The Root Causes of SIBO and Chronic Gut Issues | Angela Pifer, FMN

Angela Pifer joins the show to discuss SIBO, digestive dysfunction, the gut-brain connection, and why lasting gut health requires looking beyond symptoms to uncover the underlying drivers. Together, we explore how stress, nervous system dysregulation, infections, diet, lifestyle, and environmental factors can influence digestion and why a personalized, root-cause approach is essential for breaking the cycle of recurring gut issues.

We dive into:

• SIBO symptoms and why bacterial overgrowth is often a downstream issue
• Why identifying root causes matters before jumping into treatment
• The role of stomach acid, digestive function, and nutrient deficiencies in gut health
• Stress, trauma, the vagus nerve, and the gut-brain connection
• Why repeated rounds of antibiotics may not resolve recurring digestive symptoms
• IBS, leaky gut, and the importance of looking at the bigger clinical picture
• Restrictive diets, food reintroduction, and rebuilding tolerance to foods like beans and FODMAPs
• How slowing down, chewing thoroughly, and eating in a relaxed state can support digestion
• Circadian rhythm, sleep, movement, muscle mass, and other foundations of long-term health
• Social connection, creativity, and joy as overlooked components of overall wellness
• Alcohol's impact on the gut, inflammation, sleep, and the body's ability to process toxins
• Why simplifying treatment and addressing upstream drivers can lead to more sustainable gut health

🕒Chapters

00:00 Meet Angela Pifer, the “SIBO Guru”

01:11 SIBO Symptoms and What to Look For

02:10 Looking Beyond SIBO to Find the Root Cause

04:01 Where Practitioners Should Start With Testing

07:26 Stress, the Vagus Nerve, and Digestive Health

10:16 Leaky Gut, IBS, and Recurring Symptoms

11:37 Why Treating SIBO Alone May Not Be Enough

13:04 The Problem With Repeated Antibiotic Treatment

13:46 What to Do When SIBO Keeps Coming Back

15:30 Restrictive Diets, FODMAPs, and Food Reintroduction

18:13 How Slowing Down and Chewing Supports Digestion

20:42 Longevity Tools vs. Foundational Health Habits

21:48 Social Connection, Creativity, and Gut Health

23:48 How Alcohol Affects the Gut and Microbiome

25:59 Simplifying Gut Health and Addressing Root Causes

27:56 Where to Find and Work With Angela Pifer

🔗 Dr. Brooke Stubbs, MD 

https://www.instagram.com/brookiestubbsmd 

https://www.rootedfemme.com/ 

🔗 Angela Pifer, FMN

https://siboguru.com/ 

https://www.instagram.com/sibo.guru 

Do you use lab testing to get to the root cause of patient health issues? Vibrant Wellness offers the largest selection of advanced specialty lab solutions, and it's free to sign up! If you're a practitioner, sign up here: https://portal.vibrant-wellness.com/#/sign-up to order, manage, and track results from dozens of precise lab tests. Are you a patient? Achieve your health goals faster with advanced root-cause lab testing. Sign up here to get connected to a Vibrant provider: https://www.vibrant-wellness.com/Signup/Patient

✨ Like 👍, subscribe 🔔, and share this episode if you’re ready to take charge of your hormones and feel vibrant again!

Follow Us:

📸 Instagram:   / vibrantwellness

💼 LinkedIn:   / vibrantwellness  

📧 Contact Us: support@vibrant-wellness.com

Disclaimer:

All content from Vibrant Wellness, including but not limited to YouTube videos, is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services or advice, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on the channel, podcast, or other content linked from this channel or podcast is at the user’s own risk. The content of this channel is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.

