SIBO What Causes It And Why IS It So Hard To Treat?

Do you have SIBO and does it keep coming back? Why is it SO hard to eradicate for many people? Is Rifaxamin the wonder drug that really "cures" SIBO?

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Greetings! Eric Bakker from New Zealand a naturopath all the way down from New Zealand. That's for coming back and looking at my videos today. It's a nice, wet, rainy day out there and we're going to do some videos.

I've got a question here from a lady in the states, she says Eric what causes SIBO? Why is it so hard to treat? She really wants to know that. This lady sent me an email a while ago. I won't read out the email, it's like this long with like 50 questions on it, which I haven't really got time to answer personally, but I'll do it through a YouTube video.

So, if we analyze the question, SIBO what causes it and why's it so hard to treat? I've done some questions, some YouTube videos on SIBO or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. A long time ago, when I was a student we called it dysbiosis, we didn't call it SIBO.

Now we know really that it's a small intestinal bowel problem, particularly it effects the small bowel. The small bowel's about 20 feet long. It's over three times as long as I am. It's huge. And like any part of the GI tract it contains bacteria. The stomach doesn't have a lot of bacteria in it because it's quite acid forming and low PH.

When we get down to the small bowel we have got bacteria down there, but there nowhere near as much as you're gonna find in the large intestine and the colon. So, it's estimated that you've got around a thousand to maybe two or three thousand bacteria per milliliter in the small bowel. A milliliter is a thousand of a liter. So it's only a very tiny amount of fluid. So, a thousand to two thousand bacteria in a milliliter in the small bowel. When we get to the colon or the large intestine however, we're gonna find over a billion bacteria per milliliter. So a lot, lot more bacteria in the large bowel.

It's a lot more competitive. It's a different kind of environment. But the small intestine is what we're talking about. The small intestine and the bacterial overgrowth.

Some of the research I've looked at says that SIBO can be caused by some bacteria in the large intestine coming back into the small bowel and overgrowing. Other research I looked at states it's primarily a lifestyle, particularly of the western world kind of problem.

So what causes it, it's difficult to work out, but antibiotics are a prime cause of SIBO but so is stress and so is irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn's disease. The oral contraceptive pill is also linked with small intestinal bacterial problems. There are many medications, proton palp inhibitor drives or acid blockers can be linked up with it. So there are a myriad of drugs that are linked with it. Stress is one of the big ones, but it's also estimated that about six to 15 percent of healthy people are A-symptomatic, meaning they haven't really got symptoms but they also have SIBO. It's also estimated that 80 to 90 percent of people with irritable bowel syndrome have got SIBO.

So, what are the symptoms? Well, cramping pains, bloating, gas, diarrhea, a lot of abdominal discomfort, can be multiple mal motions or even only a bowel motion every two or three days, but generally it will mean bloating and abdo ... abdominal discomfort will be a prime one that you can get with it.

Why is it so hard to treat? Well if you think about, it's right in the middle of the body. It's a difficult part to get access to. So, we can take medications in for example, one of the prime drugs that are used for it is called Rifaximin, it's an antibiotic.

But one study I looked at, a very prominent study, said that about half the people who take Rifaximin even more 60 percent get no result with it at all, just aggravation. Also, research has shown that you're gonna get a slightly better outcome with an anti-microbial, natural one than you are the Rifaximin, but the problem with Rifaximin is it really can create a lot of discomfort and pain and sickness with a lot of people. It can have a lot of side effects.


So, it is a transient drug. It doesn't stay in the body, it moves through and it causes killing the bacteria. I really don't like Rifaximin. I know there are some SIBO doctors and SIBO experts that love Rifaxamin, but I've had too many patients contact me that feel really bad after taking it. And I see too much collateral damage with that product. I don't really like it.

Thanks for tuning in on the video.