Intestinal Methanogen Overgrowth: Everything You Need to Know

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and today I'll be speaking with Erin Dunney, RD, and we'll be focusing on intestinal methanogen overgrowth, or methane SIBO, and the effects of COVID on the gut. Erin is a registered dietitian specializing in integrative gastroenterology in her online private practice, Blunt Nutrition. Erin ditched her original career in public relations in favor of finding her own way toward solving her crippling gut and weight-related issues. Now Erin coaches and empowers women struggling with IBS to listen to the wisdom their bodies provide so they feel confident to create their own customized action and nutrition plans. But before our conversation, if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so. And if you want to get transcripts of the podcast, hop over to my website, highdeserthealthcoaching.com and sign up for my newsletter. You'll also get my free ebooklet, Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and Organic Acids Testing, when you sign up. And if you haven't yet done my quiz on which stool test would help you get to your root cause, you can find a link in the show notes and take that. Now on to the show. Welcome to the podcast, Erin.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Lindsey Parsons.

It's my pleasure. So why don't we start by talking about your your gut health issues, because I know that your history includes methane SIBO or SIBO-C, or what's now called EMO. And perhaps you can explain those terms and then tell us about your own story.

Yeah, absolutely. So I never was— started out being a beacon of health. Nutrition wasn't really on the top of my mind. I actually started out in communications and public relations. So I was very overweight as a child. I grew up basically eating Pop-Tarts on the way to school. So in college, it kind of caught up with me and I started having a lot of abdominal symptoms. I couldn't eat anything without feeling nauseous. I probably lost about 75 pounds in about a month. And so at that time I had went to multiple doctors and they found out it was actually a gallbladder issue. It wasn't functioning well. So they ended up taking the gallbladder out, which if I would've known what I know now, probably wouldn't have gone that route, but it is what it is. So without having a gallbladder, that created some further digestive issues. So for me personally, I had a really hard time with protein. So I went vegan for about 7 years actually, because I couldn't digest anything else. And it's what I could tolerate at the time. So after about 7 years, I started getting really bad constipation and I was getting abdominal cramps. Basically anything I ate, I would feel incredibly bloated. So got the whole rundown, EGDs.

What's an EGD?

I had an endoscope, so the tube that goes down to look at the stomach. I got colonoscopies. So in a roundabout way, I was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome, which basically is a diagnosis of symptoms. It's not an actual diagnosis. It's kind of like a, we don't know, you have these symptoms, so we're going to label you as this, right?

Right.

Right. So I decided that I just couldn't take it anymore. I wanted to figure it out. So I went actually back to school and that's when I got my degree in dietetics. And then I started working for a gym that introduced me to more of the functional medicine. And so the more I looked into it, I discovered small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So I went and got tested and I actually had hydrogen sulfide of small intestinal Your growth. Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, I treated myself for that and was able to become fully recovered, which is how I became passionate about just helping women in general managing IBS, which about 84% of the time SIBO is the major contributor.

So it's interesting that you had hydrogen sulfide SIBO, because I associate that normally with a high meat fat diet. Although I guess if you did not have a gallbladder, you probably weren't digesting fats terribly well.

I was not. It's always kind of an anomaly, but yes, that likely without a gallbladder, like you said, you can't do fat. So, right.

And you were eating dairy?

Yes.

Yeah. Okay. That makes sense then. Okay. So because you've had your gallbladder out, I'm curious how you support your digestion now and your protein digestion and how you would support a client's digestion of fats without a gallbladder.

Yeah. So one of the recommendations out there is Ox bile. Uh, that one is very, very popular and works well for people. For me personally, I couldn't really tolerate Ox bile. It would cause really bad diarrhea. So I, I use digestive bitters. So I do a couple of drops before every meal. So that's where I support my, from a digestive standpoint, from the fat standpoint. But as far as the proteins, I don't need that much support anymore because once I kind of worked on the gut, got everything healed up, those enzymes kind of came back. But originally I would— originally I did have to start with a broad spectrum digestive enzyme. I also had to do a hydrochloric acid pepsin combination in order to get my stomach acid back up as well. So I was on that treatment for a little while until I could get everything kind of healed up and ready to go, and then I was able to move off of it. So Now I only have to support with the, with the bitters.

