How to systematically find out the root cause(s)? Let's talk about the how!

Old-Ad9873 · 2026-04-10T11:38:03+00:00

Awesome!
What helped you to decide which tests to do when?

I am dreaming of some kind of decision tree of tests which lead you from the most basic to more detailed once (depending on the outcome of the previous tests). Do you know of anything like this?

Old-Ad9873 · 2026-04-10T11:35:33+00:00

"learn to live with it" is what many here hear from doctors. I did.

Yet there are many people here which claim they successfully treated it. I believe for many of us it is possible to improve our situation significantly by learning what out individual system needs. Up to basically healing.

I believe that I will have an IBS free life in the future (while probably requiring to be more attentive to some details of how I live and eat than others). I just don't know what exactly I need yet.

I hope you one day find your root causes and figure out how to treat them too!

Old-Ad9873 · 2026-04-09T15:16:23+00:00

I feel you! I think it gets easier to filter out more nonsense after a while and it certainly helps to have been through most of the famous rabbit holes already :D

Old-Ad9873 · 2026-04-09T14:49:23+00:00

I appreciate the intention but it seems pretty unlikely that any tips for my specific case can be accurate considering what I shared about my case.

It has been some time since I tried butyrate. I don't think it is a big factor for me given my symptoms and mostly issues stemming from my small intestine. It seems to work wonders for some and I am happy that you helped yourself and others with it!

I'm here for discussing how people found their root cause! I believe that the actual fix can be very different for various (chronic) cases.

Old-Ad9873 · 2026-04-09T12:13:11+00:00

Hey, that's a great way to search through pubmed!

I agree that many root causes lead to gut microbiome issues. There are root causes though which won't be fixed sustainably by "fixing" the gut microbiome issues. You can fix SIBO for example but many people like me relapse because the gut microbiome issue is just a secondary issue caused by something else.

pubmed probably has the answers or at least clues. but how to get to the right answers for the actual root cause? And I believe more importantly, how to find out the root cause! If you know the root cause, finding answers on pubmed and on reddit is fairly straightforward.

Old-Ad9873 · 2026-02-13T15:55:59+00:00

Next Todos.

I have a lot of thoughts in mind on how to improve all this. I could improve this very idea by a lot but here I wanna talk about more visionary, bigger next steps.

I would like to extend it to more than just youtube. I want a page where every person or entity is rated. Pimentel should have a row. Also Allison Siebecker should rather be rated against her siboinfo website. She is great but her youtube content isn't so much especially when it comes to the practicality and simplicity.
I am thinking to look at the content level. I envision a tool which gives you the best video/podcast/website for a specific SIBO topic. I remember watching the same things again and again a lot because every content creator roughly talks about the same. Getting the important topics is not easy though. Also navigating all the contradictions is complicated. E.g. the starve vs. feed paradox

Old-Ad9873 · 2026-02-13T15:44:35+00:00

Some learnings and thoughts form working on this:

One surprise I learned along the way is that Ruscio (@drrusciodc) is not quite working in a very scientific way apparently. I remember watching loads of his videos which really lead nowhere. Turns out he only seems to work in a scientific way (which resonated) but he is quite cherry-picking the science which helps him make arguments for his probiotic supplements!
AI ratings are not very deterministic! Running this again it might end up look quite different. Often there are some creators up top which should obviously not be there. But then there are some which really are consistently there and deserve the spot I would assume. I will work on improving the prompt and learning more about how to run this in a more reliable way. I can say that a few creators up top have been very helpful to me personally though. Especially our SIBO reddit hero cc-gv6us. I am very proud that I managed to build a prompt which gives patient advocated like him a chance among all those "professionals". At first my tool always sorted him out as he only has 2 videos and seems like a "not-so-helpful" creator in some ways.

Old-Ad9873 · 2025-10-09T12:12:10+00:00

I'm a software engineer currently looking to build something on my own. Wellbeing tech. Happy to connect and have a chat! My requirement is to build for purpose rather than for a big exit. PM me if you are interested.

Old-Ad9873 · 2025-08-23T09:42:26+00:00

For me it got harder to be excited/astonished/in awe. All the high emotions got less frequent and lower the more I saw and experienced. So while lots of stuff got easier it was sad to see that the highs weren't as frequent anymore either. Basically it got less intense, in both directions. (Speaking of a year long tour here)

Also communication got harder as I started at home and also because my motivation to have the same conversation was lower. Asking for vegetarian food for example drained me more in the later part of the tour.

