Stressed Out and not sleeping? Let’s Fix That – Hormone Hacks with Sherri Griggs

Welcome to the Balanced Body Podcast, where Sherri Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness in Omaha, talks to us about health, wellness, and balancing hormones.

Welcome to the Balanced Body Health and Wellness Podcast with owner Sherri Griggs. How are you doing, Sherri?

I'm doing great, John. How are you doing?

Oh, when I get to hang out with the hormone export— export? The hormone expert extraordinaire, you know I'm having a good day.

All right.

And we're getting a little technical, at least from my knowledge. We're getting into some specifics on something that a lot of people deal with. So I want to just jump right in and start talking about SIBO, but is there anything that we should think about Before we dive into this conversation today?

Oh, well, um, no, because I think that the conversation is going to explain it all and hopefully answer a lot of questions. And the first one being, what is SIBO?

What is it? That was the— and how to spell it was actually one of the first things I needed to know.

I was just going to say, and what was the first question you had?

Well, you know, how does— how to spell it? So SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

Yeah, you did. Good job.

That helps to know how to spell it. But SIBO, it seems awful. But do a lot of people deal with SIBO in their lives? And do they know that they have it? Is it something that it's like, you know, like when we found out about me? I am not only now lactose intolerant, but I am gluten-free because of hypo— thyroidism?

Because it's an autoimmune Hashimoto's hypothyroidism. Yeah.

Hashimoto's. So see, is that like the same as SIBO? So somebody who has it will know that they have that?

Maybe, maybe not. So, John, I hear this all the time. Somebody comes in and I'm looking at their history and they're telling me, oh, yeah, I've had a lot of problems with gastroesophageal reflux disease, GERD, or I've had a lot of problems with heartburn. And I say, have you ever taken medication for it?

Oh, yeah.

And the last person said, but it didn't work, so I stopped taking it. And you think, what does that have to do with anything? Well, it is that exact scenario that many times can lead to SIBO.

Oh, and you think, what?

Too much acid in this? What? It really happens. So as opposed to when we're younger, Now, I want to preface that this isn't what happens to everybody, but I tend to see it as we get older. We don't make as much stomach acid because I myself historically worked internal medicine gastroenterology, and we did see a lot of people with reflux disease. And in those days, I told her we were so proud we discovered H. pylori, which now is like, oh yeah, I got that. I got that. You know, but we discovered what it was in those days, and we had all these wonderful new medications we could treat with. And, and What's happened is just like a lot of things, you know how we've talked about overuse of antibiotics has caused problems, like overuse of these stomach medications, because now you can just buy them over the counter.

Oh.

Like omeprazole, Prilosec. You can just buy that over the counter and go get a big old box of it at Costco and you can take it for your stomach. And the truth is, and the reason, as I told this person that was just here, it didn't work is because you don't have too much stomach acid. You have the opposite problem. You don't have enough.

Hmm.

And when you don't have enough— now, this is my, my way of explaining it. It's not very scientific. So if there's anyone out there with a science background and they're like, oh, that's just bull— well, it's just my easy-to-understand way of explaining it. So you don't have enough stomach acid, so the food sits in your stomach more or less and ferments. It's a wet, warm, dark place. And what happens with fermentation? Air, gas, pressure. And I say that that pressure pushes acid up, and we think we have reflux or have GERD or indigestion. And it's not caused because of too much acid. It's caused by not enough.

Interesting.

So then we take a medication Such as that to push down the amount of acid we make. Now what happens is we have even less acid in our stomach. Sure, maybe we don't get as much reflux because there isn't as much acid for the fermentation to push up. But bacteria, parasites, worms, opportunistic yeast, things that don't belong in our small intestine. Are, have the ability to get into our small intestine because they are not destroyed by the acid in our stomach.

Right.

Because we don't have enough acid in our stomach to kill them, to destroy them. And they tend to be, as we say, opportunistic. They take the opportunity to get into our system, which many of us, our microbiome isn't always balanced. We might take a probiotic, it's not the right one, or we don't take one, or we eat stuff with artificial sweeteners. We eat fatty foods. We eat foods that are not good for our body, right?

Hmm.

No. Now this bacteria has had the opportunity to get past that, that first protection, and that's the stomach, because there's not enough acid there. So 9 times out of 10, somebody that has taken a medication like Prilosec or omeprazole will have SIBO.

Interesting.