Yeah. And were you seeing a functional medicine person then when you got diagnosed with hydrogen sulfide SIBO?

I actually, believe it or not, wasn't, but my doctor, my PCP at the time was more in the functional medicine space. And so she worked with a naturopath. So they were actually doing the testing in office. And so she consulted with the naturopath at the time. So in a roundabout way, technically I was.

And how many years ago was that?

Oh man, I think probably 10 or 15 years ago now. It was a little while ago.

So I'm thinking maybe you had hydrogen SIBO, not hydrogen sulfide, because hydrogen sulfide testing has only been around for like 3 years.

Yeah. I mean, honestly, it was at the time where they just started introducing it, and so it wasn't super reliable on whatever they were doing anyways. So I think they were just guessing, honestly, and it ended up working. So obviously obviously we know a lot more about it now, but back at the time when I was being treated, it was, there wasn't a lot out there. So they're kind of like, here, try this.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, I did wanna focus on, on SIBO-C or constipation SIBO or emo-intestinal methanogen overgrowth today. So I wondered if you could tell me, first of all, do you see a lot of patients with that?

Yeah, absolutely. So looking at what it is, so a lot of times constipation is more of of is a different kind of beast in and of itself, and even to where they're thinking about renaming it, right? So when we're looking at methanogen dominant SIBO, the species or the organism is actually an archaea. So it's not even a bacteria. So I feel like the name is kind of misleading, which is where they're looking at renaming it. So because we're looking at a different type of species, if you will, we're looking at a different treatment method. So what happens is, you know, we have archaea in the body itself, It's not like it's anything foreign. It's just one. Our small intestine is very sterile. There's not supposed to be a lot of stuff in there. So what happens is these little guys can get an overgrowth either in the large intestine or the small intestine, and then it starts creating issues, right?

Yeah. I guess that's another reason to call it EMO rather than SIBO-C is because it's not just SIBO, it's small intestine bacterial overgrowth. Could be, could be a large intestine methanogen issue.

Exactly. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. So what do you do for patients with this?

When you're looking at a methogen dominant, there's a couple things to consider. So one, you wanna potentially test for other things. You might not just have that methanogen. You might have a yeast, you might have a fungal, you might have a parasite. So you wanna make sure that that's not the only— you're just kind of double-check and make sure that that's not the only thing contributing to the symptoms. From there, where you start with, as far as treatment, you need kind of a broad spectrum of herbals and you want to kind of rotate them a little bit just to prevent any sort of resistance. So with methane dominant specifically, some of the herbals that work really well are going to be your Oregano oil is very popular to use for that. Allicin, which is coming from garlic, allicin has been known to really help kind of absorb that methane and then pairing with maybe like a neem oil or berberine. So kind of your primaries are gonna be your oregano oil, your allicin, and then you can kind of add a supportive, but I mean, really everybody's gonna be different. Everybody responds to herbals differently. So Other things that you can potentially use are Anthratil.

Anthrantil.

I always pronounce that wrong.

It's a French word.

Yes. I always pronounce it wrong. Yes. It has a peppermint oil, so it can help with some of the abdominal symptoms. Other things that have been shown to work really well for methane specifically, you got your monolaurin can help. There's also, I know probiotics is very controversial as far as a treatment method. However, Lactobacillus Lactobacillus plantarum has been shown to work really well for methane or like a spore base. So as long as you don't have an overgrowth in the large intestine, it kind of bypasses that. So those are just some of the options that you're looking at as far as treatment. And like I said, everybody is gonna respond differently. So you, you don't use all of these. It's just, you have different things to kind of manipulate based on how somebody responds.

Yeah.

And then as far as length of treatment. It's going to be different for everybody as well. So usually anywhere from 2 to 3 months is possible just for the killing off phase, if you will.

With hydrogen SIBO, I see clients respond pretty quickly once you start to give them the antimicrobials. Do you see the same thing with methane SIBO, or does it seem to take a lot longer to begin to notice an effect?

It seems to take a little bit longer in my experience, and I don't know if that's the same for you as well. And it just they're just pesky little guys. And it's, yeah, it's also possible because methane or like archaea, they feed off of hydrogen. So it's possible that you could have some bacterial overgrowth that are producing the hydrogen and it's kind of feeding the methane. So you kind of have to potentially kill both, which is also gonna take a little bit longer as well.

