Can you eat white bread/a biscuit/a cookie/a croissant/lollies/highly processed food with no issues?
When you eat “healthy” foods like fruit and vegetables, do you feel very sick and lethargic after?
That was my experience too.
Every time I had a cookie, highly processed food or something of that nature, I felt okay and had minimal symptoms (if any). I didn’t have my usual symptoms:
- Extreme bloating
- Burping
- Room clearing flatulence
- Extreme abdominal discomfort
- Feeling lethargic like I needed to lay down
If you experience these symptoms after eating “whole foods” the answer is that isn’t normal, and your gut is probably to blame. My doctor told me it was normal and just part of “rest and digest”. It wasn’t. If you experience this, you might have SIBO or you might just have a very unbalanced gut microbiome.
SIBO can be an infuriating condition to experience when trying to live a healthy life. You feel like you’re doing everything right, but your stomach continues to bloat and hurt every single day or, in my case, with every meal.
Why does SIBO makes healthy living so hard?
It’s not that hard to understand really.
A cookie, McDonalds or other highly processed foods have a faster transit time in the small intestine. This means it’s more likely normally absorbable stuff will find its way downstream to the normal area (the large intestine) without the SIBO getting to feed off it. It won’t be there as long, so they just don’t get as much of a chance to feed off the food you’ve just eaten. Therefore, you’ll likely experience less symptoms.
Things harder for the body to digest have a longer transit time. That is why they keep you fuller for longer. It’s also why they are often good for weight loss/management because they require more energy from the body to break them down. In a healthy gut, that’s a good thing. It keeps things moving and regular. In a SIBO gut, they are not so fun.
What I tried and didn’t work:
- Massaging my greens
- Adding oil to them for their massage (lucky veggies, but they were still about to get attacked by my SIBO, so maybe not so lucky)
- I went keto because I thought I couldn’t tolerate carbs (okay, you can call me crazy now). It helped for a second because it cut out huge food groups, but it wasn’t sustainable. It also didn’t treat the root cause of my issue. You can’t just “starve” the bacteria. Plus, I had headaches and even less energy than before.
- Only eating cooked vegetables – I did see slight improvement from this but not much (I was essentially boiling/cooking off some of the fibre, so the bacteria got less to ferment)
- Only eating low FODMAP vegetables (a little bit of difference but not much) .
Why does this happen to SIBO sufferers?
It’s not that hard to understand really.
A cookie, McDonalds or other highly processed foods have a faster transit time in the small intestine. This means it’s more likely normally absorbable stuff will find its way downstream to the normal area (the large intestine) without the SIBO getting to feed off it. It won’t be there as long, so they just don’t get as much of a chance to feed off the food you’ve just eaten. Therefore, you’ll likely experience less symptoms.
Things harder for the body to digest have a longer transit time. That is why they keep you fuller for longer. It’s also why they are often good for weight loss/management because they require more energy from the body to break them down. In a healthy gut, that’s a good thing. It keeps things moving and regular. In a SIBO gut, they are not so fun.
Can I just starve off the SIBO bacteria?
There is a bit of a misconception that you can just “stave off these bacteria”. Although you can lessen symptoms and give the bacteria less to work with, they are very adaptive.
It is NOT just the nonabsorbable stuff that SIBO bacteria live on – bacteria are very creative. They can metabolize just about anything, up to and including rocks, so the notion you can starve them, and they will die is sort of not the best strategy.
Fasting, liquid diets, the Elemental diet, Keto, Low FODMAP and so on may give them less to react to and help symptoms, but it will not treat the root cause and they will not kill off the bacteria (unfortunately).
If you stopped eating forever and died, the bacteria would have a decent chance of continuing to live on longer than you did. A bit dramatic, but also not as unlikely as you’d think. On the bright side, you wouldn’t have any symptoms (because you’d be dead).
Morbid jokes aside, you’re not crazy if you think eating healthy makes you worse. I understand if your relationship with food is in ruins because of SIBO. I sympathize because I’ve been there.
The bottom line is you need to treat the SIBO. You can also make dietary changes to help lessen the symptoms on your road to recovery, but they aren’t a long-term fix.
My solution to this is:
Do not attempt to starve yourself and die but to Treat the SIBO. Find a doctor who understands SIBO and gut health or do your own research (hopefully this site helps) and find the solution best suited to you.
I wish you luck and the ability to eat vegetables in peace. x
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