Endo Battery
Welcome to Endo Battery, the podcast that's here to journey with you through Endometriosis and Adenomyosis.
In a world where silence often shrouds these challenging conditions, Endo Battery stands as a beacon of hope and a source of strength. We believe in the power of knowledge, personal stories, and expert insights to illuminate the path forward. Our mission? To walk with you, hand in hand, through the often daunting landscape of Endometriosis and Adenomyosis.
This podcast is like a warm hug for your ears, offering you a cozy space to connect, learn, and heal. Whether you're newly diagnosed, a seasoned warrior, or a curious supporter, Endo Battery is a resource for you. Here, you'll find a community that understands your struggles and a team dedicated to delivering good, accurate information you can trust.
What to expect from Endo Battery:
Personal Stories: We're all about real-life experiences – your stories, our stories – because we know that sometimes, the most profound insights come from personal journeys.
Leading Experts: Our podcast features interviews with top experts in the field. These are the individuals who light up the path with their knowledge, sharing their wisdom and expertise to empower you.
Comfort and Solace: We understand that Endometriosis can be draining – physically, emotionally, and mentally. Endo Battery is your safe space, offering comfort and solace to help you recharge and regain your strength.
Life-Charging Insights: When Endometriosis tries to drain your life, Endo Battery is here to help you recharge. We're the energy boost you've been looking for, delivering insights and strategies to help you live your best life despite the challenges.
Join us on this journey, and together, we'll light up the darkness that often surrounds Endometriosis and Adenomyosis. Your story, your strength, and your resilience are at the heart of Endo Battery. Tune in, listen, share, and lets charge forward together.
Endo Battery
QC: SIBO or Just Need to Poop? Is The Low FODMAP Diet Beneficial?
Send us a text with a question or thought on this episode
Dr. Zachary Spiritos demystifies SIBO treatment for patients with complex conditions like endometriosis and mast cell activation syndrome. He cuts through the noise with a straightforward approach to this commonly misunderstood digestive condition, explaining why it's often simpler to treat than many functional medicine practitioners suggest.
• SIBO treatment basics: antibiotics like rifaximin that shift your microbiome rather than traditional systemic antibiotics
• Preventing recurrence by identifying root causes: antibiotic use, PPI use, chronic narcotic use, or other factors slowing bowel motility
• Pro-motility agents can help the small intestine function properly to prevent bacteria from accumulating where they don't belong
• Low FODMAP diets may help but are used sparingly due to their restrictive nature
• Elemental diets are a last resort for persistent cases
• SIBO is often overdiagnosed when the real issue is constipation or pelvic floor dysfunction
• Virtually all endometriosis patients have some degree of pelvic floor dysfunction
• Pelvic floor dysfunction prevents proper evacuation of both stool and gas, causing significant bloating
Have questions? Send them in using the link in the description, email contact@endobattery.com, or visit the endobattery.com contact page.
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Picture this you walk into the GI doctor and you tell them I don't know what's going on and they say well, it could be IBS or it could be SIBO small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Now here's the thing. Many of us have gotten this diagnosis and really feel this sense of either despair or hope, depending on how it's presented. Well, if you're one of the lucky few that gets presented with, it is a curable thing. However, what do we do if it continually comes back? Dr Zach Spiritos joins us on this Quick Connect and breaks that down just a little bit better for us. Stay tuned.
Speaker 1:Life moves fast and so should the answers to your biggest questions. Welcome to EndoBattery's Quick Connect, your direct line to expert insights. Short, powerful and right to the point. You send in the questions, I bring in the experts and in just five minutes you get the knowledge you need. No long episodes, no extra time needed, and just remember expert opinions shared here are for general information and not for personalized medical advice. Always consult your provider for your case-specific guidance. Got a question? Send it in and let's quickly get you the answers. I'm your host, alana, and it's time to connect. Today I'm joined by my guest, dr Zachary Spiritos, a board-certified neurogastroenterologist with a passion for treating irritable bowel syndrome, functional abdominal pain and mobility disorders. He brings a wealth of knowledge and compassion to the table. Please help me in welcoming Dr Zach Spiritos to the table. What's the best approach for treating SIBO in complex conditions like endometriosis, mast cell? All of the things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think we overthink SIBO sometimes. From a pathophysiologic, mechanistic perspective it is quite complicated, but fortunately the treatment is pretty basic and it's antibiotics, based on what kind of SIBO that you have. And these antibiotics aren't like traditional antibiotics, they're more like eubiotics, which really just shift your microbiome to something that's a little healthier and they're not absorbed systemically, so they are fairly well tolerated. That said, if someone has MCAS and responds to this medication, rifaximin, which is traditionally used in SIBO unless you have a different type of SIBO that's a different conversation then that's different and you just can't take the medication because you have a reaction to it. But that's, in my experience, few and far between.
