What Is H. Pylori?
H. Pylori is a bacteria that has a unique ability to survive in the very acidic environment of your stomach. For most bugs, stomach acid kills them, but not H. Pylori!
You can get H. Pylori from infected water or food, even through shared utensils and (here’s a surprise) through kissing.
H. Pylori can survive your stomach acid and make itself at home by secreting an enzyme to make things more comfortable. The enzyme—urease—reduces acid in the stomach. While it’s more comfortable for the H. Pylori to settle in, not having enough acid in your stomach is a big problem.
Many of us have H. Pylori in our stomachs without even knowing it. The bacteria can live in our stomach without causing any issues. But some of us can develop symptoms from this resident bug, sometimes years after we may have gotten it!
What Does H. Pylori Do In Your Body?
There are multiple strains of H. Pylori, and not all cause infection. If we have an infectious strain, we might not start to feel symptoms for months or even years later.
How H. Pylori Affects Your Stomach
Usually, we have a stable mucus lining along the inside surface of our stomach. The role of this lining is to protect our tissue from the very acidic contents of our stomach. The acid has several important roles, including helping us digest proteins, killing pathogenic bugs, and allowing us to release vitamin B12 from our food. But we must protect our muscle tissue from the acid: it’s protein, after all!
Certain strains of H. Pylori can burrow through the lining and expose the stomach wall. Without the protection of the mucus layer, the acid in your stomach attacks your stomach tissue. This is where you can feel unwell: the infectious H. Pylori bug has just led to an ulcer!
H. Pylori can cause ulcers in your stomach and the upper GI tract. Before discovering H. Pylori in 1982, we blamed spicy foods and stress for causing ulcers. Now, we know that this bacteria is to blame.
What Are The Symptoms Of An Ulcer?
Everyone is different, so you may not have the same symptoms as anyone else. If you have an ulcer, you may feel pain that’s worse when your stomach is empty and may feel better with food, milk, or taking an antacid. You might also have:
- A loss of appetite
- Bloating
- Burping
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Unintended weight loss
If your ulcers are in your intestine, you might also:
- See dark black or red stool
- Feel dizzy or faint, tired
- Have pale skin
These symptoms all relate to blood loss.
If you suspect an H. Pylori infection, please visit your doctor. They can offer breath testing to diagnose an H. Pylori infection. Your doctor can also confirm the presence of ulcers by a few testing methods, including using a small camera that passes down your throat into your stomach.
Treatment Of A Stomach Ulcer
Conventional treatment of stomach ulcers involves using antibiotics to kill the bacteria and acid-reducing medication to protect the lining of the stomach as you heal. While the antibiotics may do a great job of killing the intended bacteria, they may have the unintended consequence of throwing the good bacteria in your intestine out of balance.
The trouble with taking acid-reducing medication for the long term is that it interferes with normal digestion and absorption. Having an acidic environment is essential for protecting against pathogens, absorbing vitamin B12, and triggering the release of digestive enzymes in your small intestine.
Not only does having reduced stomach acid increase your risk of an ulcer, but it can also increase your risk of many other issues. H. Pylori is one tricky bug.
What Else Can H. Pylori Do?
H. Pylori is probably the most notorious for its role in stomach ulcers. What may surprise you is that H. Pylori infection can cause other issues, some more subtle than the stomach ulcer symptoms we’ve already discussed.
Beyond Ulcers: Other Effects of H. Pylori
H. Pylori doesn’t always create GI symptoms. Sometimes, it’s fatigue. Why? With reduced stomach acid, we have a more challenging time breaking down protein-rich food into amino acids.
Amino acids are building blocks for our body’s machinery, like hormones, muscle tissue, and hemoglobin. Without sufficient hemoglobin to carry oxygen to every cell in our body, we feel tired and worn down, even if we’re breathing deeply.
Other issues brewing from low stomach acid can be reduced immune function. Can you guess what antibodies are made from? Protein! Once again, without optimal digestion gathering the building blocks we need from the food we eat, we can’t optimally build the necessary machinery to perform at our best.
One more example of H. Pylori causing a ruckus? How about having rogue blood sugars that might have nothing to do with food and everything to do with not producing enough insulin, which requires amino acids? Hormones, including thyroxine, melatonin, and serotonin, can’t be built without the proper building blocks.
