Mastering SIBO: Strategies For Gut Health And Lowering Inflammation

Introduction to SIBO and the Guest 0:00

Welcome back to the conversation. Today I have Shivan Sarna, SIBO expert. So glad to have you here. Thank you so much, Laura. I love getting the word out about small intestine, bacterial overgrowth. Not sexy, right? So not sexy, but feeling good and sexy. So I'm I'm thrilled to share this information with everyone, and I'm just calling all people who bloat. Okay. Like, if you're thinking I SIBO. What? Is that IBS spelled funny? Yes, sort of. But if you bloat, have constipation, diarrhea or alternating constipation and diarrhea, You definitely want you to listen up.

Yes, this is for you. Now, Shivan, you are the author of the Amazon bestseller Healing SIBO. You're a TV host. You're the creator of many, many, many summits. You've done so many ranging on topics like SIBO, digestion, gut microbiome, liver and gallbladder, lymphatics, dental, health, posture, pain. I mean, you've covered the gamut in the summit world and the crazy thing is that I can remember way back 2017 or 18 or so when I was first just discovering what the gut microbiome was, and I was working in my Western medicine clinic.

I would sit there in between seeing patients and writing prescriptions, and I would watch your summit and I would have it on in the background and watch it and then shut it off and go see another patient and then come back and listen to this whole crazy concept of what the gut microbiome in the intestines and SIBO and what's happening here. So we've come full circle. If somebody would have told me back then that I'd be hosting my own summits now, I would have thought they were crazy. So this is so happy. I'm so happy.

I know. It's so good. I love it. You are one of my early mentors in the space, so we're going to jump into this conversation today. You know, this is the Silent Killers Summit where we're talking about all of the things that create chronic disease in the body and create chronic inflammation. And so SIBO is not necessarily a disease, but it is something that can steal nutrients from the body. It is something that can be hard to get rid of if you have chronic hidden infections. So I'd really like for us to start with our audience getting an understanding of what is SIBO.

Sure, it's as I said, small intestine, bacterial overgrowth, and it is literally the overgrowth of certain microbes in the small intestine. And there's also a term and a condition called IMO or IM0, which is intestinal methanogen overgrowth. And the treatments are similar to the the cascade of symptoms, a similar SIBO,

What SIBO Is and Why It Matters 2:51

which is caused by an overgrowth of hydrogen producing or hydrogen sulfide producing microbes will cause diarrhea, mixed sometimes constipation, diarrhea, the intestinal methanogen overgrowth is more likely to cause constipation. And there is an overgrowth of methane. So those are sort of, you know, some of the symptoms and what it's called. And there's fortunately a lot of research going on through Dr. Mark Pimentel, Dr. Ali Rezai at the Mast program at Cedars-Sinai, which I believe these folks are going to find a cure for us very soon.

We're praying for that. And there are protocols that are tried and true to actually reduce the bacterial overload, which then can reduce the symptoms as well as let you be the one that's consuming your nutrients instead of these organisms. And additionally, it's caused by something else and it causes other things. So that's why, you know, people with Endometriosis, people who have adhesions, who have recovered from food poisoning, which is the number one underlying cause of IBS, we need to fix it and we or we just need to manage it if the underlying cause is not fixable.

Let's talk about. Yeah, let's talk about those underlying causes because there's a whole bunch of them. You mentioned food poisoning. I mean, that's a huge one. And then there's, you know, things like surgeries. Could you go through some of the reasons why people might have SIBO and then maybe it's a good also a good time right now to talk about how you might know you have it because it kind of mimics a bunch of things, right? Like, it's a hard to tell. It's hard to tell. It mimics Candida and mimics SIFO a small intestine, fungal overgrowth, a lot of times people have both SIBO and parasites.

A lot of times you can't clear SIBO if you haven't cleared your parasites, you can't clear SIBO for really stubborn cases if you haven't cleared your mold. Mycotoxins infections overgrowth. So a third of the people that do one treatment round of SIBO get better and they're like history. But for people with this recurring scenario, a lot of times these other coexisting conditions are in play. So how how would you know? Like what? What would make us think that we might have SIBO? Like I said, bloating.

