With Good Sometimes Comes Bad

I met with my ND and got the results from the last stool test.  The blastocystis hominis of which there was many is now gone, HURRAY!  Thank goodness for Heron Botanical's formula Purge the Whorl.  But with good comes bad and it looks like my dysbiosis is even worse.  The only thing I did differently over the summer was add the Purge the Whorl and do a couple of rounds of the elemental diet.  Could the elemental diet have made it worse???

We decided to switch everything up to see if we could get some better results.  I am now on a combination of Heron Botanical's Herbal Biotic, Heron Botanical's Bitters (to aid digestion), Berberine Complex, Neem Plus, Interface Plus, Metagest (digestion), Spectrazyme (digestion) and PrescriptAssist, the probiotic Chris Kresser recommends.  Oh, and my low dose Erythromycin at night to keep things moving and the couple of drops of iodine that I continually forget to take.  I take other supplements but they are related to general health and not SIBO.  He doesn't want me to do any tests again for 6 months.  He knows how much I love numbers but says with the lack of positive movement I need to let that go and focus on how I feel instead.  Poo!  I have the results from my breath test coming next week to see if the Rifaximin/Neomycin with biofilm buster Lipophos EDTA did any better than the abx with Interface Plus.

Great Post on SIBO and Methane from Chris Kresser

I can't believe I didn't link this the second I heard it.  It's a great post where he talks about SIBO and methane and archaea.  Archaea???  I had never heard of that and listened with great interest but in the end it's still the same, starve/kill the bacteria to get better.  The best part was the end when he listed a whole bunch of herbs that he uses to do just that.  Many I had never even heard of!  I love that he prints the transcript so you don't have to quickly scrawl everything down and try to figure out how to spell things.

It's been too long since I posted last but there's a lot going on trying to wrap up summer crops and taking care of the 6 egg laying chickens and the 7 new meat chicks.  It's amazing what you can do with 6000 square feet of land in the city.  Local ordinance says we can have 6 adult chickens (10 with written permission from neighbors) but no roosters.  When one of our chickens goes broody we order her fertile meat chicken eggs to sit on and hatch. The meat chickens never technically develop into adult birds so we can have as many as we want.  Pastured, organic chicken meat is hard to find and when you do it's super expensive so this is an awesome way to cut costs a bit and the babies are so cute and funny.  We haven't taken on processing them ourselves yet instead we pay a farmer from the local Farmer's Market do it for us.

Off to make Carne Asada Beef Jerky (from Danielle Walker's Against All Grain cookbook).

Labor Day Carbs

Went to my mom's for a Labor Day bbq.  My day was all rushed and messed up so I ended up eating not enough veggies and too many carbs (a banana with breakfast and again with lunch and corn tortilla chips at my mom's, bbq sauce on my burger, sweet potato, white potato, etc).  I did not sleep well that night and the next morning I was achy and felt hungover.  Coincidence?  Yesterday I ate too much fat (stayed low carb), made the Energy Bar recipe from Keto Clarity, tons of nuts AND coconut oil.  Slept okay and woke up feeling fine.  Will have to continue to experiment.

And, the tummy pain is back.  You know the one that comes on suddenly and hurts like hell. Ugh!  Used to have them daily, now they only come once in a great while.  Seems like I've had (very) short bouts of pain every day for a week or more.  I always wonder if that's the antibiotics doing their thing, an increase in bacteria or just related to my cycle.

Tried stevia in my hot chocolate this morning.  Blech!  Think I'll go back to honey and try to work stevia into other recipes.  I thought the cacao powder would overwhelm but it doesn't.

My current go-to breakfast

2 or 3 eggs scrambled, with homemade low FODMAP salsa and 30g of avocado with a mug of hot chocolate (made with coconut milk, raw cacao powder and a touch of honey).  Good fat, little carbs and a nice amount of protein.  I either used canned coconut milk, organic with zero additives or I make my own in the Blendtec with shaved coconut and water, blend and strain through a fine mesh bag.

I make the salsa by slicing and roasting tomatoes, tomatillo and spicy peppers.  I use about 20-25% tomatoes and 75-80% tomatillos, based on size and vary the amount of spicy peppers depending on how much heat I want.  The baking sheet is coated with a garlic infused olive oil.  I haven't had a chance to infuse any coconut oil lately, it's what I prefer for cooking but hopefully will get to it this week.  Bake in the oven at 375 for about 10-15 minutes until they are soft and wrinkly, let them cool and then scrape them in the food processor with all the juice.  Add cilantro (half a large bunch), green onion (half to whole bunch with the ends cut off), lime juice (1/2 to whole lime) and cumin (up to a tablespoon) and process to the consistency you like.  I don't measure any of these things, just throw them together.  

I've also thrown together a bunch of frozen salsa packs in the freezer, one tomato in a quart freezer bag and fill the rest with tomatillos.  That way I can have salsa from our homegrown tomatoes this winter.

Carbs are not my friend... and apparently neither is marijuana

I try to stay within my allowable FODMAPs while camping but usually end up drinking too much alcohol and eating too many carbs.  I make sure to switch the carbs up to keep them FODMAP legal but my body just doesn't seem to handle them well. Oh and I forgot to take my low dose Erythromycin 2 out of the 3 nights and realized just how much it helps keep things moving.  I just come home looking 6 months pregnant.  Ugh, do I hate that.  So I am back to low carb, mod protein and higher fat, and looking much better. 

When I got back I switched to 4 meals every 3 hours which I probably shouldn't do but I just can't seem to eat enough to stay full for 4-5 hours between meals.  I'm going to make at least one or two of my meals a well blended smoothie so at least it digests quickly (my ND at the SIBO center recommended this previously).  When I try to have such a huge gap I just end up getting panicky and then eating a bunch of stuff while waiting for my meal to be ready.  The quickest thing to grab is nuts and my digestion just doesn't seem to handle them well, especially when I eat a lot.  Mac Nuts are FODMAP legal up to 40grams, that's 1/3 of a cup!  This is where I get my mac nuts, by the way, very expensive but by far the best I've found.

On to the marijuana, because I know I peaked your curiosity.  Where I live recreational marijuana is now legal so I thought, hey, maybe it would be better on my gut to get my buzz on with a bit of weed.  Thankfully I did some good ole internet searches before I purchased any. Turns out in all studies done marijuana slows intestinal motility.  My motility is already slow enough, thank you very much.  So I guess I'll just have to practice breathing, meditation and tapping and keep my cool that way.  Bummer!

And speaking of prokinetics.  Has anyone tried Resolor?  It's more expensive than Erythromycin and I'd have to order from Canada but maybe it works better???