By Rosalind E. Rohrbaugh
Vanquishing SIBO with Herbal Medicine 22 YEARS OLD. FIVE FEET, ZERO INCHES. 77 POUNDS. That's the lowest my scale’s ever read. The first time I saw that number, I was on a Publix scale at the beginning of summer 2020. That night, I hardly finished a single, plain, baked chicken tender with a small, microwaved yam cut open on the side, one of the few meals my stomach could tolerate. I had become a creature of little to no appetite. As each day progressed, any attempts to find physical comfort were disrupted by excruciating stomach pain and bloating. Nausea had me dizzy all day. Each early morning would break and send me up out of bed to be sick all day again. The weight loss and the symptoms had been gradual, with a strange pain starting at the top of my stomach around the beginning of 2017. I was at my standard petite size of 100 pounds at that time. The nurse at my primary care office waved it off as a minor case of gastritis and prescribed Zantac. After a month on the drug with no improvement, but instead, progression — a new symptom of
Small Intestinal Bacteria Overgrowth is a real condition, a monster that ravages the body. I’m thankful I took charge of finding help for myself. lower stomach pain had begun — I decided it was time to visit my first gastroenterologist. This was in the middle of 2017. I never did meet the doctor, except when it was time for my dueling endoscopy and colonoscopy. “Just to see if we can confirm anything,” they explained, after I dropped the bombshell that I did indeed have a father with ulcerative colitis. After the endoscopy and the colonoscopy came back clear, I discovered there was yet another hurdle to clear — a capsule endoscopy. A week later, I
was back in that same room, swallowing a little robot pill that would spend the next eight hours photographing my insides. Two weeks later, they told me the only explanation was Crohn's due to ulcerations they had detected. “Isn't there any more testing we should do first?” I questioned. The nurse insisted there was no need; I did have a family history after all. Their recommendation was steroids, but I wasn't feeling entirely convinced. So, I sought a second opinion. When I arrived at the new doctor, the scale was now reading 90 pounds — 10 pounds gone in just under a couple months. “This might not be Crohn's disease,” the second gastroenterologist said, as she stared down with a scowl at the pill camera's photography. She complained of poor image quality. So, she ordered new tests — none I’d been given before — and all of which returned clean. My new GI concluded after two months of labs it was simply a case of IBS. “Try and up your calorie intake and take some peppermint capsules.” Continued on page 16
14 Spirit of Change | SPRING/SUMMER 2022
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JOURNAL OF NATURAL HEALING
