The most frequent path for people who have gut dysfunction is we come in, do an exam and we run a stool test as a very common example. We also have a blood test that looks directly at leaky gut that we really like. But let's say we run this leaky gut panel or a stool panel and we find you have a bacterial or maybe you have a protozoan parasite, right... or maybe you have yeast. You have something kind of bad in there you really shouldn't have.
So we usually go through kind of what we call a removal (kill) phase or a cleaning phase where you're trying to remove some of that (the bad bacteria, protozoan or yeast). We like to use natural products like oregano oil, berberine, caprylic acid (the anti-fungal from coconut). There are some really good natural things that kind of help clean out some of these imbalances.
So we usually go through a period of time helping you clean out some bad stuff... but we don't want to stop there!
And this is really where we kind of see a huge difference between even some of the medical colleagues. It's very standard if you were to get a gut infection that we basically just clear it out with an antibiotic, an anti-yeast agent if you have Candida and then generally the doctor says you're done! And we just kind of cross our fingers that it's all okay. The problem is if you look at SIBO directly the recurrence rate for SIBO is 70% if that's what you do, which to me is terrible! Who wants to do something with a 70% chance that it all comes back within six months!!
So in our office our recurrence rate is lower than 10% and that's because we don't just stop after you do a kill phase we do what we call the Replace (boost nutrients), Repair (the gut wall), Reinoculate (Good bacteria) phase. We take these phases very seriously from 1-2 months by using probiotic, gut healing things like l-glutamine or immunoglobulin or short chain fatty acids. These are all really good nutrients to help your gut heal.
We also do one more very important thing - We Rehab the BRAIN! This is the wonderful work done by my colleague, Functional Neurologist, Dr. Paul!
(Understanding why rehabbing the Brain is important!
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So your gut has significant connections to your brain. It's been well publicized how well fixing the gut can help in variety of brain symptoms like brain fog and brain problems. Particularly in children this is a very strong avenue of research. But these things work bi-directionally.
We started to realize this because I had patients whose problems kept coming back. They had this gut stuff just go around and around in circles and we're doing enzymes and we're doing gut cleanses and here's the thing... they work. People go yeah "I feel better when I'm on a gut cleanse and then it just after I'm off for a month or two or three or four it all comes back and I've to another gut cleanse" And then you do another gut cleanse and it works and they go "I'm getting sick of doing gut cleanses, Dr. Warren!"
We found that getting the brain online to help the gut was really key in helping people get out of this cycle of needing to rescue their gut all the time. We really find that the neurological piece to make sure that your brain is sending the signals down through the vagus nerve helping the gut function properly is really key for not just getting well but for staying well...which is what we want!
Like we said it's about a 70% recurrence rate for SIBO in most healthcare practices. We don't like those odds!
We've been able to change those odds by doing the Functional Neurology (with Dr. Paul). It's very helpful! It's a little foreign to people but I think Dr. Paul does a great job of drawing out the brain, drawing out the vagus nerve, how it talks to your gut and honestly we feel like it really fits with empowering patients because we not only want to get you better, we want your body to function better after you leave our office. And we think getting your brain to talk better to your gut is one of the best things that we can do in order to keep you healthy in the long-term.