Email us at: podcast@vibrant-wellness.com

Transcript

Angela Pifer 0:00

We you go to bed, you get up, you're up for about an hour, you go to work, you sit all day, you're not exercising, you're not sleeping well. I'm not saying that this causes all of it, but it's gonna ramp up everything. It's gonna increase oxidative stress, it's gonna, it's gonna flare up the system and make it much, much, much more vulnerable for anything else taking hold. We rely on these gut organisms, you know, they collectively can produce 50 to 70,000 different digestive enzymes. So I'm always looking at helping people um improve the digestibility of their food. There's some foods, even when we when we look at uh grains, adding extra water, cooking them longer, um, starting with smaller portions, give your body the proper signaling that food is going to be coming in. So it's looking at the food, it's smelling the food, it's thinking about how it's gonna taste. And then once you're actually gonna take a bite, you take the bite, you put your utensils down, and you taste it. What does it taste like? What's the texture? Like just get be in the moment with it.

Brooke Stubbs 1:08

Welcome to the show. I'm Dr. Brooke Stubbs, and we're live from A4M Longevity Fest in Las Vegas. Today we've got an expert whose name precedes her in the world of gut health. She's affectionately known by her patients as the SIBO Guru, someone who does not just treat symptoms but digs deep into the root causes of complex digestive issues. Angela Pifer has spent over 20 years helping people from around the world who felt trapped in an exhausting cycle of bloating, restrictive diets, recurring infections, and unanswered questions. She's built a practice grounded in integrative medicine and clinical nutrition. And her approach is never one size fits all. So let's dive in. Angela, yes, thank you so much for being here. I can't wait to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Let's dive in. You are the SIBO SIBO guru. SIBO guru, yes. And forgive me of my ignorance because I was trained in Western medicine. Yeah. Went through internal medicine residency. I didn't do a whole lot of specifics in GI, but I don't treat SIBO very often in my clinic, although I'm seeing symptoms that can only be explained by uh bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine. Possibly. Okay. Well, you give me the information. Yeah, I want to know more. Tell me what we're looking for in terms of symptoms when SIBO arises.

Angela Pifer 2:36

Yeah, uh, what I would say is SIBO is a downstream collection of symptoms. Uh-huh. And there's a lot of different things that could mimic SIBO in terms of symptoms and how mainstream SIBO has become. Like SIBO seems to be out of the gate the first thing that is just assumed or considered when it could be lots of other things flaring up the system and causing people to have that visceral pain, bloating, distension, that food reaction where they feel like off after they eat. Yeah. There are other things that it could be. Okay. So even though we might consider SIBO, I feel like we need to take a much broader stroke because even if SIBO, SIBO is a downstream collection of symptoms, it's not a primary condition. We should not be treating it out of the gate or assuming SIBO with a certain presentation. I love that about it. Treating it out of the gate with an antibiotic or even herbal antibiotics. We really need to back up and say, okay, if this collection of symptoms is there, let's back up and say, why is it there? What do we need to correct if the terrain topped down? Do they have a dysregulated vagus nerve? Almost always with a functional presentation of SIBO. Do they have low stomach acid? Almost always. You know, they're bringing down proteobacteria from the mouth. It's colonizing from the reimagined studies out of cedar cyanide. They created uh uh invented a sterile catheter, um, basically an aspirate that could go down and pull up that aspirate and it doesn't get contaminated. And they're mapping out the small intestine for the first time in the last six years. Like there's a lot of people. I really don't know in the small intestine. Yeah. We run these stool tests and we think, ah, GI track, uh-huh. Right? And we've got to look in sinuses, we've got to look at oral microbiota, we've got to look at small intestine being different than large intestine. Okay. And so for me, as we're looking at all of it, I really want, I really want that to be a part of the whole um uh layout of symptoms, the constellation that we might be looking at, but not the thing we go after first. Okay. So we've got to look at correcting terrain, then we have to back up and go, why is the train so messed up? Yeah, this toxin load, they're not sleeping right. Okay, they've got a mold illness, they've got parasites, okay, you know. So we're looking at all of that. Nerve impingements that are causing gallbladder congestion. Like it's just crazy. We like lay out the bloating piece as SIBO, SIBO, SIBO. It could be candida, it could be gallbladder congestion, it actually could be a folate deficiency.

