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The Prebiotic Fiber Test

September 6, 2017 By Dr. William Davis

If you have excessive gas, bloating, abdominal discomfort, or diarrhea within the first hour of initiating prebiotic fibers to cultivate healthy bowel flora, it is highly suggestive of a condition called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or SIBO.

Confirming, then correcting, SIBO will then be a crucial issue in your full health recovery. Failure to correct SIBO can result in greater risk for type 2 diabetes, increased triglycerides, higher blood pressure, emotional disturbances, autoimmune conditions, and increased risk for diverticular disease and colon cancer.

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Transcript:

Let’s discuss something I call the Prebiotic Fiber Test.

This is a more advanced conversation, that I begin in the Undoctored book (Undoctored — Why Health Care Has Failed You And How You Can Become Smarter Than Your Doctor), and pursue even further in the Undoctored Inner Circle website, where we talk about this issue, and how to deal with it effectively.

I wanted to get you alert, to the possibility that you might have this problem. We’re seeing more and more this, as more and more people engage in the Wheat Belly lifestyle. The Wheat Belly lifestyle is very effective for regaining health, and it can unmask this problem that took years to develop. It didn’t develop last tuesday, or last month, even last year probably. It probably developed over many years of consuming grains and sugars, and other factors that cultivate unhealthy bowel flora.

What small intestinal bacterial overgrowth is; we all have micro-organisms in our colon, way down in the far end of our intestinal tract. Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth means that organisms have ascended, all the way up the 20-some feet of your small intestine, all the way up into the duodenum and stomach. You essentially have your entire gastrointestinal tract infected with abnormal micro-organisms — even if you’ve done everything right — on the Wheat Belly lifestyle, Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox, Wheat Belly Total Health — you’ve done everything…

…that is, you’ve eliminated all wheat and grains. You limit your net carbs to 15 grams or less per meal. You’ve restored vitamin D, Omega 3 fatty acids, magnesium and iodine, and achieved favorable thyroid status. You’ve taken a high-potency multi-species probiotic. Then you introduced the prebiotic fiber, to feed healthy bowel flora. If you that, you cultivate healthy species, etc.

But some people take the prebiotic fiber — the prebiotic fibers don’t select the healthy species, you have to have the healthy species, to grow and proliferate — but if you have very bad dysbiosis, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, those prebiotic fibers will feed both good and bad. What happens, is that people will have gas (excessive gas), bloating, diarrhea, and abdominal pain.

The tell-tale sign you have this, the most powerful tell-tale sign, is if you have those symptoms within the first hour. So think of it, you take a prebiotic fiber, that’s meant to nourish micro-organisms in your colon. That means it has to traverse (the fiber you eat), the esophagus, the stomach, the duodenum, the 20-some feet of jejunum and ileum, and finally gets to the colon. Well, that takes many hours — 8, 10, 12 or more hours to get there. If you have a response within, say, 20 minutes, or 30 minutes, certainly within the first hour, it means that the organisms are a lot higher up than the colon, right? Because they can’t get to the colon in an hour. That’s a really powerful sign, that you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

The Wheat Belly basic program, Total Health or 10-Day Grain Detox, can address this for some people, just by taking the high-potency probiotics, and eliminating all the wheat and grains, etc., that alone will solve this for some people. But many people, it will not. It’s process that required years to develop, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, will require additional effort. I want you to understand that this peculiar effect of prebiotic fibers, this apparent intolerance, this discomfort, gas, diarrhea, that develops within the first hour of a prebiotic fiber, is very highly suggestive that you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

If this happens to you, you want to:
1. verify this, and then
2. address it.
Now that’s a much more elaborate conversation. It’s among the more complex of the things we do in the Undoctored program, the continuation of the Wheat Belly program. You’ll find that in the Undoctored book, and Undoctored Inner Circle website. This discussion is meant to alert you to that possibility.

What if you just let it be. Can you just let it go, and forget about it? No, because it leads to long-term problems such as diverticular disease, diverticulitis, and colon cancer risk, and metabolic distortions, like higher blood sugar, higher blood insulin, weight gain, higher triglycerides, higher cholesterol values, higher blood pressure, emotional disturbances like anxiety, and disruptions of sleep. In other words, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth is a very, very important issue to address. It can allow conditions like fibromyalgia, or psoriasis, or other auto-immune conditions to persist. It can even cause or contribute to those conditions, even if you’ve done everything else right.

Getting this condition addressed is very important. Recognize that this peculiar effect of prebiotic fibers that occurs very early is a highly suggestive test that you can use to alert yourself, or your healthcare provider, that you have this issue that must be addressed for full health recovery.

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Filed Under: DIY Healthcare, Health Information Tagged With: abdominal pain, autoimmune, blood sugar, cholesterol, diabetes, diarrhea, diy health, diyhealthcare, dr william davis, dysbiosis, inflammation, probiotic, sibo, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, undoctored

About Dr. William Davis

William Davis, MD, FACC is cardiologist and author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Wheat Belly series of books. He is also author of the new Undoctored: Why Health Care Has Failed You and How You Can Become Smarter Than Your Doctor.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Chuck Horvath

    September 7, 2017

    I get a LOT of gas, but not for several hours.
    Smoothie at 8 AM gas starts at about 2 -3

    • Bob Niland

      September 7, 2017

      Chuck Horvath wrote: «I get a LOT of gas…»

      The general rule is: a reaction to mixed and varied prebiotic fiber intake says something about the state of your microbiome, and almost nothing about the fibers themselves.

      re: «…but not for several hours. Smoothie at 8 AM gas starts at about 2 -3»

      The program doesn’t yet have a firm interpretation for that. One obvious conjecture is that you have an unfavorable balance of gut flora, but the undesirables haven’t yet proliferated all the way up the small intestine.

      If so, cases like that might be more responsive to just doing the Undoctored basic program, and deferring any specific intervention. The interventions tend to be at least annoying, so are worth avoiding if possible.

      This then raises the question of what you’ve been doing in diet and lifestyle, and for how long.

      Cultivation of bowel flora is identified as principle #6 in the Undoctored program, and itself has three parts, all of which must be done (taking some liberties with the ordering):
      0. Avoid gut antagonists
      1. Course of high-potency multi-strain probiotic
      2. Introduce and gradually ramp up mixed/varied prebiotic fibers

      I’ve listed “raccoons in the garden” first, because it’s probably not on the radar for most people interested in, or even following, the WB/Undoctored lifestyle. Modern comestibles (not just processed food-like substances, but beverage and most tap water) are awash in subliminal anti-microbials that can easily bias gut flora populations in unhappy directions. As I watch developments, dysbiosis appears to be much more prevalent than heretofore suspected.
      ________
      Blog Associate (click my user name for details)

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