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A Medical Emergency, 5 Years Low A, SIBO...and help wanted
I'm holding out hope that he ingested something sharp like glass or metal or a bone and he is going to be all well soon. This happened to a healthy teen boy that lived next door, and I suppose when you are gulping down food at the pace of a young man that sort of thing might be more apt to slip past unfelt. I remember asking him about it and wanted more info. He was so cute and clueless. "What kind of bone?" "Chicken" "What kind of chicken dish?" "Juuuuust chicken?".
I also wonder, though, if the HCL made things worse and of course, since I've grown scared of supplements, I'm probably subconsciously adding HCL to my list of supplements that can turn on you!
We passed the old health food store in the center of town and it had closed down. My husband mused that Amazon was the reason it failed, but I said it was probably because all the supplement-taking people got sick and died LOL.
@sarabeth-matilsky You need to rebuild the gut lining with microbiome labs supplements like Mega Mucosa and Mega IGG 2000 (immunoglobulin supplement) it is possible that they can cause detox but this will go away eventually if it does. Then after the gut lining and mucosa is stronger you can add in https://www.holisticheal.com/micro-gut-balance-60-capsules.html as an antimicrobial to kill any pathogenic bacteria and fungi (this product really helped me). When people say the can't tolerate beta carotene etc, it can be because they have bacteria, yeasts or mold tying up the ALDH, ADH enzymes which causes them to react to high beta carotene foods.
Basically certain pathogenic microbes hide in a particular gut PH, so if you suddenly add in beatine hcl this can disrupt the current PH and the pathogen comes out of hiding and starts causing symptoms like pain.
Are you familiar with The SIBO Doctor Podcast? It features interviews with a range of elite practitioners.
Here is a link to an interview with Dr. Steven Sandberg-Lewis:
https://www.thesibodoctor.com/2020/05/27/liver-gallbladder-sterolbiome-dr-steven-sandberg-lewis/
Dr. Steven Sandberg-Lewis is professor at National University of Natural Medicine focusing on gastroenterology. Within gastroenterology, he has a special interest and expertise in inflammatory bowel disease, IBS, and SIBO. He's the author of the medical text book, Functional Gastroenterology: Assessing and Addressing the Cause of Functional Digestive Disorders. He has recently opened Hive Mind Medicine, a clinic focused on digestive and mental health in Portland, Oregon.
I find his knowledge impressive and he seems up-to-date with the latest research. He articulates a lot of the nuances of specific pathologies. For example I remember him saying that in the future Helicobacter Pylori may be given as a probiotic and elaborating on the nuances of its interactions with stomach physiology.
I wanted to quickly update you all, because if I wait for quiet and peacefulness and an attentive brain, I will never post again, and I rarely read anymore anyway, so I'm gonna go for it with two children whining at once and a third about to start...
My eldest "baby" is recuperating. It's been almost eight weeks since the horrible event and subsequent surgery, and after I last posted here, we consulted with Karen Hurd. Her unique and interesting approach to "SIBO" seemed absolutely worth trying, since she advocates for eliminating supplements if at all possible (he wasn't on any at that point), using food to heal, and since he was eating an incredibly limited diet - meat and broth - at that point, it was very easy to test whether a food agreed or disagreed with him.
Synopsis of Hurd's approach (which is totally ignoring of Grant's vitamin A hypotheses in her personal opinions and practices, but is incredibly compatible so long as you remove the high-beta-carotene veggies): she claims that sugar does not "feed" "bad gut microbes" in the small intestine or anywhere else, at least not by way of causation like many gut-health protocols claim. And it is true that many people have similar "overgrowths" of "bad" bacteria in the "wrong" parts of the digestive tract and have zero symptoms from them, so I can buy her theses on that point, at least. Instead, she says that sugar triggers a hormone cascade after every meal, which overwhelms the liver and biliary system, because not only insulin ("the master hormone") but all sorts of other hormones - rather than being mopped up and recycled by the bile and the liver - get "dumped" into the digestive tract, and the body, sensing emergency, turns off a bunch of enzymatic and other digestive processes to cope. Then, rather than food getting digested by enzymes etc. and absorbed throughout the digestive system, the body essentially turns on fermentative digestion (not as a cause of the problem, but as a result). Once this switch has flipped, all of a sudden microbes in various places are inundated with all sorts of undigested foods they shouldn't have access to during normal digestion, and can have a field day, causing all sorts of digestive and other problems, gas, pain, bloating, nausea. Toxins are supposed to be captured in bile and then dumped into the large intestine and pooped out. But he body re-uses ~95% of the bile again...and the situation with such haywire digestion is that not much of the toxin load is being excreted, but rather continues to go round and round in the bile, overwhelming the system after every meal, resulting in the body's so-called "enterohepatic circulation" becoming greatly impaired and toxic.
What to do? Hurd says we need to use soluble fiber, which has a great affinity toward absorbing certain toxins, and acts as a binder, allowing them to be excreted in the poop.
