Treating Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO)

Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) is a widespread problem that has recently become a popular diagnosis. This article addresses the root cause of SIBO and reveals actionable steps you can take to heal yourself.

The real root cause

If you receive a diagnosis of SIBO, your doctor will likely suggest that you take an antibiotic. Unfortunately, in many cases, any antibiotic you use will only offer temporary relief. Although the medical community recognizes that SIBO is a bacterial infection, they are not aware that SIBO actually originates from chronic strep in the body.

In many people, streptococci appear in childhood. They can be transmitted from a parent at conception, so that the baby is born with streptococci already present in the body. Others can contract strep at daycare, school, or other places. Strep is easily passed from one person to another, and there are many strains you can contract.

Over the years, medical professionals have focused on group A and group B strep, which are two of the eight groups of strep that science and research have now publicly recognized. However, groups A through H are only a small fraction of the actual number of streptococcal groups—there aren't even enough letters in the alphabet to classify the number of streptococcal groups.

Conditions such as urinary tract infections (UTIs) and bacterial vaginosis also result from strep, but these problems are often blamed on an unspecified bacterial or yeast infection. For more information on candida, read the Healing Medium . Even if some doctors are aware that these conditions are associated with strep, they will likely have trouble spotting strep. If strep has been in your body for an extended period of time, it can become almost impossible to detect its presence in your body with the tests available today.

Nowadays, one of the few times doctors and practitioners look for strep is when a woman is pregnant or trying to get pregnant. Although doctors and medical practitioners can sometimes detect strep with a vaginal strep test, these tests are not 100% sure.

SIBO in the body

Currently, many experts assume that SIBO is often simply a problem in a person's intestinal tract, but this is not the case. The truth is that SIBO can be present in the body from the mouth all the way to the rectum. This means that SIBO can be found in the stomach, duodenum, small intestine, colon, rectum, and esophagus.

Many medical professionals mistakenly believe that bacteria thrive primarily in the intestinal tract. They think so because of the widespread but inaccurate belief that there is no gastric hydrochloric acid in this area. They may be skeptical that bacteria are capable of wreaking havoc in the stomach, because they believe that's where the stomach's hydrochloric acid resides. The assumption is that this acid would break down and kill all bacteria, including streptococci .

The truth about stomach acid

The medical community still believes that hydrochloric acid is an acidic solution. The truth is that hydrochloric acid is a complex mixture of seven acids. For the first time, Anthony William shares this information in "Healer Medium" and addresses the issue even more thoroughly in "Help for the Liver" .

A doctor can tell you that you have sufficient or strong hydrochloric acid based on test results, but these tests do not account for all seven components in the hydrochloric acid mixture because the medical community is not aware of the existence of this mixture.

Medical research and science are most familiar with one of the seven elements that make up the mixture. Therefore, if this element, along with three of the other elements that make up part of the mixture, are sufficiently present, then the test may show that you have enough or even a lot of hydrochloric acid, even if the other three elements are severely depleted or completely absent. When only two or three of the components in the mixture are at a low level, the bacteria will not die when they enter your stomach. And that makes you susceptible to the symptoms associated with SIBO and other gut health issues.

You may know that bacteria can move and travel throughout the body. But what people still don't know is that bacteria can travel from the intestinal tract back up to the stomach, causing problems. For this reason, it is extremely important to build up your stomach hydrochloric acid mix so that you can heal yourself from SIBO or protect yourself from other gut health issues.

Some people who are told they have enough gastric hydrochloric acid still suffer from stomach ulcers. In this case, it is probably due to the fact that one or more critical elements are no longer present in their mixture of their stomach hydrochloric acid. The bacteria that create these ulcers can multiply when there is a lack of powerful stomach hydrochloric acid to keep the gut in harmony. Whether you have an ulcer or just want to prevent it, building strong stomach hydrochloric acid is critical.

Buildup of gastric hydrochloric acid

Many doctors recommend the use of antibiotics to treat SIBO, but this practice can strengthen the strep bacteria already in the body. Also, antibiotics can only suppress symptoms for a short time. Streptococcus can quickly acquire immunity to antibiotics, and frequent use of antibiotics can lead to an aggressive, mutated form. The excessive use of antibiotics has led to the emergence of a number of different varieties of streptococci .

Decades ago, there were only two groups of streptococci with a small number of strains associated with each. Unfortunately, these groups of streptococci have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics, and now groups A and B have become groups A to Z, etc. In addition, each of these groups contains branches of mutated strains. Antibiotic-resistant strains can linger in the body for years, causing acne, sinus problems, urinary tract infections, pneumonia and even appendicitis.

Don't worry if you've taken antibiotics in the past for strep problems. Antibiotics may be necessary in certain situations, but the goal is to continue to strengthen your immune system and remove the bacterial load from your body so that it can be minimized whenever possible.

One of the ways you can start to get rid of strep in your body is by increasing your stomach hydrochloric acid. This will help kill the bacteria in your stomach and any bacteria that may be trying to enter your stomach. Hydrochloric acid works not only in the stomach, but also deep in the duodenum and small intestine (although this is not known to the medical community). Some of the six hitherto unexplored of all seven hydrochloric acid compounds are responsible for working with your immune system to protect places other than the stomach, such as deep in the small intestine, where certain elements of the hydrochloric acid compound work to destroy the bacteria.