You eat and then you're bloated. You live nine months pregnant. You wake up with a flat tummy and after lunch you're like, what's up these pants often anymore? So that bloating is one of the biggest telltale signs. Yes, you can have bloating from other things as well, like parasites, like ovarian cancer, God forbid. So there's other reasons why bloating may happen, but that is the that and pain are the most common symptoms for SIBO and IMO along with constipation, diarrhea, alternating constipation and diarrhea.

Irregular belly. Yeah, I mean, it's just people are miserable with this. It's really miserable. It's a lifestyle killer for sure. And it has a other long term medical implications, like robbing you of those nutritional properties of food because they're getting to it first. It also can lead to really stressing your liver. It can lead to, I call it weird B12 levels, anemia, low ferritin levels, like like weirdly high B12 levels, even though you're not supplementing. And it's like your body's not absorbing the B12.

You have the microbes do some weird stuff to the the vitamins and low ferritin is definitely something to be aware of because that's your iron reserves. Yeah. So why would it be important? I mean, the obvious, it's uncomfortable, but why would we really want to deal with SIBO? I mean, it is a condition that can lead to other diseases and it's, as you said, it's caused by other things and it causes things. Yeah, but why why would it be really important to deal with this? Well, first of all, let's say it's constipation.

You don't want those toxins floating around in your body. You trapped in your colon for any longer than you need to. Right. If it's diarrhea, you're losing electrolytes. You're you know, you're not able to absorb your nutrition because it's passing so quickly through you. So diarrhea and constipation are unto themselves great reasons to get this taken care of. But it can also lead to rosacea restless leg syndrome. Those there's vitamins and iron levels. There's just, you know, they've done studies with different populations.

Symptoms, Causes, and Hidden Triggers 7:54

It tends to be more prevalent in women. There is it's affecting the microbiome. Bottom line. That's the best way of describing it. It is bad players in your microbiome that is blocking out the rest of your village and your microbiome. We all know that the microbiome is impacting your emotions, your brain health and your dental health, on and on and on. So you want to get that microbiome as healthy as possible and not run by these bullies. Non-medical term. And what's so cool is when I asked Dr. Pimentel, you know, what happens when people do get that bacterial load overgrowth lower and more into, you know, a negative SIBO breath test, the microbiome often comes back into alignment by itself within like weeks.

Also, when that happens, fructose intolerance, food intolerance, often goes away and all of a sudden you can eat more. And of course you're not miserable and you're not bloated. So all those things are great reasons. Absolutely. So let's you know, I want to talk about those microbes, those bad guys for a moment. So when we think of the human microbiome, what we're really talking about, when we're looking at the current research and what's available, most of the slaves in the large intestine and the microbiome generally resides in the large intestine.

However, we know we have the microbiome stretches from the mouth all the way to the rectum and we have a course of microbiome on our skin. We have a microbiome on our eyes and in our nose and in our genitals. I mean, there's a microbiome everywhere, but we think of the gut microbiome and we think about taking probiotics and we think about, you know, fixing leaky gut. We're talking about a large intestine problem. But this is very different because this is a small intestine problem. And just for our consumers of health care here, who might not know, we have a mix of practitioners and consumers.

So for the consumers of health care, your small intestine does some really important work. Your small intestine is where most of your absorption of your nutrients occurs. And so when you have you made a comment, you said, you know, those guys are kind of eating first. They're they're taking away from you. So when you're eating that good food and you're conscious of eating, you know, organic food and eating lots of clean, you know, vegetables and probiotic rich foods, and you're doing all these things to support yourself.

And then it gets to the small intestine to be absorbed. And those bad guys are there taking from you. Tell me a little bit more about those bad guys. Were they already part of us? And they just grew or were they introduced from a from a food a food poisoning exposure? Or how did that happen? What happened? Okay. So it is part of the normal microbiome, normal healthy microbiome, but they have literally overgrown and overtaken like a gang, the neighborhood. So and for the for the food poisoning, I want to clarify something super important about this.

Food poisoning business. Food poisoning. This is what happened to me. I was five, got food poisoning in India, came home. And I live in New York City and my parents, you know, I went to a fancy little school and we went to a farm in upstate New York for a visit to, you know, like city slickers. We're going to go to the farm. So we were milking the cows, which is adorable. And I took a sip of the milk without it being pasteurized. I got very bad food poisoning again and, you know, unsupervised, whatever.

