and clearing them out. Then you might want to start with a gentle fiber like SunFiber. Or PHGG, partially hydrolyzed guar gum, which is pretty gentle and it's even okay if there is any IBD in there. Because a lot of people, they keep going long enough till create enough dysbiosis till they do actually kick in with IBD. And so I see a lot of inflammation going on in people's guts these days. And then you can, yeah, you can slowly titrate up on fibers like that to try and start feeding the good ones. Now, sometimes you do have to go in with something antimicrobial, but I definitely favor things that are gentler. So I would sooner go in with, uh, like pomegranate peel powder, which is a much more selective antimicrobial. Um, if I need to go a little harder, I might go with allicin if they're not in hydrogen sulfide SIBO situation where they can't tolerate the garlic products. But if they are in the hydrogen sulfide SIBO situation, usually it's, it's, it's it's really effective to change the diet and just, if you can, pull out the fat, pull out the meat for a time, pull out anything that's garlic or cruciferous vegetables, anything that has sulfur in it, any supplements with sulfur. A lot of times people start taking NAC thinking this is gonna solve their problems and that's a sulfur supplement and they're just compounding their problems. So yeah, it depends. It depends on the situation. But until you see what's going on in the microbiome, until you see that stool test, you don't really know what, what the best intervention's gonna be.

Yeah, of course. And from a fat perspective, so what— so say that again. So you're finding that fat— you've seen that fat will, will feed what, the hydrogen sulfide species the most? Is that what you've seen?

Yeah. So what if you've got hydrogen sulfide SIBO, you really want to cut the fat down to virtually nothing and stop feeding them. Uh, the only exception there is the coconut oil or MCT oil, which is absorbed rapidly and you don't need to use bile. But anything that's going to bloom the bile is going to sort of feed those species and then cause problems. So you don't also want to take any bile supplements. If that— if you take a bile supportive supplement or ox bile or a digestive enzyme that has something that supports bile or bitters and you have a terrible reaction, it's probably a good sign that you have hydrogen sulfide.

Yeah, it's really, really good to know. And so many people, I think too, with that— I see with especially with mold, they have a slow biliary release, so they have slow bile. So it's like you know, so it's so often that people need bio for the one, but then it's not uncommon they also have something like hydrogen sulfide, you know, bacteria, and then you're gonna get to that problem. So it's, you know, I think it's important to, like you said, like do tests so we know what's going on because oftentimes it's like, well, this part of your body needs it for this reason, but it's gonna actually exacerbate this other part of the body, which really is why we have to do things in a, you know, particular order, that sort of thing. So what are your favorite tests? What are you using these days for testing?

For stool testing, I'm using either the Tiny Health Pro, which is a full metagenomic sequencing plus the gut health markers. I use the US Biotech GI Advanced Profile, especially if, if I also wanna check for H. pylori and virulence factors and also want some markers of leaky gut like zonulin and see, I think those are the, those are the main things that aren't on Tiny Health Pro. And then, oh, and also markers of gluten sensitivity. I also use quite a good bit the Gut Zoomer by Vibrant Beaks. So if I, if I need to get, tell somebody to get 3 tests like mycotoxins and organic acids and Gut Zoomer, I will usually go that route. I also use organic acids a lot. If I can, I use the Organixx, Metabolomics, or NutrEval. The Genova test because they have the most accurate marker, the D-arabinitol, for Candida. But otherwise, I will be using— if I'm using Vibrant, they do an oat test, but unfortunately use arabinose on theirs, which is not the optimal marker for Candida. But you, you get what you can.

Yeah, yeah. There's no, no test on the market for anything that's 100% perfect, that's for sure. Yeah. And then, then how much are you— are you just looking at like the methano, um, methanogen, or the methane-producing bacteria? On these tests, or are you actually testing for SIBO at this point?

I don't often test for SIBO. The main reason is because, for one thing, I'm going to want to look at what's going on in the stool anyway. So if I have to pick one test, I feel like the stool tells me a lot more. If they have constipation and I get back a stool test that says they have zero methanogens in there, then I can pretty safely assume they don't have methane, you know, methane SIBO or EMMA. But if I get back a negative breath test, that doesn't actually tell me for sure whether they don't have anything going on because there's a lot of negative breath tests and, and often it's people, it's hard for people in the US to get ahold of lactulose to do the testing with. And so they end up using glucose or I'll send 'em to use fructose if I can't, if I can't get ahold of lactulose for them. So it's not, it's not the optimal testing substrate. So at the end of the day, for me, the stool testing is just more interesting and, and, richer in information. And, and if you have the constipation symptom and then you see M. smithii in the gut, then that usually is enough evidence together to assume that it's emo.

Mm-hmm. Yep. That's helpful. And then let's talk about supplements. What are your favorite treatments out there? So I know you mentioned like SBI Protect and, you know, working with that and improving the immune system of the gut and supporting the bacterial growth that way. What else are you using these days?

