How long to consume SIBO Yogurt?

SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) is now epidemic in the U.S., affecting around 50% of the population. It is responsible for an impressive range of health conditions from obesity, to type 2 diabetes, to irritable bowel syndrome, to fibromyalgia and numerous others. We have been addressing SIBO with a collection of microbes that I call "SIBO Yogurt," a collection of human-sourced microbes that colonize the small intestine and produce natural antibiotics effective in killing the species of SIBO, a strategy that has been exceptionally effective.

But how long should you consume SIBO Yogurt to confidently correct this situation?

Chapters

• 0:00 What SIBO Yogurt Really Is
• 0:21 Why Store-Bought Yogurt Fails
• 0:42 Choosing Microbes With Three Powers
• 2:17 Conditions Linked To SIBO
• 3:12 Testing With The AIRE Device
• 4:19 Recipe Evolution And Strain Choices
• 5:26 Dose, Duration, And Big Numbers
• 6:45 Why Long-Term Use May Be Needed
• 7:53 Histamine Intolerance Workarounds
• 9:26 Herbal Regimens And Evidence

Transcript

William Davis, MD: 0:00

How long should you take the SIBO yogurt? Let's talk about that. So if you don't know what I'm talking about, please see my other YouTube videos, see my super gut book, see my super body books, see my thousands of blog posts, William DavisMD.com. And what SIBO yogurt is, is it a yogurt-like. It's not yogurt. You cannot buy this in the store. I wouldn't eat the stuff in the store because it's garbage. It's been fermented for too short a time. It has too few microbes. The microbes they use are kind of boring. They don't really have any significant beneficial effects. There's other things added. There's sugar, high fructose corn syrup, there's thickening or mixing agents like gel and gum and xanthan gum and carrageen. So I would not buy the stuff from the store. We're going to make something that looks and smells like yogurt, but we're going to use microbes that were originally sourced from humans. They're microbes meant for the hue for humans and other mammals. But we're going to specifically choose microbes that have three properties. One, survive stomach acid. Two, colonize the small intestine as well as colon. That's very unusual for beneficial microbes. So most of the microbes, for instance, in probiotics do not colonize the small intestine. So we're going to pick microbes that have the capacity to colonize a small intestine, 24 feet of small intestine, as well as the colon. And we're going to choose species and strains that produce bacteriocins. These are natural antibiotics, smarter than prescription antibiotics. When you take a prescription antibiotic, it kills almost everything. Good microbes, bad microbes. The bactericins of the species we're choosing are specific for killing fecal microbes, because that's the problem in colonic dysbiosis, that is disruption of the microbiome in the colon, or in the very common small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO, we say SIBO. So it's an overproliferation of fecal microbes. Well, we're going to make this yogurt-like food that has all those properties to get rid of the SIBO as well as colonic dysbiosis. So microbes that colonize the small intestine and colon produce bacteria and don't get killed off by stomach acid. How long do you take this? Say you have some of the signs of SIBO, let's say uh food intolerances. If you have any form of food intolerance, it could be in nightshades, FODMAPs, legumes, fructose-containing foods, histamine containing foods, those are all variations of SIBO. The problem's not the food, the problem is your gastrointestinal microbiome that creates this apparent intolerance that nobody 50 years ago had, right? But is ubiquitous now. So food intolerances, conditions that are virtually synonymous with SIBO, irrital bowel syndrome, other forms of inflammatory bowel disease like Crohn's or disease or also colitis, fibromyalgia, sleep apnea, obesity, type 2 diabetes, an autoimmune condition, a neurodegenerative. These are all diseases where the likelihood of SIBO is so high, or at least clonic dysbiosis, that you can safely assume. Or you could test yourself. There's a device called the Air Device, A-I-R-E. I've got it right here. Here's the most recent form. This was the original form. Original form measured hydrogen gas. This new one measures hydrogen gas and methane. There's a protocol to follow. It's in my super gut book. It's also in my blog, my WilliamDavisMD.com, how to use it. There's a diet prep, and then there's a specific sequence to use. It's very easy. You can do that too, to measure hydrogen gas in the breath. Because microbes produce hydrogen gas, but you your body cannot. So you can use the hydrogen gas as a mapping tool to locate where microbes are located. So it's very simple, but there's a specific protocol used that's in SuperGut or my William DavisMD.com blog. So let's say you have a food intolerance, or maybe you took antibiotics for a long time for acne or Lyme disease, or for whatever reason. Now you have really rip-roaring SIBO. And you might be experiencing histamine intolerance, uh, other problems, urobowel syndrome type symptoms, bloating, gas, diarrhea. So we're going to use the SIBO yogurt, right? In the original recipe in my super gut book, I fermented, it was a slightly different recipe. I used bacillus coagulants rather than bacillus subtulus. And we co-fermented all three. And you know what? It did work that way. So you could do that. But I think a better way is to individually ferment the lactobacillus rotori, the lactobacillus gastri, and the bacillus subtillus. Because you get higher