Matt Kelly explains when probiotics might be making things worse. If you get persistent diarrhea, constipation, or alternating bowel habits after starting them, stop and get tested for SIBO or SIFO with a clinician who knows those conditions.
One of the most common things that we see is people that have a lot of digestive reactions. And I'm not talking about a little bit of gas and bloating for a few days, or a little diarrhea, or whatever for a few days. That, that's kind of normal for a bit. But if you have reactions that get more GI inflammatory, more diarrhea, constipation, or alternating diarrhea, constipation, other problems that go, and you're just getting sicker as you take probiotics, number one, stop. But number 2, you might have small intestinal overgrowth syndromes like SIBO and SIFO. And it's really common in people with small intestinal bacterial and fungal overgrowth that taking the probiotics has this escalating negative effect, at least for symptoms that they feel. So if you've had that experience, you want to go to somebody who works with bacterial overgrowth syndromes and be tested for that.