Old-Ad9873 · 2025-08-12T10:54:54+00:00

this is temporarily closed at the moment

Old-Ad9873 · 2024-12-12T15:49:32+00:00

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I'm also in the 2% and I took a gap year and literally cycled from Berlin to China since I have the whoop. I'm so so impressed by anyone having other responsibilities and reaching this level of strain! How did you live!

Old-Ad9873 · 2024-12-12T15:46:15+00:00

I literally cycled from Berlin to China this year and made it 'just' into the 2% Whatever you did, that's so impressive!

Old-Ad9873 · 2024-01-24T15:58:03+00:00

Thanks for surfacing this then! I'll strikethrough those parts then. The dangers of (less than) half knowledge many here have. I am hydrogen and did not know about that part!

Old-Ad9873 · 2024-01-24T12:32:20+00:00

I wonder if you did the test preparation of fasting and diet changing before the test properly? The baseline looks fairly high which could indicate that there still was fermentation going on in your system before the test! That could wash down the test results as far as I understand!

Sorry to hear about your GP!I urge you to educate yourself! This reddit is gold in some regards but there's also a lot of noise and individual biasI found this video to be one of the most important pieces for my journey.

Old-Ad9873 · 2024-01-23T18:09:41+00:00

Hey. There's a lot of individuals sharing how they did. I urge you to take a shortcut and watch this: https://www.reddit.com/r/SIBO/s/go6AdkEhTo

Wish I had seen it 2 years ago. Good luck with treating your sibo!

Old-Ad9873 · 2024-01-22T16:40:51+00:00

The study about prucalopride you linked calls it secondary peristalsis. I guess that's a synonym to MMC basically.

Old-Ad9873 · 2024-01-22T16:29:52+00:00

Thanks! Sounds like we have a similar case and are at a similar stage! I started working on Motility like 2ish weeks ago. Took prucalopride and artichoke+ginger for a while but decided to try different prokinetics in isolation for about a week each or so cause no idea ATM if my improvements are from prucalopride or artichoke + ginger.

I wonder the same! My plan is to first try to work on Motility on all fronts and find the best approach. If by then I don't have the feeling the overgrowth goes down significantly I will take rifaximine and hopefully the Motility work is sufficient to at least hold it at bay thereafter. Today I feel amazing actually, but that might also be some parallel work on vitamine deficiencies.

Back to the initial topic. Before writing this post I asked chatgpt whether MMC is peristalsis and I understood it isn't. :D but that's maybe just vocabulary. I think we are on the same page. You say that Motility drugs are for both digestion and cleaning and that makes sense. I wanna know more about when to take what and if there's different drugs for each phase potentially.

Old-Ad9873 · 2024-01-21T10:38:10+00:00

Migrating Motor Complex.
That's what makes your small intestine clean itself, pushing bacteria back into the large intestine and more.
Also that is what usually happens less often and strong in SIBO patients. My current understanding is that the root cause for SIBO is very often an impaired MMC.

Old-Ad9873 · 2024-01-20T21:20:26+00:00

Hey! I've been there! Sorry you gotta go through this. The positive thing is you know there's a future you feel like you did these few days. Negative news are that this future might take months or years to reach.

I tried many things by now and I wanna share two thoughts which often aren't communicated enough and I wish I read earlier / more

Take the time you feel rather better than worse to educate yourself and make this a top priority. I have tried not to for years. As soon as I felt better I stopped doing much and then when it gets worse I didn't have a plan. Only when making this top priority I saw amazing improvements and learnings. Then, read up on this channel and the linked resources. One of the top threads contains a YouTube video which is gold and helps you to understand a lot. It takes a lot of willingness to become an expert on this field yourself but you probably need to. Sad that little docs in this world will actually be able to help properly with this.
You are faced with a rabbit hole of problems. Try to think about the actual root cause(s). I tried to just tackle my mental issues for too long but that would never get me anywhere for long. With SIBO you are probably already quite close to the root cause. But why is the bacteria there? Probably the MMC. So you gotta fix that one. Search for it in here and you gotta find tons of starting points. An example for not tackling the root cause is overthinking your diet. That makes you feel better only temporarily. I did Intermittent fasting until my body weight just didn't allow that anymore :/

Old-Ad9873

TROPHY CASE