counts of each that way. When we count the number of microbes, for instance, in the lactobacillus rotori yogurt, we get about 300 billion, 300 billion per half cup or 120 milliliter serving. So we get these super dual. That's part of the reason why I believe it's so effective. Because we have big numbers. You know, if you're gonna go to battle as an army and you're going up against an army of 100,000, are you gonna show up with a thousand soldiers? Of course not. You want to show up with big numbers. If you're gonna go to battle against trillions and trillions of fecal microbes, you want to start with big numbers. So we start with hundreds of billions. We do that by making this thing that looks like, looks and smells like yogurt. Now, that recipe is in my super gut book, it's in my super body book, it's in my weekwindmd.com blog, but it's very easy. Where to source the microbes, the conditions, the time and temperature to ferment them, it's very easy. And then you consume a quarter, maybe a half cup of each per day. And you do that for a minimum of four weeks. Now, if you're one of these people who has really bad SIBO, because you took antibiotics for a long time, you're probably gonna do this for a long time, maybe even forever, at least until we figure out how to get these microbes to take up permanent residence. No one knows how to do that yet. That's a major question, by the way. If your mom gave you, for instance, lactobacillus roterite at birth by your passage through the birth canal or breastfeeding or contact, you'd have that microbe for a lifetime. But your mom and you were exposed to antibiotics and other factors that wiped out all the roterite. So if you had it from your mom, it should last for a lifetime, barring exposure to antibiotics. If you restore rotori through this yogurt or other means or a probiotic, it's in your GI tract for about a few days. That's it. Why? Why the difference? Well, nobody knows for a fact, but it's likely the lack of what's called a consortium or guilt. That is, microbes don't exist in isolation. They rely on other microbes, just like humans. They live in communities of supportive other species. And we don't know what those other species are. I hope, maybe in a f who knows, a few years, we'll say don't just get rotori or gastri or bacillus cellus. Get those microbes with these, I don't know, ten other species, whatever. And they all support each other via metabolites. But we don't know what that is now. So you're stuck with having to do this chronically. So minimum four weeks SIBO yogurt, each of the SIBO yogurts, longer if you have bad SIBO, but even if you got rid of your SIBO after four weeks, it's helpful to consume it, that SIBO yog the SIBO yogurt microbes intermittently, maybe three times a week or so, because SIBO, for unclear reasons, loves to come back. And those microbes, especially left missiles roteri, provides other benefits: better sleep, better mood, increased empathy, generosity, increased intensity of love and affection for the people close to you, uh, increased musculature, loss of abdominal visceral fat, better skin. So there's so many benefits to the uh microbes of a SIBO, it's worth doing chronically forever until we figure out this uh long-term uh colonization issue. So, minimum four weeks, but don't be surprised if you need to do it longer. Because you know, if you got SIBO over 20 years of bad diet, exposure to antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals, it's gonna take a while to correct, especially if you have histamine intolerance. That's a really tough issue. By the way, if you are intolerant to the rotori, which one of the effects of rotori is to produce histamine. Now, histamine is a normal signal molecule. You can't get rid of histamine. If you turned off all histamine, you would die. It's like having no insulin. Insulin is necessary. It's a signal molecule, right? It's a hormone. If you had no insulin, you would die. So same thing here with histamine. You need histamine. What you don't want is the loss of microbes that were processing the histamine for you. When you lose those beneficial microbes, any increase in histamine, whether it's through food or roteri, can make you sick. The problem is not the food, the problem is not the roteri, the problem is that you lost the dozens of species that previously were responsible for processing the histamine. So we rebuild your microbiome, and that's a whole other conversation. We do that with the SIBO yogurt, fermented foods, fibers, and other efforts. And you bring back those species and the histamine tolerance goes away. But if you have that and you can't tolerate the rotary, you could always leave the rotary out at the start and add it later on. You could use smaller quantities of each yogurt, especially the rotari, maybe a tablespoon rather than a quarter or a half cup. Or you could use one of the herbal antibiotic regimens that are detailed in my super gut book, the Candibactin ARBR or the FC cyto with dysbiocide regimens. They do work. I wouldn't pay any attention to the marketing claims about certain products that are supposed to cure SIBO. There's no data to support those. We want at least some data and those two regimens, the Candibactin regimen and the FC cyto dysbiocide regimen, though there actually is some evidence, not a lot, but some evidence to validate that these are indeed effective, at least as effective as the conventional antibiotic xyfaxin. That's all detailed in the Superget book. If you have a histamine intolerance and can't tolerate the roteri, but in general, four weeks or more and consider chronic consumption for all its beneficial effects.