And the bottom line is, I started to get constipation about around seven years old. And it impacted my whole microbiome and it impacted my migrating motor complex. The migrating motor complex is what sweeps out food and bacteria from the small intestine they call the cleansing wave, the sleeping wave. You know, think of a white tablecloth and a fancy restaurant, and the waiter has a crumb sweeper that gets rid of the bread crumbs before your next course. So that is getting all of that out there is the migrating motor complex.

And when you have food poisoning, there is a molecular mimicry that happens that confuses, believe it or not, the inside of your small intestines and makes it go slower so that that migrating motor complex does not operate as efficiently. And Dr. Mark Pimentel has proven that the number one underlying cause of IBS is the minor migrating motor complex. Not working is SIBO. So that's a little bit of how autoimmune can come into it. That's a little bit of one of the biggest underlying causes. And you know, for so long I was told I had IBS walk three miles, do fiber.

You know, I could like barely move at some point. So and taking fiber simply made it worse. I also remember literally eating an apple, going it's an apple a day it's supposed to keep the doctor away. And I was just like miserable. It made me worse because it was a high fodmap, a specific kind of carbohydrate that the bacteria love. So it's if you've ever had food poisoning, let's just wrap this idea up that you weren't the same afterwards. You might have SIBO. On the other hand, I talk to people all the time and they're like, Oh, I've never had food poisoning.

I'm like, Have you ever had the stomach flu? Oh yeah, I remember that one time, you know, so similar. Okay, consider that food poisoning. I would. And then also once you have SIBO from food poisoning, you are more likely to get food poisoning. So if you and I and three of our dear friends sat at a dinner table and I got sick, but we all ate the same thing, and we go, Oh, it couldn't be food poisoning because lure is not sick. It actually was me being more susceptible to it. And you all had immune systems that could fight it off.

Oh, absolutely. It's interesting. This is a good moment to talk about the subjectivity of how we define things in our mind. So that's a perfect example of I've never had food poisoning. Oh, but I've had the stomach flu a couple of times or yeah, I've had diarrhea before. Well, most diarrhea is caused by your body trying to flush out some kind of either microbe or toxin or something that you ingested somehow, usually. And then there's that concept of constipation as well, where people say, Oh, I'm not constipated.

Oh, really? How often do you go? I go regularly, every three days. That's about. It. Absolutely. And know, like, you're not sitting around talking about poop to your friends usually. Right. And we normalize. I do. But I know you're very sad, very special. Did you. Poop today? Did you poop today? Yes, of course. Thank you. I sat in front of my nail tech when I was on TV and had to have like perfect nails. And they did these microscopic, like, shots of my fingers. So, I mean, it really had to be stupid, commercially perfect.

Anyway, we so I went to our lot and we sat in front of each other for an hour every two weeks, if not more. And we never talked about it. And like a year in we started to talk about it and she had SIBO and I had SIBO. I was like, We could have been helping each other this whole time, so do talk about it. Get your kids to feel more comfortable about it and your spouse and all that. It's very important to not just keep it in this like secret interior life of yours in the bathroom. I know it's so funny that it's so taboo.

I always say pooping is the great equalizer, just like the DMV. We all have to go to the DMV no matter what walk of life you are from. And we all have to poop. It's the great equalizer. We all have it in common. And, you know, people actually do love to talk about it. In my programs, when we start talking about poop, which is like every week, people just light up the chat and they're just so excited to talk about it because it's a safe space to talk about it. So, so because we're talking about. So you guys are talking about poop.

That's right. That's right. It's important. When you get it right, you will feel better. Just that is a baseline you will feel when you are eliminating properly. You will. So I want to touch more. I want to explore more. You know, why did I bring a topic about Sebo? Why did I bring the topic of Sebo on to a silent killer summit? When we're talking about the things that are underlying all chronic health conditions,

Why SIBO Recurs and How to Prevent Relapse 16:48

which are chronic hidden infections, all the toxins that are around the world, which I have lots of talks on, toxins on this summit, nutrient deficiencies and then chronic, you know, traumas and stress that affect the body. When it comes to SIBO, it really plays a role in two buckets. The talks are the excuse me, the chronic hidden infection bucket because hidden infections like parasites can perpetuate or prevent your body from being able to actually clear SIBO. So what would you say? And then I wanna talk about nutrient deficiencies in a second, but what would you say to people who say I had SIBO, I cleared it, it came back, I did another treatment, I took antibiotics, I did a low-fodmap diet, I did a elemental diet and blah, blah, blah.

