My name is Natalia. I am a mindfulness-based functional medicine Registered Dietitian. And one of my passions is gastrointestinal health, gut health. And why? Because a lot of people have come to me asking “Natalia, I have been told and I feel that I’ve been reading up on SIBO, which is Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, or I feel I have Candida, which is sometimes known as yeast overgrowth.” So let’s talk about those two. Right.
So overgrowths in the gut happen due to different reasons. But before I get to that, I want to tell you a little bit about your gut composition, and how that can get out of balance, because pretty much SIBO, which is, again, it’s Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, and yeast overgrowth, which is Candida happens when our microbiome, which is the species that live in our gut, get out of balance.
And why does it happen? Due to many different things, sometimes just life, you know, stress, eating too much and frequently over the sugary processed foods. Drinking, I know a lot of people who in their routine, they get home, they want to unwind, and while they’re cooking dinner, they have maybe one or two glasses of wine, and maybe after dinner another one. Sometimes people are on certain medications, you know, like antibiotics that are, believe it or not do impact the intestinal health and also your overall health. And also, a lot of people have been consuming supplements or foods that have ingredients that just put the whole integrity of the microbiome, which is – you want to think about your microbiome, which is the combination of species as a rainforest, right? And then kind of just all that needs to be in balance so that there’s a lot of trees and plants that are beautiful, and communicating with each other. And so that it can – a lot of healthy species can live there.
So, with SIBO and Candida, what happens is that these guys, we do have a little bit of yeast, Candida, we all have it. So we all have some of the bad guys. And it’s OK, as long as these guys are at ease, you know, it’s just – they’re part of us. We are made out of microbes, believe it or not.
So, if you’re struggling with these symptoms, and also just feel fatigued, then maybe you end up – you wake up… so, a very typical sign of SIBO is that you wake up flat in your stomach, and by the end of the day, you feel like you’re pregnant. And you’re like, what just happened, right? Or maybe you bloat after you eat. And that is a very typical sign of SIBO. Sometimes there’s a little bit of a pain by the right through the left side of the ribcage. And that is an indicative of SIBO, again, and it’s just gas accumulating there.
So if that is one of your symptoms, so we’re here at the clinic, we really know how to treat that. I see that day in and day out at the clinic, and it’s just about identifying what are we dealing with. The treatment for SIBO is going to be different than the treatment for Candida, which is another species that when people are eating sugary foods, and they have been under stress and they drink a lot of alcohol, or they have been under the treatment of antibiotics, or just maybe something in their life just change that really triggers stress.
So symptoms for yeast are sugar cravings, hormonal imbalances, anxiety, sometimes depression, chemical sensitivities, food sensitivities. But sometimes people with SIBO experience this as well, but they’re just treated differently. So when you come and see us, we have different options about going – in treating these. You can test via a stool test, which I’m very passionate about, yes, I get excited about poop. And believe it or not, the reason why is because we know what’s going on. And then once we know what is going on, we select the treatment.
So my job is to get you well by educating you and bringing the awareness of what is feeding these unhealthy pathogens, right, which again, today we’re talking about SIBO and Candida, and what you can do that is under your control to turn it around. There’s also a good amount of herbs that have been proven in the literature and that we use to kill off the bad guys, the SIBO and the Candida and bring in the good guys, because we kill off the bad guys, we want to make sure that the better guys are coming in.
So what I see a lot when people are treated for these overgrowths is that they feel better all round, not just they have a flat stomach and they feel good and they lose weight, and they’re able to have regular bowel movements and energy, but their mood also improve and they become happier and healthier.
So, excited to see you here at the clinic and help you get rid of SIBO and Candida for you to have a healthy gut and also live a happy, healthy life.