Right.

Right.

Yeah. It's sort of a vicious cycle, right? You gotta kill the food source as well as the bacteria or the archaea. Absolutely. Allison, do you have a product that you like?

Yeah, I really like Alisher. I use that primarily. It's, it's a good product and I, I really haven't had a lot of issues with it.

Okay. And do you find though that the methane SIBO is more intractable than other types of SIBO? Harder to eliminate?

It does. Like, SIBO in general has a very, very high recurrence rate, right? It's, it's essentially like a giant puzzle because there's a lot of different factors that can trigger the progression of it. So not only do you have to kill it off, but you also have to kind of figure out that root cause on how it got there in the first place. So a lot of times we're looking at motility issues as well. Um, we're looking at low stomach acid, we're looking at low pancreatic enzymes. If you have a history of abdominal surgery, that can cause issues, medication use. So depending on what that root cause is and how long you've had it and how severe the motility issues are, it definitely can make things harder as well.

Do you use breath testing or do you do stool testing or both?

Yeah. So I primarily do, I do stool testing, but I also go through Vibrant Labs. So I actually do the testing for acetyl-lithol distending toxin. So what is that basically? So a lot of times when people get SIBO, it can be from food poisoning. So when you get food poisoning, which is very, very common, I mean, it could be, you don't even know you have it. It could be you just feeling a little funny one night and you're like, well, something's a little off going to bed. Well, what can happen with that is that bacteria is gonna produce this toxin, that very lengthy word that I talked about. So we'll just call it CDTB. So what that does is that toxin is going to start attacking the part of your digestion called viculin. So viculin basically regulates your migrating motor complex. So I'm using a lot of big words. What does that mean? Basically that migrating motor complex, you can consider it the Roomba of your digestive tract. So Every 90 to 120 minutes, as long as you're not eating, this migrating motor complex is gonna create this wave and it's gonna take all of that debris sitting in your stomach and it's gonna wipe it out. So it's kind of like that Roomba going through and cleaning any debris that's on your floor. So what happens is if you get damaged to the viculin, then that's gonna make it to where your body is not scrubbing out that debris. So it's just sitting there and it's creating this breeding ground for bacteria, archaea, all of that to feed off of. So that's why I tend to test that as opposed to doing the breath testing, just because it's another measurable way to detect whether or not SIBO is present. And then you can kind of use that with the stool test to figure out whether it's— we're dealing with some SIBO.

So does Vibrant Lab have that marker then?

Yes.

Oh, okay. Because I've used the IBS Smart that has the vinculin, anti-vinculin antibodies and the anti-CDTB antibodies, which incidentally I, I have, I have elevated. I have post-infectious IBS essentially. I didn't realize that Vibrant Labs was, but I can't access their tests because they don't let health coaches order them. Excuse this brief interruption, but I wanted to remind you that if you've been struggling with with IBS, IBD, reflux, gastritis, SIBO, dysbiosis, candida, diarrhea, constipation, and all that gut health stuff. That's my specialty. So I work with clients not just here in Tucson, Arizona, where I live, but also virtually on video chat. And I offer single appointments as well as a 5-session gut health program for people with tougher gut health issues or mental health or autoimmune challenges that go along with that. Who likely require testing and longer-term follow-up, as well as 12-week programs for weight loss. If you think that a 5-session or longer course of health coaching might help you meet your health goals, you can set up a free 30-minute breakthrough session with me to talk about what you've been going through, and I'll listen and hear if it sounds like I have something in my toolkit that you haven't already tried and let you know if I think that health coaching would be appropriate for you. You can find a link for that in the show notes, and I hope to hear from you. So you mentioned rotating. Tell me about how you rotate.