It came back, it came back, it came back. What would you say to these people where it's just so relentless? Okay, so literally Alisson Becker. Dr. Allison Becker is a world renowned SIBO expert who I do many projects with. She literally, for my birthday, got me a T-shirt that said, Are you on a broken attic? Because all of our webinars I asked that question so often. It is the number one reason why people don't relapse is if you are on a broken attic. So I talk to people all the time that talk just like you were describing it.

And then it breaks my heart to find out that they were not on a broken addict. So they have been relapsing a broken attic, moves that migrating motor complex. And when I say moves it, it's more of like creates a symphony, a syncopated movement within the migration, within the migrating motor complex in the gut. It's not necessarily like it's not a laxative. It helps that micro peristalsis sweep out things from the small intestine. So being on a broken network is the number one way to prevent SIBO.

Unless you can just prevent, like, you know, adhesions and and experiences and food poisoning to begin with. Yeah. And the other thing that I would fish for that I was kind of fishing for in this talk too, was that have you done parasite cleanses. Have you done like actually gone in and look for those hidden things that can perpetuate the regrowth regrowth re problem of of SIBO. So what have you seen any or talk to a. Lot of people who once they clear the parasites SIBO goes away which is really interesting or it's a treatment that becomes much easier, much more effective and like they only have to do one round and they cleared it within that one round after tons and tons of efforts of doing multiple rounds.

So that's another thing, doing multiple rounds of either herbs, very specific ones, antibiotics, very specific ones, or that elemental diet was a liquid, which is a liquid amino acids diet for a certain period of time. Those are the three main treatments and it is odd, but because we're used to taking on an antibiotic or something, call me in the morning and you're well after like eight pills or something. But with SIBO multiple rounds to help reduce those levels of the overgrowth is often necessary.

Yeah, it can be a whole thing and it's really important that you're looking at all sides of this, that you're making sure your upper digestion is supported, that you're working it, clearing parasites, and just know that you're probably never going to see your parasites on a gut test. They're they're very good at not being excreted. They don't want to leave your body. So it's hard to see them on a gut test unless you catch them in a, you know, a catch eggs or something in some part of a light of a of the life cycle of the parasite.

And that that little section of stool that you collected from the whole stool that day, that that little tiny bit that you collected had some sort of debris or DNA from a parasite, which is hard to find. Right? Just scream intelligence. That's why they're still around. Just like mycotoxins. Like there's a lot of sabotage they can do to your brain, I think, and your your motivation. Yes. Well, in the last few minutes that we have here in this first part of our talk, could you spend some time talking to us about how diet might influence the development or the treatment of SIBO?

Because what you're eating becomes very important in whether you develop it or if it recurs or if you can get rid of it. So the thing about diet is that carbs are what they are, what the microbes live, specific carbs fodmaps you'll see low-fodmap diets for IBS all over the place. Monash University is a great resource, but I need to clarify that that diet only controls symptoms. It doesn't reduce that overload. So you want to go easy on yourself, but don't beat yourself up. Because I have seen SIBO panic happen so many times with people are like and this was me also like if I eat this bite of food, this one bite like that apple that day, like I remember how I felt before I ate that apple.

I was just like, What the hell? Because I was hungry and I, I didn't know what else to eat. So I was down to just a few foods. And so it SIBO is when it comes to diet, it controls your symptoms, it does not control the relapse percent nor is it cause SIBO it will make your symptoms worse. So you start to think, oh my gosh, it's getting worse because in three days you can often get your symptoms under control where you feel better. This is really important to understand for people. You didn't eat your way into it and you're not going to eat your way out of it.

