Accountability vs. Victimhood

I did a 10 hour yoga workshop this weekend.  Not the brightest idea but these teachers only come to town once a year.  As we all know exercise is stress and given the recent diagnosis of Hashi's and the ongoing battle with SIBO, I should be keeping stress to a minimum. What can I say, I couldn't help myself!

My teachers talked a lot about alignment (of course) but also what that alignment does to your mental health and overall wellbeing.  Slouch and you feel physically, emotionally, mentally like crap, not to mention what it does to your digestion, rounding in and compressing everything. When you raise your head, expand and raise your chest you are more likely to feel strong and empowered, you give your stomach, intestines, gall bladder, liver, etc. more room to do their thing.  Think about the animals you see, the only time they slouch or tuck their tail is when they are scared, unsure.  Most of the time their tail is up their head held high, ready for anything.

It got me to thinking about all of us.  For many of us we didn't do anything wrong to create our SIBO so we have the "woe is me" feeling (someone can't remember who called this the Eeyore).  We can't find a good doctor, we can't (or won't) stick with the diet, we don't know what supplements to take to make ourselves feel better.  We can live in this victim mentality or we can take accountability for our actions, do our own research, get support via groups on FB or whatever social media outlet we choose, carve out time (even just 5 minutes a day) for mindfulness/belly breathing/whatever and make a plan for getting well.  Great places for finding information?

http://www.siboinfo.com/

http://chriskresser.com/sibo-what-causes-it-and-why-its-so-hard-to-treat

https://www.facebook.com/DrRuscio (He's in the process of updating his website, I had not heard of him but his herbal protocol from the Digestive Sessions covers all bases - more about this later)

http://www.amazon.com/IBS-Irritable-Bowel-Syndrome-Antibiotics-ebook/dp/B00CBP2S1Q/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1423452835&sr=1-2&keywords=fast+track+digestion

http://www.amazon.com/New-IBS-Solution-Bacteria--Irritable-ebook/dp/B007Z5SVRC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1423452939&sr=1-1&keywords=new+ibs+solution

There are numerous podcasts that deal with SIBO.  Not to mention it seems like every few months there is some sort of weeklong free online Summit related to health (this week it's Healthy Gut Summit).  Check out Underground Wellness, Revolution Health Radio.  There are also several podcasts, articles and videos on SIBOinfo.com under learning more.

The bottom line is no cares about your health as much as you do and sometimes you just have to take matters into your own hands.  I have walked into the doctor's office several times and said, "what about this?", and given him information about labs or probiotics or herbal protocols or conventional treatments.  I'm lucky that I have a provider who is open to this and willing to try anything.  I also skype with Dr. Keller at the SIBO Center at NCNM to help clarify things I am unsure about.

And more important than anything (and trust me hindsight really sucks on this one for me) keep a food journal, better yet a food journal and an everyday journal so you can track what is working for you and what isn't.  I've started measuring my belly just below my belly button too because I can't always tell by looking if I'm bloated at all.  My high fat, low carb, low-mod protein diet is doing wonders for me (that doesn't mean it will work for you).  But it took me a full year to figure it out because I wasn't willing to change my diet that much and hey, it was low FODMAP so I didn't think I had to.  If you feel like things aren't working, change it.

If you don't have the money to do labs and supplements and don't have a good doctor, start with the SIBO specific diet or better yet, a low FODMAP AIP diet to help reduce some of the inflammation in your digestive tract.  Tip - you can do this by printing out the SIBO specific diet and then crossing off anything not allowed on the AIP (great resources for this are Practical Paleo, The Paleo Approach or The Paleo Mom blog.  Don't have money for books, check them out at the library (if they don't have them, you can request they order them or loan them from another library).  Just give it 30 days to see if it makes a difference. And seriously if a food on the list makes you feel bad, stop consuming it!  Start a practice of some kind to help you reduce stress.  Research which of the supplements recommended to treat SIBO are the least expensive.  There are several places to order them online and most do not charge tax or shipping.  If you can scrape together $$ for one test, consider a good 3 day stool test which can show how well your body is digesting food, if there are parasites present and whether candida is a problem.  The stool test will also show which botanicals and meds the nasty organisms are resistant to and which will kill them.

For a quick, inexpensive (no fun) fix you can also spend your food budget on amino acids, multivitamins, coconut oil and honey and do the elemental diet.  Siboinfo.com says it has an 80-84% rate of erradicating SIBO.  

I'll say it again, no one cares about your health as much as you, so keep your head up, do your research and take charge because in the end wouldn't you rather be a Tigger than an Eeyore???