Speaker 2:The harder element to this is how do you get it from coming back, and that's all identifying why it was there to begin with, okay. And was it antibiotic use? Was it a PPI use? Was it chronic narcotic use? That really slows the bowel down so that bacteria has a chance to proliferate. And if you target that and sometimes we're good at it, sometimes it's tough to identify then we can prevent it from coming back, Because SIBO can come back over and over again. You can continue to treat with antibiotics called rifaximin, and again there's another one that we can use for a different type of SIBO that can be. People don't want to be on antibiotics in perpetuity, so it's really trying to understand why it's there and then treat that. And sometimes we use pro-motility agents to help the small intestines squeeze, to help the kind of the small intestines peristals adequately and get small bacteria or bacteria to where it should be in the colon, or removing offending agents like PPIs, narcotics that could lead to conditions like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.
Speaker 1:Do you combine that with a low FODMAP diet as well?
Speaker 2:I don't, I don't. So the low FODMAP diet it can be quite restrictive and does it work? In SIBO it does, but I think we just treat the SIBO. And so if someone has recurrent SIBO over and over again or just it's not getting better with rifaximin which again is really really rare but if we test people and they're just not getting better, then there are diets you can use. You can use an elemental diet which effectively is starving the bacteria and you're really just giving food in its digested forms. You can imagine how tasty that is. It's pretty gross. We don't use that unless it's a last resort. But yeah, I have had patients who just continue to get SIBO over and over and over again because they have bariatric surgery and these kind of blind loops of intestines that continue to kind of just cultivate growth of this bacteria that lead to ongoing fermentation. Then we will use a low FODMAP diet, but sparingly and on a case-by-case basis.
Speaker 1:Side note on this endopatients are really big for SIBO.
Speaker 2:It's really not that complex. And so here's my issue with functional medicine doctors, where they don't work in science, a lot, a lot of it's pseudoscience, where they just a lot of it's not based on clinical data and they turn SIBO into like high dose oregano or high dose garlic and you're like, okay, well, sure, but we also have an antibiotic that works really well, it's really safe, and so in that world they really harp on SIBO. And, yes, it happens. It's not that common though. In fact, when someone's really bloated, they oftentimes just need to poop more. I was like am I bloated? Do I have seaballs, like we haven't pooped in 10 days? So like, maybe let's work on that?
Speaker 1:Probably, not Probably, just need to poop Right A hundred percent.
Speaker 2:Another one is like pelvic floor dysfunction, which is really underlooked, and if you can't evacuate stool, you can't evacuate gas and it's tough to treat. It really is. You got to retrain the whole pelvic floor and people kind of want an antibiotic or a medication to treat that. But it's just, it's, it's glossed over.
Speaker 1:I tell you, if I have a woman who's in her fifties and sixties- who have a lot of bloating pelvic floor is at the dysenterges, like the top of my list. Yeah, that should be for, I think, pretty much everyone.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, pelvic floor is a huge, huge issue and actually we don't know any endopatients that don't have pelvic floor dysfunction.
Speaker 2:I bet.
Speaker 1:That's a wrap for this quick connect. I hope today's insights helped you move forward with more clarity and confidence. Do you have more questions? Keep them coming, send them in and I'll bring you the expert answers. You can send them in by using the link in the top of the description of this podcast episode or by emailing contact at endobatterycom or visiting the endobatterycom contact page. Until next time, keep feeling empowered through knowledge.