And there are other reasons. It's caused by other things. But, but how do you know if you have SIBO? Right? There are some, some symptoms. Number one, if you're somebody that has taken that kind of medication, you probably have it. If you have a problem like IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, especially IBS See, with constipation, it's probably SIBO. It's probably a bacteria in your gut that doesn't belong there.

So how many people do you think kind of deal with this and think it's something else? Like, is it something that you deal— you're dealing with that you know about, that you feel like that makes you feel off balance? Or is it more just like you have these other symptoms that lead to other Problems like IBS?

So, it's amazing how many people think, well, yeah, you know, I get a little bloated when I eat this certain food. And yeah, I have some, you know, like sometimes I feel a little gassy or occasionally have constipation. You know, that's just okay. That's not normal. So there's a lot of people. I mean, for instance, 1 in 4 Americans have digestive issues. So 25% have some sort of digestive issue.

That seems high.

It's— it is high. I think it's high. SIBO not being the only cause, obviously, right? I mean, like we said, some of the other things that can be— I mean, some of this stuff can be, you know, if you get an ulcerative colitis, I mean, there we're talking autoimmune again, right? Crohn's autoimmune disease. But if it's irritable bowel syndrome, 50% of the time it's going to be caused by SIBO.

Yes.

And then there's lactose intolerance. And when it gets bad enough, people, they know they have symptoms, they know they're having issues, but they don't know why. They just know that, oh, once in a while I have a lot of gas. I don't know why. Just sometimes I do.

Hmm.

Or I occasionally, every once in a while, I have some diarrhea. Okay, that's not normal.

So, um, yeah, I think— I feel like this is the natural sort of question leading this way, is like, how do you test for SIBO? I mean, are there different ways? Is it something that you can go— is it right next to the Prilosec?

It's not. It should be, right? You should easily be able to just get a hold of a SIBO breath test and do a breath test and check to see if you have SIBO. And you think, okay, a breath test for SIBO?

Yeah, that's not what my first instinct was to say. It's like, is that where you test it?

It's the easiest way to test it. You can go in and do a small intestinal biopsy. But who wants that, right?

Nobody wants that.

Nobody wants you to go into the small intestine and check that out. They say that the breath test, the breath test is looking for methane, looking for this bacteria to give off some methane. Or, yeah, I think it is nothing. I believe you can also do it with stool testing. There is some argument there because stool testing can actually tell you what bacteria is overgrown. What bacteria do you have too much of?

Okay, that makes sense. I mean, we did that test.

We did it. But most people don't consider that to be a fun test. And that test costs about double what a breath test costs.

Interesting.

However, in defense of that test, it also tells us many other things, right? It can also tell us about short-chain fatty acids. It can also tell us about yeasts. It can tell us worms, parasites. It can tell us— it is very inclusive and tell us many, many things. The SIBO breath test. Strictly is going to tell us about SIBO, right? You either have it or you don't.

So, so for that specific test, it's really, really good because then you get an outcome for whatever you're looking for.

If you find out if you have SIBO, okay, for the stool test, yes, you know exactly. Okay, so SIBO test, you know yes or no. Do I have SIBO? Yes or no? Now, if it's yes, then there's a couple of things to consider. Well, what bacteria is overgrown? We don't know.

So then you don't have a clear answer on that.

You don't have a clear answer on that. Mm-hmm. But, um, The thing about it is that there are, there are certain treatments out there. One of the treatments that I like to use pretty much takes care of every bacteria out there.

Yes.

So you could, if you did, if you wanted to be cost-effective and not know exactly, you could take the treatment. What I won't know is Is this treatment need to be 30 days or 60 days? So if I were treating somebody from the SIBO breath test only, I'd have them do it 60 days. Right? Why do it 30 to just not have it be gone? I have them do it 60 days. And then you could do another breath test and see for sure that it's gone. But most of the times, the symptoms are gone. You don't need to retest.

Okay. That makes sense.

Right? Because the symptoms— bloating, gas, right? Abdominal discomfort, that heartburn, nausea, diarrhea. I mean, the constipation. It even gets into, you know, fatigue, joint pain, skin rashes, um, all of these things, right? Because all of these things have to do with your microbiome, and this bacteria is in there taking it over.

Interesting.

So if we do 2 months of treatment and you don't have symptoms anymore, pretty safe to say it's gone.

That's awesome. And then are you balanced after you get rid of SIBO, or like, do you then need to do other things? Do you— are you then balanced after it's gone, or do you need to do other things to kind of then help sort of fix?

