Ep. 31: Hydrogen Sulfide SIBO: Carnivore Diet, Keto or Low FODMAP?

Practitioners, real quick, before we get into today's episode, when I went through every gut practitioner application over the last several years, I found one common thing. And that is that more than a third of the applicants wrote the same sentence. And that was, I don't know where to start. And I know that if you are listening to this podcast, you are probably not a beginner practitioner. And even if you are, you probably know a lot. You probably know low-fod map, fiber, motility, probiotics, all the things. Here's what I want you to know. You can have the vocabulary, but most of us were never handed the grammar, meaning the rules for actually putting it all together in a complete sentence. And in order, so that the client that is sitting in front of you, you know exactly what to do and in what order. Most of us try to solve that problem by going to another conference, taking another CU. What that is doing is actually just adding more tools to a toolbox that's actually pretty full already. Learning more doesn't teach you how to use what you already know. That only comes by applying it to real cases. And that is why I am hosting the HGMA Edge live on November 6th at noon central. We are going to walk through real cases together so that you can see why you're stuck with certain clients, where minerals fit, and the blueprint that I personally use and teach so that you can learn and decide what comes first. You will walk away with a way of thinking that you can use on your very next complicated case. The link to register is in the show notes, and I look forward to seeing you there. Hydrogen sulfide is extremely toxic to your mitochondria. If you go back to like eighth grade biology, you probably remember learning about mitochondria and mitochondria and ATP production. We need ATP production for energy production. And so that's why brain fog is such a common symptom with Hydrogen sulfide SIBO. Hey, welcome to the Love Your Gut Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Heather Finley. I know what you're thinking, how am I supposed to love my gut when all it does is hold me back? I thought the same thing before I found my own relief from my own gut health issues. I dedicated my life to getting to the bottom of my own gut issues so I could help women just like you transform theirs. Now I'm here to guide you through your own gut health journey. We do this through identifying your root causes and making sustainable and transformational changes. As a result, you can unleash your true potential. My goal is to empower you with the information and tools you need to love your gut so it loves you back right here on this podcast. Hello, hello, welcome to the first episode of 2023. Seems crazy, we're already here. And thank you so much for your patience. I know it's been a couple weeks since we have had a new episode live for a good reason. Hi Bing, my book has launched, which was a huge undertaking. If you miss the news, my book is available for purchase, the healthy, happy gut cookbook. You can buy it on Amazon, you can buy it at Barnes & Noble, you can buy it really anywhere that books are sold. And I'm really, really excited to have it out in the world. Just a special thank you to everyone who has supported the book. It's been overwhelming. You all have supported the book so much by purchasing it, by sharing it, by giving Amazon reviews, which is huge for really helping fulfill the mission of the book, which is to help more people understand their digestive symptoms and find relief. The book is not just a cookbook, it is packed full of information. I ran into a friend the other day and it was so kind. He was like, Heather, I, my wife fought this. And I really thought that this was going to be just a cookbook. And he's like, this is like a literal life manual. I have learned so much. And that was the biggest compliment and I was so happy that he told me that because that's what I really wanted it to be was an actual manual for how to find relief from your symptoms and how to understand them. I think the number one reason that people struggle with digestive symptoms is because they don't understand them. So all that to say, thank you all so much for supporting the book and for continuing to support the book. It really means the world. And I'm excited about today's episode. We are going to talk all about hydrogen sulfide SIBO. This is going to be applicable whether you are a practitioner or whether you just listen to this podcast to learn about digestive health from either personal experience or those around you. And really, I will make it easily understandable for anybody who is listening. But I wanted to do this episode because hydrogen sulfide SIBO is not something that's talked about very often and we're seeing it more and more in the gut together program with the women that we work with. And I did a practitioner training in my gut practitioner program a couple of weeks ago. And I got several messages from people after like, how have I never heard of this? Oh my gosh. I think I've missed so many clients that have this and I didn't even know. So I really, really hope that this is helpful. And if you like this episode or these more sciencey episodes, let me know because I'm a nerd and I would love to keep doing really nerdy sciencey episodes. So let's just kick it off by first just explaining what SIBO is. SIBO is bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth occurs when there's an abnormal increase in the overall bacterial population in the small intestine. The small intestine should be largely sterile. It's not going to be completely sterile. There are actual bacteria that