Yeah. So, I actually use my own SBI powder. I— because there were two supplements that I was giving to everybody and they were so expensive, I made my own Perfect Stool brand SBI powder and Tributrin Max are my products. So, I often use those. If I use my— my Tributrin Max is high dose. So, I use it for people who have loose stool. I don't ever use it for people who have constipation, although I do use low-dose Tributrin or butyrate for people with constipation, but much less frequently. 200 to 500 milligrams once every 3 days to once a day. So, usually, because higher doses will constipate you if you, especially if you're already constipated to start with. Yeah. So, I said the pomegranate peel, allicin is something I'll use if, you know, you try all these things. And then, of course, I should say before I even get there, prebiotic fibers. So, I mentioned the PHGG, their SunFiber, but all of the, each one of the bacteria in the gut is fed by particular fibers. So I'll look at what they have in their gut. And so, you know, I might use apple pectin, I might use rice bran or oat bran, I might use acacia fiber, inulin, psyllium husk. These are some of the big ones and they feed particular butyrate-producing bacteria. So I look what's low, what's, what's good already. And and I will create a gut shake for them. And then also Akkermansia often is killed off by antibiotics. That's a real common one. So using probiotics with Akkermansia, but then importantly feeding them. So the prebiotics for them, that's the pomegranate, not the peel in this case, but the juice extract and cranberries or cranberry powder. Also the EG or the matcha green tea powder. So yeah, usually some kind of a gut shake that has these prebiotic powders. And then often things for healing and sealing the gut lining if there's signs of leaky gut, like elevated zonulin, for example. So there I'd be using L-glutamine and zinc carnosine and Saccharomyces boulardii.

Yeah, beautiful. And I wanna make sure everybody knows as you're listening, like a lot of these fibers that Lindsay's talking about are fibers that I did talk about in my book for also binding mycotoxins and mold. So you get a benefit with doing that. But since we do talk about mold so much on this channel, I just want people to know as they're listening to these, sometimes when we do add these types of binders as they are in the mold world. Sometimes when we are actually using binders to flush the toxins out, what winds up happening, it sends a cellular signal for the cells to dump more toxins. And so then sometimes people can have their toxic load in their blood actually go up upon using those kind of fibers. And they can— you can actually feel worse. So just as a caution for anybody that's listening, of course, always you know, always talk to your doctor about any of your plans. And, you know, when you have mold illness, I would just, you know, caution you to, like any other binder we use, to start really slow just because it's like so many things, like I mentioned earlier, so many things are like, okay, well, this part of your body needs this and that part of your body it might be too much for. So we oftentimes have to go slow and do things in a certain way to make sure that we are, you know, thinking about this from all the angles.

Yeah, definitely. You gotta titrate up when you're starting fiber, so you don't just like, yeah, chuck, you know, 2 cups of fiber into a— and you got to drink a lot too, a lot of liquids to go along with all the fiber. Yeah, but a lot more than you would imagine when you get to it.

Totally, totally. Well, what else did we not say today? I want to make sure that we let people know of your quiz, and you have a booklet that you all offer both for free. So I want to let people know about both of your free giveaways you're giving everybody. Um, but before we do that, is there anything else we did not say in this conversation around gut health that you think is like essential that we say today?

Well, I will say this, and I'm not sure how, how much this relates to mold or Lyme or any other things you're dealing with, but the two supplements that I try and avoid if at all possible are two that are pretty commonly used, and that's berberine and oregano oil, because they can hurt beneficial microbes and hurt diversity. So that's an absolute last resort for me. Like, I try and do everything else possible first. And, if I do use those, I'm giving supportive things like prebiotic fibers and probiotics, and I'm pulsing on and off so that people have it so that the microbiome has a chance to recover.

Yeah, that makes sense. That's important and clear. And, we do, I mean, it's the same thing with NAC you mentioned earlier. And, NAC, everybody think of, "Oh, this is great. It's a biofilm disruptor." But, it's like, well, it's a biofilm disruptor of the good guys too. So a lot of these things are powerful and, and, um, we have to use them respectively, you know, or, uh, respectfully, I mean. So thank you so much for, you know, for that awareness on that. And tell us now about your freebie and your quiz, if you would.

Okay. So I've got a booklet. It's called Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and Organic Acids Testing, where I talk about the different functional medicine tests that are used to try and get at why you are suffering. And then I have a quiz where you actually can go in and enter your symptoms and come out with what tests I would recommend you would— you take at the end.

Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much. And so we'll put links for that, um, links for both of these below the show and below this video, and also links for Lindsay and how you get a hold of her to work with her and all of those good things. Anything else that you want to conclude with today?

Um, well, if you— if you are interested in any of the supplements I mentioned, they're at poopperfectstool.com.

Great. Perfect. We'll put that in the show notes too. And thanks everybody. I look forward to your feedback on what you think about me bringing guests onto our channel here. And thank you so much, Lindsay, for spending time with me today.

Thank you so much, Diane.

I'll see you everybody. See everybody soon.