Has Anyone Here Successfully Resolved "SIBO" Or Major Stomach Bloating? With Peating Or Anything Els

[thebigpeatowski]

TBP:
1) do you think turpentine is mostly for parasites, or do you think it is effective for SIBO too? Would you start with that or try the garlic treatment first?
2) was a week plenty for the garlic treatment to take care of your SIBO? did the preceding turpentine effect that, or did it just cause worms to be expelled?
3) how bad is the garlic treatment? specifically with smell, does your whole body exude stinky garlic scent for the time you are doing it? Lastly, when you end the treatment, how quickly does the smell go away?

Hi Kyle M....I'm sorry to hear that your doc has not been as helpful as you'd hoped for, has he given you a diagnosis at all? I'm assuming you're still having symptoms.


As you know I did the Raw Garlic Shock & Awe first. I didn't know about turpentine back then and I certainly didn't know I had parasites, I was diagnosed with IBS. I didn't have health insurance at the time and rifaximin was $900.00, so I went with the Russian Penicillin.

Raw garlic is fabulous for being anti-fungal, anti-biotic and anti-viral too...plus the enzymes help bust up bio-films. It can be hard on the stomach (kinda painful, but I got used to it fairly quickly) and it's smelly as hell, you will reek and people will notice....but it's readily available, cheap and quite safe. Raw Garlic works very well for SIBO, but you need to dose it three times a day for at least a week. It can be brutal and tiresome, but at the time I was absolutely thrilled with the results. It stopped my bloating and chronic diarrhea, the smell goes away in a day or two depending on your metabolism. I followed Ray Medina's raw garlic protocol:

Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, Part 8 | Gut Critters

Also, here's a link that RM added later comparing some other natural remedies for gut dysbiosis. It shows a graph depicting the effectiveness of various essential oils, pine being one of the best:

IBS Treatment Options | Gut Critters

Essentail oils are far less smelly than raw garlic and can work quite well....some are better than pharmaceuticals, in my opinion. I still eat garlic, raw and cooked, because I personally like the taste. But if I had a gut issue, I would reach for the turpentine first.

Turpentine works very well based on my experience using it with my son who picked up a nasty gut bug on a cruise ship. If you suspect fungal overgrowth in your small intestines, turp will definitely work......and it definitely works for other parasites (worms and flukes)....yuck. It's quite safe and actually pleasant smelling and requires far less dosing.

If you are fearful or unsure in any way, then I would suggest you try something else. It's really important to follow your own instinct here. I could list lots of links to the effectiveness, safety and long term use of turpentine, but this is something people need to research for themselves. I personally love the stuff and consider it to be a permanent part of my first-aid kit.

Please also understand my personal context here, I've had waaaay too many antibiotics over the course of my life. I initially suspected that whatever microbes I had were definitely of the resistant variety. I had to take some Metronidazole in February of 2015 and it immediately triggered chronic diarrhea and gross malfunctioning of my ileo-cecal valve. This was similar to the IBS/SIBO diarrhea that I had previously in 2014, but without the bloating up high. I took high dose Nystatin for that because by then I KNEW I had a fungal overgrowth specifically....and I still hadn't discovered turpentine.

I'm not keen on pharmaceutical antibiotics AT ALL, but that's just me...based on my personal experience and my lack of an appendix.

I know Peat recommends taking antibiotics and he's WAY smarter than me, so there's that.

 

[Kyle M]

It seems like the garlic shock and awe treatment is the best thing for me to try first, especially since it doesn't have the suggestion of potential harmful effects like turpentine, but I am not looking forward to the smell thing. I am at a point in my life where I can sequester myself relatively out of society for a week or so and work on writing, but even still I get very self-conscious about that kind of thing. I wish I could know whether it's going to work for me or not, but I guess that's the nature of this stuff, self-experimentation.

 

[docall18]

My stomach is always very bloated... I think this is "SIBO" or some kind of bacterial overgrowth. I think it prevents me from being able to eat a lot of things... and I suspect that not being able to eat of lot of things inevitably has a bad effect on my overall health.

Has anyone used Peating or any other technique and successfully resolved chronic stomach bloating? What did you do?

I only got a bloated/distended stomach when i started taking 'metabolic enhancer' supps such as preg, caffeine etc. However the thing that caused the worst bloating was P5P b6. Paradoxically this also provided the best relief of symptoms (esp high adrenaline).

I tried all different foods supps etc to stop the bloating but nothing really worked.