are in the small intestine and the more that we research SIBO, the more we even know about specific bacteria that are only in the small intestine versus the large intestine. So the large intestine also known as your colon is where most of your bacteria is. You have trillions and trillions of bacteria in and on your body and the biggest concentration of them are in your colon. So we want lots of good bacteria or probiotics or microbes, whatever you want to call them, in your large intestine. And when you get SIBO, bacteria ends up in the small intestine where it's not supposed to be and these are unwanted types of organisms. So there are three types of SIBO. Most people only know of the two types that are on standard SIBO testing, which are intestinal methanogen overgrowth or methane dominant SIBO. And then hydrogen SIBO or hydrogen dominant SIBO. Those are the two that if you go to the GI doctor and they order a SIBO test, most likely you will get those two tested. There's a new or newer known type of SIBO called hydrogen sulfide SIBO. So that's really what we're going to focus on today. You may be like scrambling through your medical documents looking for what type of test you had for your SIBO. The only test that you can have for hydrogen sulfide is something called the trio test. And the trio test is only available in the US. So if you live outside of the US, hopefully the trio test will be available to you someday. I will link that site in the show notes in case you want to check it out or think that potentially after listening to this episode, maybe you think you want to get this tested. So the trio test is the only one that will test for hydrogen sulfide. And if we do SIBO testing, this is the test that we'll do. Because like I said earlier, this is something that we're seeing tons and tons more with our clients. So the way that testing works for SIBO or the way the mechanism behind like how they're measuring these gases is the hydrogen sulfide gas diffuses across membranes in your body. It makes its way to blood vessels, which then makes its way to your lungs and you breathe it out. So the breath test is measuring the amount of hydrogen sulfide gas that you are off-putting and determining if you have this hydrogen sulfide overgrowth. Like I said, trio smart, we call it the trio test is the only breath test that will actually test for this. There's lots of conflicting opinions on like how to actually interpret a positive test. But you have to evaluate based on a baseline test or a baseline number. Because the gas actually could be coming from the colon, from the small bowel, it could be coming from the mouth actually, it could be coming from the stomach, from the bladder. There's tons of, it's not just the small intestine that can have this gas, it could be everywhere. Not everywhere. Many, many places. And there's some practitioners that have different opinions on this and that's not really the purpose of this. episode, so I'm not really going to get into it too much. But there is a rule of thought or a school of thought that says that if you have a flatlined sebo test, the standard test, not the trio test, it could be hydrogen sulfide because essentially hydrogen gas is being produced, is being gobbled up and it's producing hydrogen sulfide. Now, if you have a flatlined test, you could just have a negative sebo test. So don't hear this as like a diagnosis saying like, oh, you had a flatlined sebo test, you were negative and so you actually could have hydrogen sulfide or you actually do because you could just not have sebo. But the gold standard for diagnosing sebo is the double peak. So you're going to have a pocket of bacteria in the small intestine and a pocket of bacteria in a second peak, you know, when the substrate hits the colon. It's more common with lactulose than a glucose substrate, but like I said, we're not going to get into like some of the nuances today. What I really want to talk about is sebo and hydrogen sulfide specifically and some of the causes and what you can do about it. Just a quick note too, as I'm thinking about this is there's a really interesting study on oral hygiene by the guy who is the founder of probiotic advisor and I'm blanking on his name. But he did a study looking at individuals that actually did a mouth rinse like an antimicrobial mouth rinse before they did a sebo test and found that when they did this mouth rinse, it actually gave them a negative test versus when they didn't. So if you want to go look that study up, you can. But there's a significant connection as well with the oral microbiome, which could be an episode definitely for another time. I know a question that I get a lot in my DMs is about can you diagnose sebo through a stool test? And the answer is no, you cannot diagnose sebo based on stool testing. However, we do know now that there are specific bacteria that can contribute to sebo and specifically hydrogen sulfide sebo. So the two bacteria that contribute to hydrogen sulfide sebo are bilofyla and desulfa vibrio. These are on some stool tests, not all stool tests. Like for example, I know a lot of practitioners use the GI map. Desulfa vibrio is now actually on the GI map, whereas bilofyla is not. Biomefx has these markers. That's a microbiome lab stool test. There's a stool test called ombre that has it. GI effects has some of these markers. So depending on what stool tests you do, you can't diagnose hydrogen sulfide sebo from it, but these two bacteria being present does potentially indicate that maybe that could be consistent with the symptoms that you're having. There are other proteobacteria that can potentially contribute, but it doesn't mean again that just because you have these