Brooke Stubbs 5:08

Okay. What would your approach be? I'm I'm sitting here now, I'm going, okay, I'm overwhelmed. Where do I start as a practitioner? I have a patient who comes in, you know, she's just started on a GLP1, she has extreme um upper GI, epigastric discomfort, lots of burping. I mean, this can just be slowing of the gastric system, but a lot of people have slowing of the gastric system and don't have all of the constellation of symptoms. How do you approach each of your patients and what are the the clinical things that you absolutely must test first?

Angela Pifer 5:44

Yeah. Um, I always, always, always run a leaky gut test. Okay. Hands down, everyone's gonna get it. Okay. If somebody has leaky gut, you're gonna have a stalled vagus nerve. Okay. It's gonna interfere with digestion top down. Okay. It's gonna set up really from a vagus nerve dysregulation perspective, it's gonna set up uh heightened visceral sensitivity, um, low blood flow in the GI tract, low bile flow, low every chemical that you're creating to help you digest, it's gonna dampen. Uh-huh. Uh, it's gonna mess with ileosecal valve function, which is everything SIBO overlays. So if we think about it from that perspective, okay, we can have SIBO, but we're looking at vagus nerve dysregulation, and almost everyone, maybe someone has an adhesion, right? Maybe somebody has uh short bowel syndrome, maybe somebody is diabetic and they've got neuropathy. But obviously, there are other reasons why this can get set up. Okay, and they probably are gonna be more, they're gonna need more maintenance support just to keep them steady. I'm talking about more of a functional presentation. It's vagus nerve dysregulation. So, what's dysregulating the vagus nerve? Right. So leaky gut is out of the gate, and then um, you know, I mean, I kind of think about a lab as just being a really, really thorough health history timeline. Sure. Have them lay out, you know, from birth to present, when did things change? When did you move places? When did you go off to college? And as you start to track back when symptoms really started, that gives you a lot of insight. You know, what happened the six months prior? Did you travel? What do you know, couple deaths in the family? Is this trauma related? And then whatever that stirred up in the immune system, now your immune system starting to go after other things. Uh-huh. And then you've got immune dysregulation, now you've got more vagus nerve inhibition. Like it's this vicious cycle that just happens in us. Uh-huh. So um, I like an O test that's just gonna give us a nice, gentle, broad stroke of the test. Tell us about an O test, the organic acids test. Okay, just being, you know, looking at all the metabolites and being able to see do we have a yeast issue? There's a couple markers on there, mitochondrial uh deficiency, which again, a lot of people, if you're not sleeping and you don't have good energy, how are you gonna heal? Uh-huh. So we need to know that. And a lot of that obviously can be just an you know an intake as well. Okay. Um relay like that. Um, you know, we can look at neurotransmitter balance, amino acid balance, um, some you know, nutrient nutrients on there as well. Um, I personally just assume when people are in a chronic blade gut-wise, they're nutrient deficient. I like to give them a good balanced, you know, multivitamin, obviously, well, obviously for me, bringing up minerals out of the gate. Um, even for some people, an amino acid supplement. I think I I can go there without maybe running a huge micronutrient panel. Um, but you know, if I'm gonna run it um because I see a lot of deficiencies in the past and I want to see where they're at, yeah. You know, Vibrance micronutrient panel is absolutely stellar because it's looking at intra um and extracellular nutrients. So I really love that one too. Right. Um, but usually for me, I'm looking at leaky gut tests, whether it's an awheat zoomer or not, just depending. Uh-huh. And then I'm gonna look at a gut zoomer. Uh-huh. If they're not sleeping, I'm absolutely looking at their cortisol cycling and their hormone balance. Okay. Right. So I'll look at that too. And then the basic blood work and all of that.