And that's this whole concept of food as medicine is really one of those things that I get really frustrated with because you cannot solve every health problem with food. If you could, all of you health people who are here, information seeking and trying to figure this out, you wouldn't you would have already solved this because many of the people watching right now are very healthy eaters. So, yes, food as medicine is an important concept, but know that it's only part of the solution. It's not the whole solution.

Exactly. Oh, such a big thing. So this this first part of our talk has been so enlightening. Siobhan, thank you so much for joining us today for this talk on SIBO to our audience. I hope you found our conversation insightful and helpful. If you're a summit purchaser, stay right here because we're about to dove even deeper into this discussion with Siobhan. If you're not, click on the button on this page to get access to a continuation of this conversation and many others, and get the tools

Diet, Treatment Options, and Elemental Diet 23:30

you need to reclaim your health. If you're watching this continuation of my talk with Siobhan Sana, thank you for being a valuable member of our community and we're going to dove right back in. So we've gone all over the place with Cibo and you know, we're talking about how it really does impact your health and prevent you from being able to feel good, live your best life, look good and feel good in your clothes because it's so irritating. You started to touch on nutrient deficiencies and you talked about it does weird things to your B vitamins and does weird things.

Anything else that you want to share with our audience in terms of long term effects of SIBO on nutrients in the body and how this can set you up for other chronic health conditions. Like if we were looking at the cascade of development of SIBO long term SIBO to development of other things, what would you share with our audience? I would I would share. These are going to be generalities. I would definitely share that. There's a buildup of lipopolysaccharide which can lead to brain fog. It can lead to, you know, really stressing your liver, fatty liver, hair loss, psoriasis.

I mean, there is a lot of reasons to take on SIBO, not to mention you're going to be highly motivated cause it doesn't make you feel great, but there's a lot of reasons and you know, some of these don't sound so devastating like cancer or something. God forbid, however you want to create that context in your microbiome, in your body, to be as healthy as possible. So here's something that is treatable, that does have, you know, studies behind it and is in most cases, treatable, I should say. And so sort of like box check, get that thing taken care of so you can move on to other things.

And also once this, you know, if you clear your SIBO, you're going to have more energy to clear those parasites. I know a lot of people who will treat both of them simultaneously and just get really great results. One less thing for your body to be burdened with is really, really important. Yeah, and I think this is a great space to kind of segway into treatments for SIBO because you've done you've done a lot of personal research around this. You've interviewed the world's experts on this. You're friends with the world's experts on this.

You've, you know, treated your own self, you've helped, you know, and thousands of people get connected with practitioners to help with this. So let's let's dove into treatments like what works, what doesn't work, what's bogus, what's myth, what's what really is the solution. So first of all, we already talked about it, but I'm mean reiterate SIBO your food, you didn't eat your way into it and you're not going to eat your way out of it. Okay. So that's one thing. The SIBO diet is designed to help you manage your symptoms.

Now the herbs that have been studied and that also there are other ones too, but like garlic which is high fodmap. So that would mean that you caused symptoms, but in the form of Allison, which is the active ingredient with garlic that has been shown to do really well, there is oil of oregano that's really does a beautiful job. There's certain combinations like that. And then so that just there are some herbs, they're medicinal like food there. You can buy them over the counter, but they're very powerful or so don't underestimate that.

That usually takes a month for the gas levels to come down, whereas if you do the antibiotics, that's usually a two week course. So cool that you can buy them over the counter. Takes a little bit longer. They're not super expensive, but they're not inexpensive. The antibiotics are rifaximin for hydrogen producing microbes. Right. And then rifaximin in neomycin is a good combination for the methane overgrowth. So that takes two weeks and it's three times a day and rifaximin stays in the small intestine, which is really interesting.

It's a very special antibiotics. I know antibiotics are polarizing. I also know they can save your life. And of course we want to avoid them as much as possible. However, Rifaximin is very special and you can take it multiple times without reducing its efficacy so you don't tend to, you know, get immune to it, so to speak. And then the third thing, which is the most effective is the elemental diet. It is also the most obnoxious. So and by the way, if you have great insurance, often rifaximin is paid for, but if you have limited insurance, you have certain insurances, it can be extremely expensive.