on a stool test, you have hydrogen sulfide sebo. For example, E. coli, certain strains of E. coli can contribute to hydrogen sulfide, pseudomonas, clipcella, citrovacter, and proteus are also bacteria that can contribute to hydrogen sulfide. So like I mentioned earlier, hydrogen sulfide gas can be produced in the mouth, the small bowel, the colon, but the two most common areas for this bacteria are the small bowel and the colon. So in the small bowel, that's where we're taking the trio smart test and we are diagnosing it with the breath test. And that's the standard way that you're going to test for these. But let's get into some of the symptoms and signs of hydrogen sulfide. So some of the main signs are bloating, distension, bowel changes. A lot of the research shows constipation, but there are now some research studies that show diarrhea and I know Dr. Primental talks about this a bit as well. But those are really all standard symptoms. I mean, how many people that have IBS or have any type of gut issue have bloating, distension, or bowel changes? So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, yes, yes, yes, that doesn't mean you have hydrogen sulfide. Some of the other more significant or unique symptoms that you could have are hypersensitivity to lighter sound, bladder irritation. You see this quite a bit with interstitial cystitis. I know we've seen it quite a bit in some of the clients that we've worked with. Brain fog is a big one and I'll talk about why later. And then nerve pain. Another symptom that we often see is eggsmelling gas. So our clients who are like, it's really embarrassing, you know, I'm at work and I have really bad gas and I like have to cover it up and it just becomes really life-altering. That can be a symptom as well. So everyone's going to present with different symptoms. I think it depends on the bacteria that are causing this. Obviously, the levels of bacteria, as well as where it is. You know, if it's in the colon, it's going to maybe be different than the small intestine. But visceral hypersensitivity specifically is a pretty common symptom of IBSCBO, but more common with those that have hydrogen sulfide CBO. And essentially, when someone has visceral hypersensitivity, what's happening is related to mast cells and histamine. So there's too many mast cells and these mast cells are causing too much histamine in the gut, which is causing some of these symptoms. So if you have histamine issues, if you have mast cell or suspected mast cell issues, potentially this could be a driving underlying cause. And I guess that's something also to keep in mind as well is your CBO is not a, it's a symptom. It's not a root cause. So we really want to look at the underlying reasons why. So I want to talk a bit about the mechanism behind hydrogen sulfide CBO and why you might just feel really poorly and hopefully maybe shed some light on why that is. So hydrogen sulfide itself as a gas is very irritating to the colonisites, which are the cells of the colon. And these cells absorb water, they absorb minerals, they absorb so many things, and they regulate our microbiome. And when these cells are irritated, it is very hard for them to do their job. And this has an impact on the mucus layer of the gut, the mucus layer is going nuts, and the microbiome is going nuts. And there's just tons of irritation and tons of inflammation. It can also degrade the lining of the gut, which can lead to tons of symptoms. There is also some really interesting research about colitis and how colitis and in the connection between colitis and hydrogen sulfide CBO. So the other thing that's going on here is hydrogen sulfide is extremely toxic to your mitochondria. And if you go back to like eighth grade biology, you probably remember learning about mitochondria and mitochondria and ATP production. And so that's why brain fog is such a common symptom with hydrogen sulfide CBO because it's directly impacting the mitochondria, which is directly impacting energy production, which is so interesting, right? That this mechanism is not only just affecting the gut, which obviously we know that so many things are impacted outside of the gut, but that this is down to the cellular level, how this is affecting your brain and your ability to focus or stay present. So that's a big one that we see, but essentially you need strong healthy mitochondria for so many things, but specifically for muscle function, contraction, energy, neuron firing. And so this is where like some of the muscle pain, the nerve pain, the brain fog, all that is coming in because of the direct impact that the hydrogen sulfide is having on the mitochondria of the body. The other mechanism I alluded to earlier about bladder spasms and interstitial cystitis could be because of this as well, because of the direct effect on muscle contraction, the bladder is a muscle. And the ear irritation that can happen there. There's other things obviously that could be present here, like oxalate issues or histamine issues or candida or whatever it might be, but hydrogen sulfide, the connection between hydrogen sulfide and interstitial cystitis is very, very interesting. So if you heard nothing from this last section, what I want you to hear is that hydrogen sulfide is very toxic to the mitochondria and that's why you're so tired and that's why you can't focus. And so the good news is, when you can improve the hydrogen sulfide, these symptoms can go away, which hopefully gives you a ton of hope and just a bit of perspective here. So I mentioned earlier the bacteria that are common with hydrogen sulfide. So those are definitely things that can contribute to this as well. But I want to talk about some things that can