Yes. So then you want to— then you— then you want to support the microbiome. And at that point, so unlike the stool test, you— you don't know exactly what probiotic you need. In the stool test, we do know what you're low on, what you need more of. In the SIBO, if we do it in the SIBO, then we're just going to do a, a probiotic that contains— so I have one that I like to use that almost every time somebody comes back needing particular strains, it ends up being the strains that are in that probiotic I'm using. So you'll get some probiotics that have 1 or 2 different strains in them, which is good if that's all you need. But if you need any of the others to be replaced in order to be balanced, then, then you want to have those.

Absolutely.

Yeah, totally. So, you know, Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium and, you know, the guys that make up The microbiome, and there's different strains of those, right? Different strains of Lactobacillus and different strains of Bifidobacterium. And which ones do you need? And then we know there's one called Akkermansia that we know, uh, we have found in longevity medicine has to do with weight loss. If you don't have enough Akkermansia, sometimes adding that can help with weight loss.

I remember when we were going through my results, Um, it was like we, we did the test, it came back, you had already put me on a probiotic, and then that probiotic turned out to be the one that I needed because it was like helping me fill in the gaps of probiotics that I needed.

Right.

And so you're talking about the one that you like?

Yeah, that's the one. And so by saying that, right, that says, well, geez, well then that's just the one you— so if somebody doesn't want to go to the next step They don't want to do the stool test, then obviously that's the probiotic they need to use because most of the time that's the one people need. Now, not every time, but most of the time.

Well, and one thing that I didn't understand, but you told me this before in the past episode, was that sometimes probiotics will just have like one actual strain of the probiotic, but then there'll be like 900 billion or Well, whatever that is, it's some insane number of probiotics within like a little probiotic shot or, you know, yeah, drink or whatever that you take. I, I just didn't know that there were so many different strains of probiotics out there, and I probably should have thought of that.

Well, but they don't really— that isn't really what you see, right? When you think about the advertising you see or what you hear, you need a probiotic. Well, you need to take a probiotic, but nobody ever says Well, you need to make it take a probiotic, and you need to make sure it has Bifidobacteria longum in it, not Bifidobacteria bifidum. Mm-hmm.

Be like, what?

Oh, yes. Make sure it has longum, not bifidum.

Yeah.

No one says that.

No.

Right? Oh, mine has Lactobacillus rhamnosus.

Yeah. Really?

Mine doesn't. Mine only has Lactobacillus plantarum. Those are the conversations you hear.

And I think, I think that's the marketing for whatever those probiotics— not just not to throw shade on probiotics, but, you know, when I found out that there's different strains that should be in there, I kind of assumed that probiotics were things that you take for probiotics would have multiple different strains in them. But then I found out when I looked at the label that there was only like one, like the same exact probiotic in there 9 billion times or whatever the number is.

Yeah, just one strain. And that's the one you need. Now, I mean, we do know that certain strains do certain things. And if you were to do your research or strictly to say there's probiotics that help women with vaginal health, and we know that it's a lactobacillus. And so, you know, so That's why they have women's probiotics, or they have different ones for, oh, this is a great probiotic if you have diarrhea. We know that certain strains do certain things, but most people don't take the time. Even if the advertising is there, they're just told, I should take a probiotic because it's good for me.

Yeah. And then you look for the one that you can gulp down fastest, probably. I mean, I don't know. Right.

And then you're like, I know it should be the most expensive one, but that one in the fridge, that's too much of a hassle. I'm not going to spend $60 on that.

Right? Yeah.

Yeah. I'm just gonna buy this one for $15 on the shelf.

Geez.

Are there probiotics that are $60? My goodness.

Higher? Or more.

Yeah. Oh my God.

So, you know, are they that much better? Well, depends on what you're using it for. Maybe.

True.

So, so SIBO, our SIBO thing. But so, yes. So, one of the things— the other thing about the SIBO breath test is you can do it at home. You know, it can take up to 3 hours.

Yeah.

The reason is, is because you drink some lactulose, right? Not lactose, lactulose. And then every 20 to 30 minutes, You breathe into this tube because we are now feeding what would feed these bad bacteria. And if they make that methane or hydrogen is the other one, if they make methane or hydrogen and you're breathing into this tube, it's going to measure that.

Okay.

So over time as it's going along, so it's more than 30 minutes because I believe there were 10 tubes. So maybe 10 to 15 minutes, you're looking for measuring those amounts. To see if you're making them. Now, if you didn't make either one of those, then you don't have SIBO.