As you can see, H. Pylori modifying your stomach environment to suit its preferences profoundly impacts your health and wellness. A stomach environment that’s not acidic enough or overuse of antibiotics (or both) can put you at risk of developing many conditions, including SIBO.
What Is SIBO?
SIBO is short for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. When things work as they should, we have a diverse colony of bacteria and other helpful organisms living in our large intestines. You may have heard of this by another name: the microbiome.
How SIBO Develops
These beneficial organisms help digest our food and feed the cells lining our digestive tract. We thank them by giving them their preferred food: fiber.
The trouble comes when the bacteria migrate: if they aren’t where they should be—mainly in the large intestine—they can cause symptoms. Our small intestine isn’t sterile or free of all bacteria, but there should be far more in the large intestine.
There’s a kind of door between the large intestine and the small intestine that helps to keep most of the bacteria contained in the large intestine. If that door—the ileocecal valve—isn’t working correctly, you’re at greater risk of bacteria roaming into your small intestine.
What Are The Symptoms Of SIBO?
Your symptoms of SIBO may vary from those of others, but may include:
- Nausea
- Bloating
- Loss of appetite
- Unintended weight loss
- Fullness too soon while eating
There’s a lot of overlap between the symptoms of these two conditions, which is why having an expert in functional nutrition can help you uncover which condition (or conditions) might be making you feel bad, as well as get to the bottom of why you got the condition to begin with.
Without treatment to put SIBO in check, further complications to your health and wellness may be on the way. SIBO—left untreated—can lead to malnutrition. And the domino effect continues. We now know that lack of nutrients can lead to fatigue, low immunity, hormonal imbalance, disturbed sleep, depression/anxiety, and more.
SIBO and ulcers require more care than an antacid and antibiotic. That’s the magic—well, science—of functional nutrition experts like the doctors at Doctors Nutrition. We get down to root causes to craft effective solutions.
What Can Cause SIBO?
Unfortunately, a lot of things can increase the chance that you can develop SIBO. These can include:
- Gastric surgery for ulcers
- Crohn’s disease
- Diabetes
- Celiac disease
- Food poisoning
- Medications or treatments that slow the passage of food along the digestive tract
How To Diagnose SIBO?
The most accurate, “gold standard” testing for SIBO is quite invasive. It involves a healthcare provider running a tiny tube down your nose, your stomach, and your small intestine. There, fluid can be collected for testing.
However, that isn’t usually a physician’s first choice because it’s invasive. As with H. Pylori, breath testing is the more common method of diagnosing SIBO. It’s much less invasive and can be done at home or at your doctor’s office.
What Is The Recommended Treatment For SIBO?
Physicians typically offer antibiotics and herbal remedies as a standard treatment for SIBO. And more than likely, they’ll provide relief. However, a relapse may be around the corner.
Functional Nutrition for SIBO
From a functional nutrition perspective, the best SIBO treatment helps prevent relapses. If H. Pylori and SIBO are happening together, H. Pylori may have occurred first.
While it’s common to treat stomach pain and GERD with antacids, having low stomach acid may create more problems later. Having enough stomach acid is vital for normal digestion and absorption, to help protect us from getting sick from pathogens in our food, and to trigger the release of needed digestive enzymes.
And only treating symptoms means that SIBO can happen again. To be most effective, we must identify and address the root cause to work towards long-lasting remission. That’s the magic of functional nutrition: to get to root causes to prevent relapse.
Key Takeaways About H. Pylori And SIBO
There may be issues with both H. Pylori and SIBO. It’s tricky to tell which one might be causing problems or if you have both conditions since so many symptoms overlap.
There are so many factors that contribute to how you feel on a given day: it can feel confusing and frustrating to deal with symptoms that aren’t specific—how do you know what’s going on when so many conditions share the same symptom list?
To learn more about H. Pylori and SIBO infection, get a FREE Consultation with one of our doctors (D.C) here. Be sure to ask about our H. Pylori breath test. A breath test, also known as a Urea Breath Test, is a noninvasive way to detect the presence of Helicobacter pylori (H. Pylori) bacteria in your stomach.