actually help hydrogen sulfide, SIBO or hydrogen sulfide gas. What we know is the more the diet is restricted, the harder that is to come out of and the higher risk we are for nutrient deficiencies, the body already has trouble when SIBO is present with nutrient deficiencies, let alone when the diet is so restricted. The sulfa vibrio and bilofyla specifically, these bacteria are bile tolerant and they can digest bile acids. Bile is a great source of sulfur if you didn't know that, which is super, super interesting. And these bacteria also really like saturated fat and higher fat diets. I can't tell you how many clients we've seen that have gone keto or carnivore or even paleo and their symptoms are so much worse. And the reason being here is that these diets are typically much higher in saturated fat, meat and sulfur containing foods. I'll talk in a little bit about why you don't have to cut out all the sulfur in your diet. But just know that these, if you have tried these diets or your client has tried these diets and they feel worse and they have some of the symptoms I mentioned earlier, this is worth ruling out. And you definitely don't treat this SIBO the same that you do others. So these can also be the long haul SIBOers that like fail all SIBO treatments. It could be because they're using the wrong things. You're definitely going to use different products and different treatments. If it's hydrogen sulfide, that's present. There's some studies that actually show that low FODMAP as well will increase sulfide producers, which is why maybe you feel worse on low FODMAP or you're sometimes just got worse when you stayed on low FODMAP too long. And there's also studies that show that Perseika vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, etc. Actually lower sulfide producers. So all the things that you're told to cut out actually are the things that are really going to help you. Hey there, I know you are absolutely loving this episode, but I am so excited because my book The Healthy Happy Get Cookbook is now available for pre-order. This book is designed to help you identify the causes of your symptoms, give you really actionable steps to address them, and help you love food again and get back in the kitchen. So not only is it packed with tons of info, it's also packed with over 50 delicious recipes that I'm so excited for you to try. When you pre-order this book, you not only get the book on your doorstep on December 20th just in time for Christmas, but you also get access to some bonus trainings and a live Q&A call with me in December. So we'll be releasing more info about that soon, but I would absolutely love it if you would pre-order the book and share it with a friend who might need it as well. The link to pre-order the book is in the show notes and also on my website. And the interesting thing here is that oftentimes people think of SIBO and they think, oh my gosh, I can't tolerate any fiber, I can't eat any fadmaps, I can't eat anything that's going to ferment or cause issues. But if you look at the research specifically on hydrogen sulfide, it is showing that fadmaps actually help inhibit the growth of specifically dysulfivibrio and bilofyla and proteobacteria, specifically the fadmap goss, galacto oligosaccharide, so so interesting, right? So if you've been on a low fadmap diet forever and you find that your symptoms have just worsened and worsened and worsened and maybe now you have nerve pain and bladder pain and egg smelling gas and brain fog, potentially, I know we've seen this with many clients, your SIBO could have transformed into hydrogen sulfide SIBO, which is why you don't feel any better on the low fadmap diet and maybe the symptoms are getting worse. There's also some studies on goss, galacto oligosaccharide, PhDG, partially hydrolyzed squargon and sauce, also a fadmap showing that it inhibits the growth of dysulfivibrio and that PhDG feeds your good bacteria. So the saying of like don't eat any fiber or don't eat any fadmaps because it's going to feed the bad bacteria and it's going to make things worse, there's actually no research to support that. It's never been one study to date to show that you can starve these bacteria or that if you just avoid the foods that feed all fiber that you'll be better, you might feel better symptom-wise but you're not actually addressing the underlying problem. So the really cool shift here is that there are things that you can do from a diet perspective to actually help improve your symptoms and I'm going to talk you through some of that. But before we do that, I want to talk also about polyphenols. So polyphenols are plant compounds that act similar to prebiotic fiber and help to promote the growth of beneficial bacteria. Polyphenols are a great strategy for SIBO in general but specifically hydrogen sulfide SIBO because they're anti-inflammatory, they're helpful for the mitochondria and they're going to promote the growth of the good bacteria that we want. So including more polyphenols in your diet, more zoths containing foods or just more fiber in general is going to be very, very helpful for this condition. Now I want to talk a bit about sulfur. So there's a school of thought or a lot of people that will say, "Oh, if you have hydrogen sulfide, you need to eat a low sulfur diet and that is going to be what provides you relief." So low FODMAP was number one, low sulfur is now the second thing we're talking about. What's happening with hydrogen sulfide is the bacteria are gobbling up the hydrogen producing sulfur, which is what's producing for a lot of people that sulfur smelling gas. But really the main question that we're looking at is like, where is the sulfur coming from? So now