I eventually stumbled on a fix for it. I previously took B6 once per day. Splitting it up over the day fixed the bloating. What i think was happening is the B6 was fixing blood sugar/insulin issues and reducing adrenaline cortisol etc. However these issues would rebound as the b6 effects wore off, resulting in bloating. Things like preg, prog, caffeine etc that all suppress adrenaline & stress hormones can also cause bloating. See Peats discussion on the effect below.

 

[docall18]

Dear Dr. Peat,


I’m 34/male.


Why would T3 or something like high-dose caffeine+aspirin induce water retention, often within minutes of ingestion? It also happens at a lower dose of the pro-thyroid substance when followed by a burst of physical activity. Strangely, simply high-dose caffeine improves body tone at the expense of a very shrunken penis owing perhaps to its progesterone increasing effect. It manifests itself as puffiness of the chest and abdomen. My thighs become much larger and jiggly while my calve muscles lose definition. The overall puffiness usually resolves at least partially overnight. I also have spider angiomas on the inside of my thighs close to the knee indicating high oestrogen. However, the strange thing is that the water-retention problem doesn’t really go away even using strong aromatase inhibitors like letrozole or exemestane, neither with a few weeks of high dose zinc or even vitamin E.


Are there circumstances when exogenous thyroid or pro-thyroid substances can lead to an elevation in the body’s oestrogen load? The usual explanation from the literature is that excess thyroid increases SHBG levels and because of the different binding capabilities of the steroids to the SHBG, the effective androgenic/oestrogen ratio is adversely affected. Others suggest that thyroid is flushing the oestrogen from the tissues and into the bloodstream; it’s an intermediate state one has to soldier through. Some argue about a copper toxicity syndrome. And there are those who argue for nutrient deficiencies, or even a down regulation of 5aR activity.


A lot of folks on raypeatforum.com also report similar experiences, so I was wondering if you could shed some light on why this is happening?

Ray Peat said:
Have you checked your weight before and after those events, and noticed the quanties of urine afterward? It could be that the changes are produced by shifts in circulation and muscle tone. Too much caffeine can cause a surge of adrenaline, which can cause shifts of fluids and tone.

unexamined_whimsy, Apr 8, 2016ReportBookmark

 

[Kyle M]

Why would T3 or something like high-dose caffeine+aspirin induce water retention, often within minutes of ingestion? It also happens at a lower dose of the pro-thyroid substance when followed by a burst of physical activity. Strangely, simply high-dose caffeine improves body tone at the expense of a very shrunken penis owing perhaps to its progesterone increasing effect. It manifests itself as puffiness of the chest and abdomen. My thighs become much larger and jiggly while my calve muscles lose definition. The overall puffiness usually resolves at least partially overnight. I also have spider angiomas on the inside of my thighs close to the knee indicating high oestrogen. However, the strange thing is that the water-retention problem doesn’t really go away even using strong aromatase inhibitors like letrozole or exemestane, neither with a few weeks of high dose zinc or even vitamin E.

When we say bloating here we are referring to gas in the GI tract distending the abdomen, not water retention causing puffiness around the body.

 

[mujuro]

The game changer for me was Custom Probiotics 5 strain bifido product. No lactobacilli products have ever made me feel better, in fact they always made things worse. Cutting out all fibrous vegetables while introducing white potato as my new staple carbohydrate helped as well.

 

[SarahBeara]

The game changer for me was Custom Probiotics 5 strain bifido product. No lactobacilli products have ever made me feel better, in fact they always made things worse. Cutting out all fibrous vegetables while introducing white potato as my new staple carbohydrate helped as well.

Every single probiotic I have tried has made things worse too. Mainly by making constipation way worse and slowing down my whole system. May I ask how you found that one better?

Interesting that others have mentioned turpentine. I'm just starting to take d-limonene, which is an oil from orange extract (1-2 oranges contain 40mg limonene) and it's also a terpene just like turpentine. Apparently it takes 10 doses to start taking effect so I'm taking one dose per day.

I'll keep you all posted!

 

[mujuro]

Every single probiotic I have tried has made things worse too. Mainly by making constipation way worse and slowing down my whole system. May I ask how you found that one better?

It's my understanding that the Bifido species are the dominant inhabitants of the large intestine. Can't help but get a bit icky here, but the main difference I noticed was a change in odor and stool consistency. Your nose can always tell when you've eaten something bad or your bowel is misbehaving. Both odor and consistency returned to a very familiar, normal pattern and have remained that way for about 6 months. Loose movements are few and far between. I have use it two or three times since, whenever I feel like my gut may be getting out of whack.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Mmmm....Improved Colonic Bouquet, yummy!