So there are some Canadian pharmacies that can help facilitate better prices. But the elemental diet is definitely worth a conversation because it is a liquid diet that you exclusively do for about 17 days. And it is it used to be really disgusting. It used to taste like vomit. I'm not kidding because amino acids can be sickly sweet. They can taste super gross. So a lot of people have in the past few years put out a lot of effort to make better tasting, elemental diet, which is fantastic. It used to be what people put in feeding tubes, and now we're consuming it like a shake.

That's a stretch. But, you know, you're using it as a meal substitute or meal replacement if you're trying to give your gut arrest. And then if you are doing it as a treatment, it's the only thing you'll consume for those 17 days. And it usually does the best job of reducing the bacteria. The other kill the bacteria, you know, or you know, like shoot them way. And the elemental diet starves the bacteria because you'll absorb the nutrient from the elemental diet so quickly that it doesn't get a chance to feed the overgrowth.

And it's not fodmaps. It's not carbohydrates that are that the bacteria are feeding on. So it's like you're not giving them they're their favorite food source, but an elemental diet is not for wimps. I mean, this is a serious thing. You you're committing to not eating anything else for almost three weeks. Yeah. And and a lot of and also your your experience, the elements like let's say you do day one and you're like, oh, I can't do this. There is a lifecycle to it where you may not like it the first day, but maybe by the third day you start to crave it.

So it's a very interesting way that you go through emotionally and physically when you're doing the elemental diet. So I just want to say like don't give up on that first couple of days if you. Oh, yeah. I mean you're purging more than just I mean, this becomes like a detox experience. It's like it's your emotional detoxing. You're you're purging toxins out of the body. I mean, it's a whole thing because you're not putting substances in the body that are difficult to digest. Right? So everything's getting a big rest.

And now your body can focus on so much more. Yeah. So you get a lot more out of it, right? Yeah, exactly. Okay. So that's the thing you've seen work the best. Now, how about prevention of recurrence of SIBO and maintaining gut balance? Let's go into that topic. Oh, definitely a broken addict, which I will define. I know I said it before, but I didn't really tell you what it was. Things like Ginger is a pro kinetic.

Life After SIBO and Gut Recovery 31:00

There is motor Hegarty which is a prescription. There is there are a variety now of over-the-counter or pro kinetics that are easily accessible that have kind of come onto the scene in the past few years. Also, there's a formulation called a gas, which is a variety of different herbs. There's a wonderful pro kinetic that also. You can get that on Amazon these days. I mean, you can. You can there was a slight pause in its availability in the marketplace, but I think it's back available. It may have Russian letters on it, so don't worry about it.

It's usually fine. Also, eBay has really strict counterfeit rules, so I do tend to if I can't find it on, you know, full scripts or whatever, my usual is, I'll go to eBay to find it. And they have they have I have pretty good luck there. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I see. Anything else on prevention and then maintaining gut balance, like once you've been through this. Right? Well, definitely avoid food poisoning people. Okay. So like Thanksgiving at Christmas at the summer, barbecues and buffets eat the food that is called.

This should be cold and hot. That should be hot. Like eat from the center of the, you know, the casserole dish that has the Bunsen burner, Bunsen burner, whatever they're called right underneath it. You definitely want to avoid food poisoning. I just my husband and I just went out for a birthday dinner and we had salads, and we both think we got food poisoning from the salad. Oh, my. God. There's so much with lettuces. I mean. I'm like, I'm glad they wash it. And what are they washing it with and what did they put in the sink before that?

I just I just got turned off from the lettuce idea, like this week. Yeah, I know you didn't can grow your own lettuce indoors so easily with those towers. You know, I'm all over the place on social media and internet, and I keep getting I keep getting feelings, tugs that I want to grow some salad inside my good idea. I think it's a good idea, actually. I watched a whole documentary about lettuce and I was like, Ooh. I watch a documentary about any food that you're just going to want to grow your own food.

Honestly. Yeah. So maintaining gut balance then. So after so let's talk about life after Cibo. Life after Cibo. So you're going to be able to expand your diet, eat the rainbow for sure. And you know your prebiotics ultimately are fibers. So the more you can get in, the better and rotate that, you know, spin the plate, get about, get some food that you've never you don't usually eat in the produce department. You don't have to do a lot. Tom O'Brien will tell you to go get the things that look so weird and chop it up, make a hash or, you know, put them in ice cube trays and then throw one of those little hash of different root vegetables in your bouillon or your soup.