First of all, my son tried beans, which fascinatingly - since we had thought it was triggered by carbs in general - did not cause indigestion (which is possibly bile reflux?? He reports it is incredibly intense and unpleasant when it happens). He quickly ramped up to eating 1/3 cup of beans 6X day. Next came rice, which was a thumbs up in that it also did not cause indigestion. It seemed that Hurd was right about simple sugars including fruit being very different hormonally and digestively from starches. It's been really really hard for him to gauge his appetite, because....for years it's been mostly nonexistent, in that he ate when it was mealtime, ate what he was served, ate a lot when he was growing...and then recently after the new year and until the surgery, kept eating obsessively even when full. He didn't ever develop any sort of Body Intuition around food, possibly a continuation of the fact that after having a severe eating disorder as a small child, he had to literally force himself to eat from the age of six onward, and even once he liked and felt nourished by eating, his appetite was never "usual." He thinks that a lot of sensations that he used to think were "hunger" or "fullness" were actually pain, bloating, gas, etc....and so in place of intuition right now, since he still cannot gauge quantities, he settled on Hurd's suggested servings: in addition to beans 3x day between meals, for each meal he's now eating about 3-4oz lean meat, 1/3 cup cooked beans, ~1 cup cooked white rice, along with lots of water.
Every attempt to add either more animal fat or vegetables has resulted in that terrible indigestion. Eating more food overall has also not worked too well, since his digestion feels pretty delicate and perhaps his stomach shrunk? It must have. The constipation finally cleared after two weeks, but motility is still not great. Hurd suggests avocado/non-animal-fats to help this, once he can digest them, so he will be trying avocado later this week since many trials of vegetables have just not been working. (Ordinarily she recommends nuts in addition to the beans etc. for constipation (side note: which has been working GREAT for me!), but that does not seem at all advisable for a recuperating stomach so he hasn't tried these. Additionally, he discovered that overdoing exercise in heat (even a semi-vigorous walk) could bring on the bile (?) reflux.
He has lost about 30 pounds since the surgery and would like to regain that muscle, obviously. He is exhausted and prone to extreme fatigue, and I suspect that his iron and zinc are low or dysregulated, but we are scared to try any supplements ever again. Not sure how to proceed on that one. Not really sure how to proceed overall, although Hurd's ideas have shown extremely promising initial results (i.e stability and turning around the Degeneration that seemed to be happening in his digestion for the first few weeks after the surgery) so he is certainly continuing for now.
It's not clear why exactly his gut is behaving this way. We talked with someone who had the exact same stomach-rupture-"out-of-the-blue" in his early twenties (incidentally, it was during a through hike of the Appalachian trail!), and this person similarly took something inadvisable for stomachs - ibuprofen - right before the rupture...but it shouldn't have _caused_ the rupture, just like Ben's betaine hcl consumption was certainly in retrospect inadvisable, but most people who take it - almost everyone - does NOT rupture their stomach. Anyway, this person was put on PPIs 18 years ago, and continues to take them now, since he was told he'll need them for the rest of his life.
It's certainly likely that my son would be told to take a PPI now, but I can't see any reason it would do anything besides (possibly) cover up symptoms, and it could cause a lot of damage. So I'm hopeful that Hurd's dietary approach will continue to be useful. I am curious if others have had experience with her protocol? If you've posted on this forum and I haven't found it, feel free to paste links for me. My brain is toasted.
Okay, must go. Thank you all so much for your thoughts and well wishes.
That is so good he is doing better. I think the bean protocol is pretty great, the miracle for me was solving my IBS-C. Thanks for sharing the details about sugar. I didn't quite understand why she thought it was so bad, but rice was fine.
I forgot to ask you was the hcl he was taking have digestive enzymes in it as well? I use one that doesn't because the enzymes can bother the stomach.
Hi @janelle525,
No, the hcl did not have enzymes.
I am curious - did you follow all of Karen Hurd's constipation advice, including eating up to 1.5 cups of nuts per day? And if so, how long did you need to eat that many nuts until you could...eat fewer?? 🙂 I personally am following this part of her advice and finding that it works great for pooping! Except I am either slightly bloated or slightly gaining weight for the first time ever in response to a dietary change, and I don't particularly want to, so I'm thinking that doubling my daily caloric intake might not be sustainable long or medium-term!
I have not been doing nuts, these are the hardest for me to digest. And for the first few months I couldn't eat them without IBS. I can now have pumpkin seeds so far and not have bad cramping. But I generally just don't eat them. I do want to try nuts again. Yeah nuts are very calorie rich!
Stomach takes the longest to heal. It's a tough spot to be in.
I ended up in a similar situation. I tried to fix SIBO and Candida by supplementing Betaine HCL and ended up destroying my stomach. Ulcers, internal bleeding, acid reflux. I am bleeding so much internally that my platelets are severely low now. Although I am finally starting to get better but it takes so much time and care.
What worked for me:
PPI medication
Baking Soda
Vitamin C (start slow if gastritis is bad)
S. Boulardii probiotic
Vitamin D, K2 MG
Meat only diet
No Vitamin A obviously
I hope your son gets better soon!
Hi Sarabeth I wanted to ping you as the post above me is so good and I don't see an email ping on it.
Hope all is well with your beautiful family.