That's awesome mujuro....I've never tried just Bifido species, probiotics that I've used in the past always came packaged with lactobacillus and a bunch of other crap....plain Bifido sounds worthwhile.

 

[Kyle M]

Here I am with another question tbp, on the link you gave they said they used probiotics in tandem with the garlic treatment, did you do that?

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Here I am with another question tbp, on the link you gave they said they used probiotics in tandem with the garlic treatment, did you do that?

I tried a few different kinds of probiotics, they never worked for me and some brands mades things like bloating and insomnia worse.

Then I decided that keeping my guts as bug free as possible all the way to my colon was probably a good idea. You can't really control when and where the microbes will take up residence when you take a capsule orally. So if you are trying to eradicate SIBO specifically you might not want to take the probiotics orally.

Having said all that, taking herbal anti-microbials can kill the good bugs in your colon which is a BAD thing, especially if you have no appendix or a difficult time repopulating with friendly microbes. Most healthy people have no trouble repopulating their colon simply by choosing appropriate foods.

Other people need more help in establishing new colon flora. In this situation I would take the probiotics in a suppository format, in other words place them exactly where you want/need them (up the tail pipe) . Bypassing the stomach acid insures viability and bypassing the small intestines insures that you don't give yourself another case of SIBO.

This is only my opinion .

Experiment and find what works for you and please share what you learn from your experience, it adds to the pool of helpful knowledge

 

[docall18]

When we say bloating here we are referring to gas in the GI tract distending the abdomen, not water retention causing puffiness around the body.

Yes i also experience sudden stomach distension/bloating, and what im saying is it seems to be more stress/cortisol/adrenaline related, than food related.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Yes i also experience sudden stomach distension/bloating, and what im saying is it seems to be more stress/cortisol/adrenaline related, than food related.

AGREED! This is definitely ONE cause....there are other reasons, sometimes multiple reasons, this is where it gets very difficult to pinpoint.

 

[docall18]

AGREED! This is definitely ONE cause....there are other reasons, sometimes multiple reasons, this is where it gets very difficult to pinpoint.

Yes for sure. I guess a good way to distinguish between the causes is if the distended stomach is from water or digestive issues.

Mine is from water retention. It can come and go very quickly and i dont have any stomach upset/digestive issues. I can go from a flat stomach in the morning to a 4 months pregnant looking stomach in the evening. This is likely a cortisol/stress issue causing electrolyte imbalance.

If your bloating is accompanied by heartburn, diarrhea, stomach pain, gas, belching etc- then it is likely a food intolerance/gut issue.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Yes for sure. I guess a good way to distinguish between the causes is if the distended stomach is from water or digestive issues.

Mine is from water retention. It can come and go very quickly and i dont have any stomach upset/digestive issues. I can go from a flat stomach in the morning to a 4 months pregnant looking stomach in the evening. This is likely a cortisol/stress issue causing electrolyte imbalance.

If your bloating is accompanied by heartburn, diarrhea, stomach pain, gas, belching etc- then it is likely a food intolerance/gut issue.

This is an excellent description of the electrolyte imbalance, I've found that eating a bunch a salt can help very quickly. Other times drinking a coke with some aspirin will fix it too.

But when BOTH electrolyte imbalances and microbial overgrowth, like SIBO or H. pylori, are going on AND a person has brain fog from hypothyroidism, it's a real challenge.

"When digestive secretions are inadequate, and peristalsis is sluggish, bacteria and fungi can invade the small intestine, interfering with digestion and causing inflammation and toxic effects."---RP

 

[Kyle M]

Starting garlic shock and awe tonight, and will continue for ~1 week, going until next Sunday. Wish me luck.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Starting garlic shock and awe tonight, and will continue for ~1 week, going until next Sunday. Wish me luck.

I can smell ya from here, ha ha...GOOD LUCK!!!

 

[shepherdgirl]

I'm curious about this statement in Dr. Peat's article "Cascara, energy, cancer and the FDA's laxative abuse":
"In the presence of bacterial endotoxin, respiratory energy production fails in the cells lining the intestine. Nitric oxide is probably the main mediator of this effect."
Just wondering if anyone has ever tried red light for intestinal issues? Was it helpful or no?
Also - if there are bad bacteria, parasites, etc - would red light harm or help them?

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Just wondering if anyone has ever tried red light for intestinal issues? Was it helpful or no?

I've tried it, it works very well to stop bloating gurgling and generally calm things down, feels great on the gallbladder too, but it's not something I can do all the time. I suppose if you had one of those mats with led's er something you could slip it under your shirt/pants.

 

[ecstatichamster]

Magic in raw garlic and raw onion. I'd do that first b