Okay.

So when those tubes get to the lab and they measure them, they look at them. There are also other things that you can measure with breath testing, and those we call them substrates. So the lactulose was a substrate. There's also lactose as a substrate. If somebody does a quiz Which is one of the ways I would do it is they would do a quiz. And if their quiz makes it seem like, ooh, this person is like, sounds like they're more lactose intolerant, maybe we better do a lactose test or fructose malabsorption.

So. I think I like, I like how you approach it because, and this is just in general, a good Veer off of, and I'm sorry to derail the conversation slightly, but like, I like how you look at just not let's solve this one issue and then you're going to be better. You're looking at the whole of everything that's going on, and this would just be one test just to solve for one thing, but you're looking for what really is the root cause of your— Problem, not just the symptom. What's causing it? Because if we get that, yeah, if we get that, then you're gonna feel better regardless. Like, it's— it'll solve it. It'll solve itself once we solve that. I think too often, I think too often people just want to solve the issue, right? Like, think of, you know, acid reflux.

I just want to take care of the symptom. Here's what's going on. I have acid reflux. I just— I want it to go away.

Yeah, so take some Tums or whatever, or Prilosec, or, you know, deal with it ourselves. But if that's not actually the issue, then you're kind of solving a different issue with the wrong thing, and then it leads to SIBO in this case, in this one case. Exactly.

Well, or the patient that, uh, one of my very first patients that came to me, she came from her primary care office and she said they want to start me on Linzess. Now Linzess is something that helps with constipation. And she said, I don't want to take it. I've heard of the people that take it, and when they gotta go, they gotta go. And she said, I'm, I'm outside, I'm doing things. I don't, I don't want to do that. So we figured out she had SIBO. We treated her for the SIBO, and now she doesn't have to be treated for constipation because she doesn't have it anymore.

That's why people should call you, Sherri. I mean, like, literally, that's the root of the cause is if there's an issue and it happens to be SIBO, then you'll test for that. But if it does, if, if a solution is something else because the problem is coming from some other, you know, reason for why something's going wrong, we'll cut out, you know, lactose in my case, right? Because I'm lactose intolerant now. We'll throw it, throw you in and help you with some of the other things to balance you out. So I like how you look at that. I like how you look at that.

Sure. Right. I mean, we sometimes, we might take our time and fix one thing at a time, um, or one area at a time, but eventually we'll get to it all because you don't want to do too many things all at once, right?

Yeah.

Because it's a lot of change can be very overwhelming.

Yes, too many, too many things to solve for makes it so that you just become unresponsive. At least that's it in my case. That's how I, I happen to live my life. I always equate it to like, do you remember when iTunes was the big place to get stuff and somebody would give you like a $5 iTunes card?

Yeah.

And then you had so much choice but only $5, right? I always then got overwhelmed and never spent my $5 gift card.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's too much. Can't do it. Well, and I— and that's one of the things that sometimes, you know, when there's so much going on with somebody is, you know, being worried about overwhelming them with all of the things. Okay, we're gonna add this, this, this, this, and this, and all these things. And, and, you know, there were a lot of things we were doing, and there are still some things that we may address down the road if they don't straighten themselves out. But, or, you know, there's no reason to throw the kitchen sink at it and see what, what worked or what sticks. As I, you know, you say, I say throw the whole bowl spaghetti, see what sticks.

Let's just—

because then if there's a problem, we don't know what caused it.

Right. Very true.

So if we are treating your gut, I have no trouble treating your gut and balancing your hormones. But if I'm doing your gut and your hormones, I'm probably not going to mess with your adrenals. It just kind of see where we're at.

Yeah.

So this SIBO testing thing, this breath testing that makes it easy, that's one of the things that, as you know, I've always believed in doing all this testing in this big program, and I'd like to do that. In fact, I saw somebody today that really, really needed to do a big program, but they were here for my special I'm having this month. And I, I brought it up. I said, I think we're going to need to address this.

Mm-hmm.

But not right now. We'll address this. But I feel that when person comes back for results, we really need to— in all fairness, it wouldn't be fair for me to go, well, you know, that's, that's fine. We're just going to take care of this. Good luck.

You know? Yeah.

Um, because there's another issue that I know I can help with, and, and that is probably this person has SIBO.

So speaking of monthly specials, is this going to be something for people to look out for?

It is, yes.

See how I stuck it in there?