we want to talk a bit about low sulfur. This is another diet or elimination diet that you will hear talked about with hydrogen sulfide SIBO. A lot of people will say, "Oh, if you have hydrogen sulfide SIBO, you should just cut out all the sulfur in your diet and it will make the symptoms better and your hydrogen sulfide SIBO will get better." And here's the thing that we need to know about hydrogen sulfide SIBO. We really have only been researching this for five years and we actually don't really have a ton of data on the actual amounts of sulfur in foods. If you Google low sulfur diet, you will find every variation that is so conflicting. So it is honestly no wonder that everyone is so just worried about what to eat and so confused because everything on the Internet contradicts each other. So we have definitely not seen tons of improvement for individuals that just like cut out all the sulfur probably because they're getting sulfur from other things that they're unaware of like before they started working with us but also because there's an underlying mechanism that we have to address. So for what it's worth, you don't need to cut all the sulfur foods out of your diet. You are going to find so many variations of that on the Internet and there's a better way. So, and just like, you know, there's been no study to show that the low FODMAP diet can starve SIBO, bacteria in your gut have tons of metabolic flexibility. So you can really do any diet you want but we're not going to kill off bacteria. You have to use herbals or antibiotics or other things to ate. your body in doing this. Diet is a piece, but I want you to think about it from the perspective of what can you add to support your gut, because if you've gotten to the point where you have hydrogen sulfide SIBO, just cutting out more and more foods is not going to be the solution, because there's so much good quality research showing how much fiber in general just really helps this. So the more variety you can add in, the better, even if you go really slow, you're going to be more successful. We also get sulfur from other things. So we have sulfur obviously from food that we consume like meat, eggs, dairy, those are food-based sources of sulfur. There's also sulfur present in the process of bile flow. As you all know, or you may not know, but I'm a huge fan of bile makes me sound like such a nerd, but bile is truly the MVP of digestion. And when you release bile with meals, it releases touring. There is sulfur involved in this process. There's also sulfur involved with the mucus layer of the gut. And this is the barrier of protection between your gut lining and the rest of the situation. So if you don't have sulfur to support that, then that could be a problem as well. But like I said, your mucus layer is the defense between your microbes and you, and it's made out of sulfur, carbs, protein, etc. So if your immune system is agitated and your gut lining, it's going to make compounds high in sulfur, chronic inflammation is going to increase sulfur. So we need sulfur, but cutting it out is not key here. That's not going to fix the situation. There is some research looking at like ulcerative colitis and sulfur producing organisms in their gut. And so that could be a whole another topic for another day. If you have UC, you can go look that up. But essentially what you need to know from a diet perspective here is that the more prebiotic fiber, polyphenols, resistant starch that you can include in your diet, the better. There are certain foods that we do want to decrease when we're looking at hydrogen sulfide. The main one is saturated fat. So high levels of saturated fat are not going to be good for hydrogen sulfide sebum. And then animal protein in large amounts. Can you still eat animal protein? Yes. But large amounts at one time not going to be great. But I would rather focus on the foods to increase. So as I mentioned already, fodmaps that are tolerated as many as you can tolerate. And then things like kale, broccoli, brussels sprouts, all those cruciferous vegetables are really good here. So cauliflower cabbage. If you can add those in, even if they need to be really well cooked, you're going to be doing your gut a favor. Fiber, like I mentioned, specifically the goss fiber. So like bimuno is a really great goss fiber supplement that you can get. I'll link it in the show notes as well as partially hydrolyzed bargum. Also very great for hydrogen sulfide. And then inulin has been shown as well to inhibit proteobacteria. So if you tolerate that, I would go extremely slow. But those can be things that you can include in your diet. And at the same time, you're not only going to improve the hydrogen sulfide, but you're just overall gut health in general. There's tons of other studies on other more nuanced things like even green tea and turmeric and olive oil and blueberry polyphenols. But really what it boils down to here is variety in fiber and color. So I would like to close out this episode with just some encouragement. Hopefully you're having some light bulb moments going off at this point, thinking about, huh, maybe I've been approaching my hydrogen sulfide seabot or perceived hydrogen sulfide seabot all wrong. And maybe you thought that you just couldn't eat all these different foods or that you needed to avoid any fermentable fiber, any fod map, anything that contains sulfur, all the cruciferous vegetables. And I'm here to tell you that that is not true. And we have seen such good results in our clients by actually improving the intake of these foods. And what a relief, right? To know that there are foods that you can include. And seeing food from that perspective of this is actually going to help