Gotcha. Yeah. As far as the supplement herbals. Herbals. Yes. So I typically will start somebody out with a Candida Bacter AR, Candida Bacter BR, just because I like that it's a broad spectrum. And plus I find that your oregano oils, your— it's just very, very potent. And so typically I don't necessarily like to use that right away because also that die-off reaction can be very intense for people. So sometimes people tolerate the Candida Arbr just fine, and then if we might just do a little bit longer with that, if that's not working, that's where I then will do the heavy hitters like the oregano oil The other thing to consider with that oregano oil, um, is just double checking and making sure that people are getting the enteric coated, because if it's not enteric coated, it's just gonna go in your stomach and that's not gonna help anything either. So that's typically how I would do it. And I would just keep people on potentially on the oregano, potentially throwing in that neem or the monolaurin, keep 'em on a little bit longer. The other thing I didn't mention is berberine. Berberine is also another one, although that specifically responds a little bit better to diarrhea. But with the berberine, it's nice because it does have a little bit of a biofilm disruptor. So if you need something to kill kind of that protective shield that, um, some of the bacteria can have or archaea can have, that's nice. But it's also if you have like a fungal overgrowth or some sort of yeast, the berberine's gonna help with that as well.

Right, right. So when you say rotating, I was thinking you meant short-term rotations. I've heard of practitioners using 4-day rotations, but you're talking more like 6-week rotations or what kind of?

Exactly. Yeah. Like I, I don't rotate that much.

Right, right. Yeah. Okay.

But yeah, I'll do, especially if somebody's not responding, that's where I'll add some of these other things. So you're not necessarily changing too much. You're kind of using the same thing. You're just kind of playing around with the dosages and then also adding some of these other supplements to see if they might respond better to that.

Yeah. And have you found that some people need to just kind of stay on something long-term, that it comes back so quickly you just have to keep 'em on it?

Yeah. So typically with the right dosages, I like to have people test every 3 months. And I think that's another thing that I see. Because at the end of the day, I know it's a, it's a hard investment for people to make. And so they don't necessarily want to retest. And I know a lot of practitioners out there saying, okay, well, your symptoms are at 90%. We don't have to retest. That's why I like kind of testing the endotoxin that we talk about in the Viculin, because it's a way to see, are we making progress? And part of my theory is that I think that because most of the protocols are only like 6 weeks. Herbal, people are feeling better, and then they go off of it and then they get the recurrence that because they didn't retest, they didn't see that it was completely gone. So the question is, is there a high recurrence rate because it's really hard to kill, or is there a high recurrence rate because people aren't retesting? Because you ideally wanna test at 3 months and at 6 months and make sure that it's 100% gone. And then getting into more of the supportive measures where we talked about including some herbals to support that migrating motor complex to make sure that you're getting that motility and getting things pushed out because to support that migrating motor complex, I mean that you're gonna be on 6 months to a year. So that's a little bit longer term than the initial kill off, if you will.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And are you keeping people on antimicrobials up through the testing then?

Ideally, yes, because I don't wanna stop treatment until I know it's gone.

Right, right.

Okay.

Interesting. And, and are you retesting with the full stool test or the full Vibrant Labs with the antibodies, or what are you retesting?

Not the full, just the antibodies because it's a lot cheaper to do that. Right, right. So, so yeah, usually the full panel. It's, it's nice because you can kind of just pick that one and just retest that.

Right. And you see those numbers come down on the antibodies over after treatment?

Absolutely.

Yeah. Okay. I never, I never actually thought to retest the antibodies. That's, that's an interesting technique. Okay. So do you find that people with EMO or SIBO-C have worse bloating? Like it's, they're in more pain. They seem to be just more uncomfortable than people with hydrogen SIBO.

Yeah, absolutely. Because it's just, I mean, if you think about it, bacteria kind of sit and feed off of the stool, right? And so if it's just kind of sitting there and not going anywhere, basically it's full-on feeding ground where when they are eating the food, that's kind of essentially just sitting there for them. They produce so much gas and methane gas is so uncomfortable. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So I'm curious because obviously if you're looking at an elevated CDTB antibody, you could be dealing with any type of SIBO. So are you basically judging on that this is a constipated person versus this is a person with diarrhea at that point to decide? Or does Vibrant Labs have— well, I assume it has a marker for methane, but often I've discovered that when I look at stool tests for methane, I see the presence of the archaea or the Methanobrevibacter smithii at least, but I don't necessarily see that it's elevated. It doesn't show as elevated.

