On today's episode Debbie talks to a local functional medicine nutritionist- Angela Pifer.  She is known as
the SIBO Guru.  You can learn more on her website as well as order her new bone broth to heal your gut:

 

"For the past decade I have had a thriving private practice, working clinically as a licensed Certified Nutritionist. I was trained in Functional Medicine, even before the term ‘functional medicine’ became a buzz word. From a Functional Medicine perspective, I help identify and address the underlying condition instead of trying to compartmentalize the issue by solely focusing on the symptoms.

For example, if you have a condition with a complex array of symptoms, like SIB O, let’s get at the root cause for why this was set up in the first place. What contributing factors led to this? What effect has SIBO had on your body?

The mainstream approach to addressing SIBO hasn’t set well with me from the start. The reason that SIBO was set up in the first place is because the digestive track is extremely imbalanced. Instead of adding to this imbalance, by using antibiotics, I prefer to look for and address the root cause.

For the past decade the main focus of my practice has been on digestive conditions. I have worked extensively with inflammatory bowel diseases, irritable bowel disease and SIBO (small intestinal bowel overgrowth). Though the gut has always fascinated me, I also realized from the beginning, that the gut is the center of the universe (from a body perspective). If you can heal and rebalance your gut, this will address, or, at the very least, greatly improve any health condition that you have.

I work day in and day out, teaching, guiding, reassessing and doing the nutritional handholding that helps each of my patients get better. In addition to focusing on digestive conditions, here are the other conditions that I work with:

Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Fibromyalgia
Migraine
Food Sensitivities/ Allergies
Thyroid disorders
Small Intestine Bacteria Overgrowth (SIBO)
Diabetes
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)
Autoimmune Conditions
Arthritis
Diabetes
Lyme disease
Heart disease
Adrenal Fatigue
Sports Nutrition
Hypertension
Cancer – Worked two years at an oncology center
Chronic pain
Menopause
Metabolic Conditions
"You are likely here because you have taken an antibiotic to address SIBO and it has come back. Do antibiotics fix SIBO long term? More often than not, they don’t. They simply knock the organisms down so you feel like you have recovered for a very short time. Antibiotics may also make it more difficult to rebalance and heal the system long term.

The vast majority of studies on SIBO aren’t looking at a SIBO cure, but rather, looking at which antibiotic therapies will knock SIBO down the longest – whether it reoccurs in 14 days, 3 months or 9 months. The average recidivism rate of Xifaxan (Rifaximin) and a prokinetic (considered the gold standard of treatment) is 4-9 months. Clinically, I find that most people start to notice symptoms reemerge 10-14 days after antibiotic treatment.

SIBO is considered by most to be a reoccurring condition. This means that all the pain, discomfort, and bloating that you are experiencing right now, is likely going to come back within a year. I do not agree with this. I feel strongly that the current way that this is treated is contributing to the high recidivism rate. SIBO is not a primary condition, as it is currently treated (meaning that, SIBO is diagnosed and the patient is offered antibiotics, without further investigation as to WHY this was set up in the first place).

SIBO is a secondary condition; a symptom that something is not right with your system. It is an extreme imbalance in your body that is best addressed from a functional medicine approach: identifying the ROOT CAUSE, and coupling dietary and herbal therapies together to knock down SIBO to the degree that you can address digestive and immune insufficiencies, heal the gut, and rebalance your gut flora."

If you have SIBO, I can help you. -Angela Pifer

We will talk about...

What is SIBO and how do we get it?

What are the symptoms of SIBO?  How do we know if we have it?

How do we treat and heal from SIBO?

What are the benefits of Bone Broth?

Angela offers coaching programs to help heal SIBO with a five step program:

Be ready
Resolve the SIBO
Address the insufficencies
Heal your gut
Rebalance the gut flora

 

Find out which lab tests to do for SIBO here and for bone broth check out - https://gutrxgurus.com/prod
uct/gutrx-traditional-chicken-bone-broth/