Optimizing Nutrients: Vitamins I'm Taking to Help Cure SIBO

I'd been a lifelong sceptic about supplements, until I was diagnosed with SIBO. When you have SIBO, bacteria that are normally located in the large intestine have migrated up to the small intestine, where they encounter your nutrients earlier in the digestive process and get to them before you do. SIBO patients are deficient in many vitamins, especially fat-soluble ones, and these vitamin deficiencies can actually mimic other very serious health issues. For example, a B12 deficiency can look amazingly alot like MS, ALS, Parkinson's or other incurable disease.

The PHD diet advises getting our nutrients from food wherever possible, but those of us with SIBO have malabsorption issues and are very likely deficient in Vitamin B12 and D3, among others. To heal the gut it's essential to optimize your nutrients as quickly as possible. This means asking your doctor for an extensive vitamin and mineral panel and researching the type of vitamin you need to take for best absorption. (Example: Methylcobalamin B12 is more bioavailable than the less expensive cyanocobalamin.)

Multivitamins aren't a good option. They'll never have the right proportion of each vitamin that you need. Why? Because some vitamins like C and magnesium are so big that to put all that into a single multivitamin would not be swallowable. In addition, you don't need to take all vitamins daily — just those you're deficient in or ones critical to correcting a health condition. To bring my nutrition up to speed I take this panel recommended by the Perfect Health Diet:

Daily
* D3 — to go weekly, after serum 25OHD of 40 ng/ml is achieved
* B12 500 mcg — to go weekly after deficiency is addressed
* B-5 500 mg
* C 1 g
* K2 100 mcg
* Magnesium 200 mg (when not taking Natural Calm)
* Iodine 225 mcg

Weekly
* B vitamins:
    * 50 to 100 mg each of B1, B2, and B6
    * 5 mg biotin
* Boron 3 mg
* Zinc 50 to 100 mg

And when not eating 1/4 lb of liver per week:
* Copper 50 mg
* Vitamin A from cod liver oil, 50,000 IU/week

And when not eating brazil nuts::
* Selenium 200 mcg

Additionally
I start my morning with a tsp of virgin cod liver oil — that's right, our grandmas knew a thing or two that we've forgotten. The omega-3s in cod liver oil balance out the omega-6s I get in olive oil. The only other oils I cook with are grassfed butter and coconut oil.

Next, I mix a 1/2 tsp of glycine powder in a glass and drink it down with 1 NAC capsule. Both are healing to the gut lining, and NAC helps get neurotransmitters back on track, which can help with the sleep disruption that throws the migrating motor complex off, slowing up digestion.

I fast until noon, when I eat my first meal — usually eggs in some type of veggie frittata. While I'm eating I gulp down two Atrantil capsules. Atrantil is a botanical antimicrobial that tamp down my "bad" gut bacteria population. About a half hour later, I pop a soil-based probiotic (usually Prescript Assist).

I mix a 1/4 tsp of vitamin c powder in a 1-liter travel bottle and take it with me to work. When I've finished it, I fill it up again. I try to drink two of these during the day before it's time to commute home.

After dinner I take all of the above supplements, and I'm done for the day, unless constipation symptoms have raised their ugly head. When that happens, I take mix two teaspoons of Natural Calm magnesium drink into a mug of warm water and drink it down before bed.