So Vibrant Labs, their stool panel is very, very, very comprehensive. So they have the archaea, they have They have the methane, Smithy. So yeah, it might not necessarily be high, but also you can tell based off of the symptoms as well, kind of where, where they're at. And I would say just in my clinical practice between those two, I've had really good results to where I haven't really had to do the breath tests. And I find that, I mean, the breath tests, you can argue back and forth, like technically they're not always going to be accurate either.. So depending on what test you're using. So in my experience, just using those two markers has been enough to be like, okay, this is what you have. Yeah.

Yeah. I do find though that when you get somebody with H. pylori, you know, sometimes you get this overlap of H. pylori and the methane SIBO and they both cause constipation. So then you're not quite sure which one you're dealing with. Then you deal with the H. pylori. I feel like sometimes that might cause the methane to overgrow because you're killing off bacteria that that respond to the mastic gum perhaps, but not— and those aren't the archaea.

Exactly. And I mean, like you said, H. pylori itself can produce methane as well. So if you have both, you're getting just doubled up on the methane. And yeah, that's real uncomfortable.

Okay. I didn't realize that H. pylori was a methane producer. Okay. So I understand that your history also includes a severe case of COVID with complications. So can you tell me more about that story?

Yeah. So my digestive health has been real fun. So yes, I, there was a series of events leading up to it, but basically to kind of backtrack a little bit. So I had knee surgery in November, so I was out for a little bit with that. And then in December, my husband had brought home like the world's worst stomach bug in the world. Like, I don't even know where this thing came from, but, you know, he's a grown man, literally peeled up on the, on the floor with such bad body aches. He couldn't even move. Like, it was bad. So we recovered from that in about 24 hours. But my son, who was 3 at the time, what can happen after a stomach infection, which we learned, the lymph nodes in your stomach can swell. So he ended up being sick for a month. Like, he threw up at between 2:00 and 3:00 AM. Every single night for a month and like severe body aches. So needless to say, I was under a very large amount of stress for a good probably 3 months at that time. So why I say that is because that's important leading up to the COVID situation and why I got it so bad is because about once I took— it took about a month for my son to get better. And when I say he threw up every night for a month, He threw up every night for a month. It was insane. So 2 days later, I was going to go back to work. And then we, we got COVID. My husband got it from work, didn't know. So they were fine. I, during the actual COVID, I was fine. I just had a little bit of body aches, but then a couple of weeks later, I would start waking up in the middle of the night. And my heart rate would be 150 beats per minute, which if you ever wake up in the middle of the night with your heart rate that high, I will tell you it's terrifying. You're like from a dead sleep. You don't even know what's going on.

Yeah.

So that would actually happen a few times. Like I would just be sitting on the couch and my heart rate would just jump up. My left arm was starting to get numb. And then I started developing like it, it would start from my chest and it felt like lava starting to flow, flow through my body. So needless to say, that shouldn't happen to an individual. So I had contacted, you know, my primary care physician and because I had COVID, they wouldn't see me in office even though I was 2 weeks out. I wasn't contagious anymore. They wouldn't see me. So I would go to urgent care, urgent care that couldn't really help me. And so they found me a new PCP. That PCP was like, well, you just have, you've had a lot of stress lately. And so it's, it's silent anxiety. And so he just wanted to give me Lexapro and send me on my merry way. So that wasn't going to work. So then it kept getting worse and worse. I went back. So I went to the ER because all my heart blood markers were fine. They're like, we can't do anything for you. You're long. They just labeled me long hauler COVID and sent me home. So then I went back to my PCP and then was like, he changed his story and was like, well, you're, you're a COVID long hauler. And then just gave me a steroid injection. So I actually, in a 2-week time span, went to the ER 4 times as it was getting worse and worse. And they kept sending me home, like to a point that a nurse came in. She's like, I don't know why you're here. We're not going to do anything for you. And so that 4th time I was like literally begging and pleading for my life and saying, you know, something is wrong. Do not send me home. You gotta pay like something. And so luckily that doctor was like, all right. So they, they admitted me. So I ended up in the hospital for about 3 days. I ended up with myocarditis, which is an inflammation of your heart. I had a small scar on my heart as well. So that's where the irregular heartbeats were coming from. And then I developed a massive stomach ulcer that actually was about to puncture if they hadn't seen it.

Oh my gosh.