A simple and powerful way to build up hydrochloric acid in your body is to drink 0.5 liters of pure celery juice on an empty stomach every morning. The mineral salts in celery help to restore all the missing elements in the mixture of seven acids that make up stomach hydrochloric acid. Once your acid is boosted, it will be able to destroy SIBO and kill all types of strep.

Mineral salts also strengthen your immune system, as some cells of your immune system find great support from the mineral salts in celery stalks (similar mineral salts are found in spinach stalks, but this does not mean that spinach stalks can replace this , which celery stalk juice can offer you). Once white blood cells pick up these mineral salts, they help generate chemical compounds that can rid the body of SIBO. It would be hundreds of years before science and research discovered the phenomenal ways in which celery stalk juice supports the body.

Resetting your immune system

When working to overcome strep , it's also important to rebuild your immune system. This will enable your body to create new chemical compounds - ones that strep is not immune to - that can kill the bacteria and remove it from the body.

Once you know that a SIBO diagnosis means your body is fighting strep, you may be able to recall times in the past when the same bacteria caused other problems over the years: strep throat, swollen tonsils, sinus infections, cystic acne or urinary tract infections. Learn more about these and other symptoms by reading Liver Help . Identifying what is happening in your body completely changes the trajectory of the healing process. It allows you to attack the root cause with a confidence and precision you wouldn't otherwise have.

Also, understanding the truth that strep is behind SIBO actually starts to break down the bacteria wreaking havoc on your body. You may know that your thoughts affect your immune system, but this is greatly enhanced once you know the exact culprit causing your symptoms. (At this point, thanks to your newfound knowledge, you're actually rewiring your immune system to better deal with the bacillus).

Once you know the truth, an identification process begins where the killer cells in your body can fully connect with the pathogen that is causing your symptoms or conditions. Through the frequencies of thought, your immune system can modify, correct, redirect and absorb new information. These qualities are just the beginning. Your immune system can also restructure chemical compounds, a fact that science and research wouldn't come across for three or more decades. Lymphocytes, a subset of the immune system's white blood cells, use the healing information you learn and take in to create a new chemical compound that matches your understanding of what's happening in your body. This development allows your immune system to go after microorganisms that were once unaffected by its defense efforts.

Fear of fruit

People are often misadvised to avoid fruit if they are trying to rid their body of yeast, mold and bacteria or to heal from symptoms and conditions such as candida and SIBO. Unfortunately, this inaccurate advice can lead to a strong fear of the fruits that are actually critical to true healing. (Learn more about the harmful tendency to fear fruit in The Healing Medium ).

Some people don't feel at their best when they start eating fruit. They may think that they have too much sugar or that fruits are not healthy for them. The real reason why they may not feel well is that the fruit is highly detoxifying and helps to rid our body of toxins. This may cause temporary discomfort. Acids naturally present in fruit dissolve bacteria, including strep. Ripe bananas with spots are especially powerful for a person with SIBO because they can suffocate the bacteria and flush them out of the body. Other nourishing fruits are figs, cherries, mangoes and watermelon. Learn more about the miraculous physical, emotional and spiritual healing properties of different foods in The Best Foods .

Medicinal foods

Including some simple herbs in your diet can help get rid of SIBO and kill the underlying strep. Some particularly powerful herbs are rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano, parsley, and coriander. There are many ways to use them:

• Sprinkle fresh herbs over any cooked or raw dish, including guacamole, hummus, salsa, or other dips.
• Drink thyme tea every day.
• Oregano, fresh or in capsule form, is a huge weapon against SIBO.
• Juice the parsley and combine it with celery stalk juice (other than the pure celery stalk juice you make every morning). The mineral salts in parsley help fight SIBO.
• Eat cilantro, which flushes heavy metals from the body and also helps kill SIBO.

Medicinal nutritional supplements

Some supplements can be a great addition to the treatment protocol:

• Vitamin C is able to protect the body from the havoc that strep causes and from causing problems such as urinary tract infections, barley, pelvic inflammatory problems, cystic acne and sinus problems.
• Ant tree bark
• Hyssop tea
• Hibiscus tea
• Organic elderberry syrup
• Olive leaf (tincture)
• Liquid zinc sulfate
• B-12 with methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin

Recommendations for high-quality nutritional supplements can be found on the Healer Medium page, in the preferred supplements section.

For more nutritional supplement and treatment suggestions to help manage SIBO, check out Liver Help .

What to avoid

If you suffer from SIBO, it is extremely important to avoid chocolate until you have cleared the strep from your system and you are fully healed. If you have SIBO but love chocolate and don't see how you can give it up, cut back on it until you heal and choose a cleaner option without dairy or processed sugars.

How to move forward

If the road to healing seems overwhelming, know that you can do it step by step and change by change. Changing your diet and lifestyle can be challenging, so it's important to be compassionate with yourself as you go through these changes. During this process, never forget this basic truth: your body loves and is desperate to heal itself. It is doing everything in its power to make this happen. Remember that restoring your body takes time, patience and persistence. Celebrate every step you take, and be sure that with accurate information and the right tools, you are prepared to heal.