me versus this is going to hurt me. And I know that when on my own gut health journey, when I had that mindset shift as well, it was like a breath of fresh air, finally being able to think, oh my goodness, maybe the reason that I feel the way that I do and then maybe maybe the reason I've been going downhill year after year after year is because I'm eating less and less and less. And maybe my body needs more and more and more variety. So we are at the beginning of 2023. It is a great time when people are making resolutions and, you know, intentions for the year, words of the year. I'm a huge fan of word for the year. If you are, you can shoot me a DM and tell me what your word is and I'll tell you mine. But maybe it would be a great intention to set of like, how can I improve my variety in my diet? How can I try to eat as many colors as possible? It's very cliche. I feel like to say, eat the rainbow, but like how many different colors can you have on your plate and how many different things can you like look at your plate and think, wow, this is really supporting my overall health. The variety, not only in fruits and vegetables, but in nuts and seeds and beans and legumes and grains and even meats and other proteins, like your body needs variety. And that's what I want you to hear from this. And I hope that it is super, super encouraging. So just to kind of summarize, what I spoke about today and I'll leave you also just with some quick tips for like a protocol, if you're a practitioner, is that hydrogen sulfide, SIBO can be really debilitating. It can be very toxic to the mitochondria, which is why, you know, you or your patient may feel really exhausted, have a lot of brain fog and feel just really run down, maybe have nerve pain, etc. But the solution is to actually add food in. And there's lots of mechanisms, you know, behind the nuances here in hydrogen sulfide, SIBO. But what we're particularly looking at is dyslphibrio and bilofyla. So you can look at those bacteria and you can research them more. But I just wanted to close off with like some of the things that we use with our clients that we find helpful. And if you are a consumer, this is in no way a medical prescription. Please consult your doctor before trying anything new. And if you want more support, you're welcome to apply for the gut together program. We would be honored to support you. We often use zinc acetate to help neutralize gas. Zinc acetate is a very poorly absorbed form of zinc. And so essentially, what happens is zinc binds to the gas in the small intestine and it precipitates out as a salt. So we use zinc acetate. I'm not going to give specific dosing because I don't want people going and like self prescribing. But you can look up the mechanisms here and do more research on these. We also use vitamin B12 specifically hydroxycobalamin. Gas can bind to B12 and deplete it. So one thing to keep note of with your clients is low levels of B12 or just that's part of the low energy piece there. But hydroxycobalamin can be very help. And then for the mitochondria specifically, some things that I love, NAC, or anacetyl cysteine quercetin can be great. There's actually tons of foods that contain quercetin. So that can be a great food-based approach. Alpha-lipoc acid, acetyl-alcarnitine, a comprehensive B vitamin can be really helpful. And then the last thing that you really want to look at as well is iron. You need iron for the gut brain connection to work. So a full comprehensive iron panel can be very helpful. Not just like the standard iron markers are going to get on like a CBC. But looking at ferritin and looking at TIBC and looking at the other iron markers, you need robust amounts of iron to make this whole thing work. So you need to check that off for sure. The other things that can be helpful if valves aren't moving, of course, is prokinetics or getting the valves moving. You can neutralize the gas with bismuth. That's something that we often do. A regular oil can be really helpful for actually inhibiting the gas. And then, as I mentioned, any underlying deficiencies. So really step one, get the balls moving. Step two, address the underlying deficiencies. Step three, inhibit the gas. So use a regular oil or something else. Step four is neutralize the gas. You can use it. You can use bismuth or, like, devrom is really great for that. And then five is support the growth of beneficial bacteria. You need that or your client needs that. There's tons of research on it. And you will be off to the races. So I hope that this was helpful. I know it's a bit more sciencey than you may be used to, but I hope you learned something new, whether you are a consumer or a practitioner. Hopefully you had some takeaways. If you have any questions, hop over to Instagram, send me a message. I'd love to chat about this or any just insights that you had. And we'll see you next week on the next episode of the Love Your Gut Podcast. As always, please note that this episode or anything discussed on this podcast is not a substitution for medical advice and you should always consult your health practitioner before trying anything new. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the Love Your Gut Podcast, but I have to jump in really quick and remind you that I have a Greek quiz that will help you finally figure out why you're bloated. In order to live a life free of discomfort, you need to figure out what the root causes that's making you experience these uncomfortable symptoms. The easiest and fastest way to do this is by visiting DrHeatherFinley.co/quiz. Take the quiz as soon as you can so you can transform your gut issues and lead a happier, more vibrant life. Now let's get back to the episode.