So first moral of the story, you know, something's wrong, something's wrong, advocate for yourself and don't just say, ah, I'm just going to go home and live with that. Don't do that. Second moral of the story. So naturally, because I really wanted to figure out the stomach stuff, because I was having a lot of residual issues because of it, because I still was getting a lot of bloating, it took a really long time for the ulcer to heal. So I started diving into the literature and come to find out COVID can actually cause a lot of stomach issues. So part of that is because COVID impacts ACE2 receptors and that's how it gets into the body. So basically you have ACE2 receptors in the lungs, which is causing, you know, all the, the lung issues in the heart. Your heart is lined with those, but your intestinal tract has a bunch of them. You have them in your stomach, you have them in your small intestine, you have them in your large intestine. So what we're starting to see is that one can cause ulcers. So a combination between high stress medications, because I mean, at the end of the day, when your heart is going nuts, I'm gonna do whatever they want me to do because it's incredibly scary. I'm not going to be like, hey, I'm going to take quercetin. No, fix me. So you're getting visual impacts because of that, the steroid use, things like that. So one, COVID's causing ulcers due to the medications and treatments. The other thing that it's causing is intestinal permeability, because basically what it's doing is it's breaking down that lining of the stomach that's supposed to be blocking out things. So you can look at your intestinal tract kind of like a cheesecloth. It's supposed to keep out the, the bad things and only let to let certain amount of things in. So basically what COVID can do is it can cause these little holes or bigger holes in the cheesecloth. And so what's happening is you're getting these proteins and other things into the body that's not supposed to be there. And it's causing this incredibly large inflammatory response. And that can create digestive issues like bloating, constipation. You can get post-infectious, they're looking at post-infectious COVID now triggering IBS. And then lastly, it can create dysbiosis as well. So you're getting some bacterial imbalances in there as well. So I did run the Gut Zoomer on myself and it actually confirmed all of these things. I had leaky gut. I had my secretory IgA, which if it's low, your immune system is gonna be crap. That was low. So it actually was really interesting because I did all the research and then I ran the panel and then my results like lined up perfectly for that. Yeah, it was really cool slash not cool for me, but it was cool that it basically like confirmed I had intestinal permeability, which lined up perfectly with the research.

Right, right. So what did you do for yourself?

Yeah, great question. So in my particular case, I kind of had to bite the bullet and I did have to take a PPI for a couple months because like the mastic gum Cause I did a couple different things. The mastic gum, I did a GI microbial, I did licorice root, I did aloe. Literally none of that worked. Like the only thing—

did you have H. pylori too?

No.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. So when I was in the hospital, because they did check that, they did biopsy it, but also in the gut panel that I ran, um, you know, it, so yeah, I didn't have H. pylori or anything like that, which was, and I had no other risk factors. So I was a little frustrated because I'm like, why are none of these things working? So really the PPI was the only thing. So what I did was, is I took, um, I did the standard leaky gut profile. So I did a combination of EPA, DHA for my anti-inflammatory, curcumin I did as an anti-inflammatory, berberine actually can really help support the mucosal tissue and start regenerating that. L-glutamine, I did that vitamin C and zinc. So I also did a little bit of magnesium because I think, because with COVID you're also getting, your adrenals are impacted with that. And if your adrenals are taxed out, which given the series, I was very stressed out, obviously. So I needed to do some sort of support there as well, because if your adrenals are taxed out, your immune system is low and it's going to be harder to manage the gut. The gut isn't going to heal as fast. Because you just, you don't have the capacity. So, so I did add some of that in as well.

Okay. And how long did it take you to recover from all that?

I would say about 7. Well, yeah, because I would say I'm at 90% right now. So about 7 months, a long time.

And did you have fatigue?

For probably about 6 weeks, I could only handle walk— well, actually even just walking to the end of my driveway and back. Back, I'd be done.

Wow. Did you, did you use any L-arginine?

I did not.

Oh yeah, that's one I've heard for the blood vessel impacts that, that happened. What did they do for your heart though?