Make a stir fry with it. So definitely get that diversity going. But I know it's going to be hard until you clear the sea because it will probably make you feel worse because of the symptoms from the fibers. So you definitely want to as soon as you can get as much diversity into your diet as possible. Okay. So Shivan, can you talk to us now about life after resolution of SIBO? What happens now? Oh, my gosh. Start eating other things. Enjoy, you know, some different fibers, enjoy not having to eat only three or bring your own food to every potluck.

You know, expand your diet, maybe don't go crazy in the beginning but like experiment you have confidence don't let the you know I want to say trauma not to say that eating something could cause trauma or not even something, but yeah, there's a lot of emotional ramifications to having such a restricted diet for so long for some people. So feel free to expand your diet and relax a little bit and you want to keep feeding that microbiome as much diversity as possible. And some great tips are, for example, Dr.

Tom O'Bryan taught me this one is to go walk around the produce section and get all those weird veggies and roots that you would never normally pick up and go home. And, you know, peel them, chop them chunk, do whatever you need to do and put them all into a mash. And then, you know, put them in ice cube trays, freeze them. And then when you're making a stock or you're making a stir fry, throw them in there. So you get some different some truly diverse prebiotics to feed your gut to feed your gut microbiome.

These days, it's so easy to find fun recipes. I mean, if there's a weird vegetable, you don't know what it is. Just look it up and say recipes for whatever Jerusalem artichokes go. Yeah. Exactly. And you know, the microbiome does come back into more homeostasis and balance after that overgrowth is gone. So you can expect to feel better. You can expect a lot of different health things to improve and give you more of a of a foundation to be able to fight other infections. Well, you can also expect a decrease in the incidence of development of chronic inflammatory diseases.

You can expect nutrient deficiencies to start to clear up. You can expect energy to go up. You can expect brain to function better. I mean, so much improves once you solve this. And not to mention mood. I mean, there's nothing like a grumpy, bloated who isn't absorbing nutrients. That's no good for anybody's relationship. Well, so final words, any final words of hope? And also, please let our audience know where they can find your work, where they can find your book, where they can get a hold of you, where they can see your upcoming projects.

Thank you. Thank you so much. So the word of hope is don't give up, right? So you there is science to support these treatments. There are breath tests that you can take to find out how much the overgrowth is. And there is definitely a way through.

Final Advice and Where to Find Shivan Sarna 37:30

So don't think it's impossible because it's not. And even if you have an underlying cause that can't be addressed or cleared up, you can certainly manage your SIBO so you'd feel 100% better. Individual results will vary. Okay. And then how can you find me at sibosos.com and the S.O.S. has come to mean "save ourselves" because it's an empowering place. We are pro practitioner for sure, but there's a lot of things possible that you can do yourself, which is very encouraging. So it's SIBO S.O.S. (sibosos.com) In my book Healing SIBO is on Amazon and a variety of other booksellers published by Penguin Random House.

And it takes you through basically everything we've been talking about today. Yeah, it's amazing. And you always have another summit in the pipeline, like something's coming up next. I think you told me you've got a hormone summit coming up in 2024. So, I mean, yeah, that's okay. Oh, there's one coming that I'm actually speaking on. That's the Microbiome Rescue. Gut Rescue Summit and evidence based solution to finally get your health back. Yep. It's happening almost at the same time as this summit.

So look for it. We'll be sending emails about it. So it's so good to have you here, Shivan. It's just like I said, it's a whole full circle moment. Honored to know you. Honored to be your friend outside of what we're doing here. And just thank you for you really are one of those people who opened the door for what our audience is experiencing today. You are a pioneer in the summit space and you helped normalize this process like everybody should be watching summits and doing summits because it's a great way to get information out there.

So all those years you had in the TV world working on Shopping Network, right? It was Shopping Network. Yeah, yeah. It and yeah, HSN. And she was your most favorite host of HSN. She took all those skills and started producing health summits. So thank you, Shivan. This has been wonderful. And until next time, everyone take good care. Bye now.