I know.

Yeah, it actually is. Because one of the things breath testing for SIBO is, even in traditional medicine, okay? It's even how traditional medicine tests. They don't jump on it because insurance companies don't really— they're like, hey, we believe the way to do it is just treat them for all these other things. And when other stuff doesn't work, just keep giving them treatments. Just keep trying to fix the symptoms until you rule it out. Okay. But breath testing is it. So we'll be running a special that will include your consultation and your breath test and a follow-up to go over the results. It's one of those that, unlike hormones where you had to be in person, we can do this telehealth. We'll talk. I'll ask you questions. We'll talk about what your symptoms have been. The kit will come to you. And one of the things that I'll have to tell people right away is you have to be off your probiotics for at least 2 weeks. So as soon as they— well, I talk to them long before they get a kit or even get started. We'll say, well, if you're on probiotics, stop them now because you need to be off in 2 weeks to do the test.

Okay.

Because maybe the probiotics are keeping those bad guys at bay. And the bad guys are just waiting for a chance to take over, for you to get sick, for you to eat something that, that upsets your, your GI system, um, for you to take an antibiotic that kills all your good guys but doesn't happen to be one that kills that bad guy.

Oh my gosh.

So that's why you need to be off those probiotics, um, before the test and And then we figure out where to go from there. And then I'll have choices, right? If you say, I don't want to do the stool test, I don't care, just give me the treatment, and we'll do the treatment. We'll do the basic probiotic. I make no guarantees, right? Probably most of the time it will work unless you have a super special strain of some weird yeast or something. Like, I have one patient that's had Horrible issues, and no one's ever been able to figure out. Um, so we are treating her for that special strain, and so far so good, which is wonderful because most things she can't take because of that. But so we can do that, or you can say, no, I want to know. I want to know exactly what's causing this. I want to know what the culprit is. I want to make sure we're treating it properly, and I want to make sure I have the right probiotic that I need.

And then you will find that out, because let me tell you, Sherri goes in and makes sure she understands what the, what the issue, what the underlying issue is. The testing will out.

That's right, we were gonna find out because I like to know. I don't just want to guess.

No, why guess? Why guess about your health? Seriously.

When you don't have to. Yeah.

That's so cool that you'll be able to do telehealth with this too. I didn't even know that part.

Oh, yes.

Interesting.

Yes, I'll be able to do telehealth with this because hormones I couldn't because testosterone is a scheduled drug and I can't be prescribing across state lines. But for this, this is a breath test and it's a natural treatment. And I am seeing you. And if you were to— if it were to be that we did a stool test and it had to be an antibiotic for some reason, we couldn't do it with the natural, which again, the natural kills almost everything, but say I run into something like a parasite, um, or we have to treat it differently, then, then we— I can still do that because I have seen you. I can still call a prescription to your pharmacy.

That's awesome. So awesome. So if you're interested, if this has piqued your interest, whetted your interest in trying to see if now is the time to get a hold of Sherri and take back your health, maybe even dive into the Balanced Body Blueprint program, which is, I have to say, is a good one. You can go to balancedbodymedical.com and schedule just a quick 15-minute conversation to see.

15-minute conversation, discovery call. We don't have the special up yet, but that will be coming up in the next couple of weeks. You'll go onto the website, you can sign up for the special on the website, but until then, sign up for a discovery call and I'll put Put you on the list and get you started ahead of time.

Can't can't lose. Sign up now, right? Right.

And then John, I guess I'll be CBOUing later.

CBOUing me later.

Oh, it was right there.

I was trying to think of something that would be CBOU later.

I'll CBOU later.

Oh my gosh!

That was bad, wasn't it?

I know. No, it's gonna be great. Well, Sherri, this was enlightening. Thank you for explaining C. well, what are the common causes, and diving into— man, I just, I hate the idea of parasites and stuff. So, you know, I knew this was going to be a weird one, but it seems like you got a level head about how you would, how you would attack it and then make sure somebody fixes that problem. Correct. Yes.

There's no reason to be uncomfortable and miserable. And yeah.

No way. All right, well, thank you so much, and we'll talk to you next week.

Thank you, John. See you next week.

This has been the Balanced Body Medical Podcast with Sherri Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness. If you're looking to find Sherri, go ahead and look for the website BalancedBodyMedical.com. If you're looking for the business and you want to find Sherri at her office, you can find her at 10815 Elm Street in Rockbrook Plaza. Thank you.