So for the heart stuff, I just was put on metoprolol, or metoprolol. Again, I'm terrible with medication names. I'll never pronounce them right. Um, but yeah, so I'm on that basically until we are confirming that the inflammation is gone, and then after that I'll, I'll wean off of it, but it's just one of those things where I think sometimes it's, it's hard in functional medicine, right? Because you really don't wanna take medications and you almost go too far the other way where sometimes you, you kind of need to do a combination of the two. It can't be, be all or nothing. So I think that's another one that, you know, I think is hard is that sometimes it's either doing all herbals or you're doing medication and there's this argument between, but, but really I found some good results doing a combination of both. Cause like I said, I mean, you can't—

yeah, I wouldn't goof around with like a heart problem. I mean, it's one thing to take herbals for your diarrhea or constipation. It's a whole nother thing when your heart's at, at risk. Like, I'll take what the doctor's given me.

Yes, thanks. Exactly. If there's, there's some things that you kind of need to concede on, there's— yeah, that's definitely one of them. Yeah.

Well, all that is very interesting and I appreciate hearing about your story. Anything else you wanna share before we get off.

No, I mean, I, I'm just so honored to have the opportunity to come on. And I think I really enjoy having the opportunity even to talk about the COVID stuff because I feel like it's really not talked about a lot. And the more I see people and the more I kind of work with them, I'm finding that it's really becoming a huge issue having so many digestive issues post-COVID. So I think the biggest takeaway I wanna let people know, even from my experience and through all of this, is that it's never in your head. You're not making stuff up, you know, you know your body best. And so if you're not finding results from one person, keep finding. And I think that there's something to be said about using functional medicine along with conventional medicine. The two can definitely work together. It doesn't have to be this either-or situation. So I think just kind of looking at your care team and making sure that you have some good people behind you to help kind of figure this out so you don't have to do it alone because these conditions are very complicated. There's a lot of layers to it. And I think it helps working with practitioners both in the functional medicine and conventional space to help you deep dive into what's going on specific for you and figure out the best plan of attack based on what's going on. Yeah, yeah.

No, I, I do and have heard and do, do know from my own experience that if you have existing gut issues, that COVID is likely to give you gastrointestinal symptoms. And so you definitely want to get your gut in order because COVID's still circulating and, and you're much better off if you have healthy gut when you— when it's— that, that and good vitamin D levels, right?

Absolutely. And get off those those PPIs if you can. Like I said, you need it, you need it. But they actually— one study I even looked at that COVID was— and again, you're not going to necessarily— it's not a miracle to stop COVID, but it becomes inactivated with a stomach pH of less than 2. So you really do need that stomach acid as another layer of defense to basically kill off or basically increase your chances of not having a severe outcome. So think about how many people are on PPIs right now. Really trying to work, like you said, on the gut.

Yeah.

Because COVID isn't going away. It's gonna be living with us. We're also gonna have, not to sound like doomsday, but we're gonna have other viruses that are coming out. If you look at history, we have one coming out every 2 to 3 years. So we just need to make sure that we are supporting the gut because that's, that's a huge part of our immune system. That's 70 to 80%. So we just need to make sure that that's intact. So when the next thing comes, we're strong and we're gonna be able to fight that off as well.

Right, right. Okay. Um, well, tell me where people can find you.

Yeah. So you can find me all the places for the most part. So Facebook, Instagram. I also encourage you to go to my website, www.bluntnutrition.com. I have a blog on there. So if you wanna learn more about topics surrounding IBS, Right now I'm writing a series specifically about COVID and how that can impact the gut. So if you're interested, hop on over. If you want, join my email list. I have a nice little freebie on there, a roadmap to becoming system free for IBS. So that will get you on my email list. So you get some exclusive content every month as well. Just other nutrition tidbits and, and other little goodies with that.

Okay. Awesome. I'll just I'll put links to all that stuff in the show notes. And thanks so much for being with us today.

Yeah, thank you, Lindsey. Thanks for having me.

That was really interesting stuff. I did not realize about ulcers and COVID, but I just looked it up and found out that in one study, 3% of patients hospitalized with COVID had GI bleeding caused by gastroduodenal ulceration and esophagitis. So I'll link to that article in the show notes. If you'd like to connect with me online, you can follow my High Desert Health Facebook page. Join my Gut Healing Facebook group, or join my newsletter list at highdeserthealthcoaching.com, as well as Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Links for all those are in the show notes. Thanks for joining me today, and here's wishing you all the perfect stool.