Brooke Stubbs 9:03

Absolutely. Talk to me. You're you're talking a lot about a vagal nerve dysregulation. And we we you mentioned trauma, you mentioned stressful events. Talk to me about stress and the GI tract. What are what's your approach towards that with your patients?

Angela Pifer 9:16

Yeah, trying to figure out where it's coming from.

Brooke Stubbs 9:18

Yeah.

Angela Pifer 9:19

And sometimes just as clinicians, I think we can look at their lifestyle.

Brooke Stubbs 9:23

Uh-huh.

Angela Pifer 9:23

You know, you you go to bed, you get up, you're up for about an hour, you go to work, you sit all day, you're not exercising, you're not really going out with friends, you're not doing anything that brings you joy. Uh-huh. Where's the SO? Where's the community? You're not sleeping well, and you're one, and again, I'm I'm not saying that this causes all of it, but it's going to ramp up everything. It's going to increase oxidative stress. It's going to, it's going to flare up the system and make it much, much, much more vulnerable for anything else taking hold. Uh-huh. Because you're going to get immune dysregulation. You're going to get an increase in inflammation. So we can kind of look at their lifestyle and just figure out what do we need to identify and help them expand that and work on things. Resetting circadian rhythm with light is a huge one.

Brooke Stubbs 10:09

And you notice a lot of difference clinically in your patients.

Angela Pifer 10:12

Absolutely huge. So we think about the last 30 minutes of the day is the golden hour. The first 30 minutes of the day is also the golden hour. Okay. And if we can go and stare at the horizon within that first 30 minutes for about 10 minutes, we tells our mitochondria to wake up. It tells our digestion to wake up. It's actually a stimulus to us to get going in the morning and our body and get all the physiology moving. So I love it. We have to look at getting back to, you know, foundational things. That foundational thing. So from a stress perspective to uh looking internally again. If someone has leaky gut, they're going to have a stalled vagus nerve. They just are. If you've got chronic inflammation, if you have chronic um pathogens, markons, anything, you're going to be in this chronic state of vagus nerve inhibition. And then, you know, 80% of signaling, um, that afferent signaling that the vagus nerve is listening to coming up from the from the thoracic, all the organs, all the digestive organs. Uh, that's signaling the brain. And the brain is like, oh my gosh, look at everything that's dysregulated. It's not gonna allow the vagus nerve to kick back down into parasympathetic. It stalls it and sends in the immune troops, kicks inflammation up. And the pair, uh, the vagus nerve is really what helps us kick inflammation down. It's what helps us digest. It what it's what helps with supporting motility and everything else. Yeah. So, how do you approach leaky gut in your practice? Yeah, absolutely. Uh, so I find it this might just be my patient loan. I find a lot of metabolic endotoxemia in my group. Now, people that come to me are often people that have been through seven to 12 providers. Okay. They've been through tons of treatment and they're on the SIBO wheel, hamster wheel of SIBO. And what is that? You have symptoms, you get treated. You have symptoms, you get treated. I just like the antibiotics, antibiotics. It's sometimes you, oh, it's not the right antibiotic, and we need to use a stronger one. Uh, you need three rounds of antibiotic, that'll fix it. Yeah, but it doesn't. Okay. It doesn't. We SIBO is known to be recurrent, and I am challenging the SIBO algorithm saying that that algorithm is setting up the recurrence. Oh, okay. So talk to us more about that because SIBO is a downstream collection of symptoms, it's not a primary condition. So if you're looking at this as my patient is coming and reporting bloat, SIBO is not the only cause of bloat at all. But it seems like this quick jump of uh you kind of had, you know, a little IBS dysregulation. Well, we've been told most IBS cases are actually SIBO, this must be SIBO, therefore, okay, here's the treatment for it. Okay. But I think the problem when we're looking at that is again, you're not identifying how it got set up. So once you treat it, where's the momentum carrying you forward? You still have a motility issue, you still have immune dysregulation. Knocking this stuff down is not going to fix all that. Right. Right? So that's where I feel like we really need to back up and even rethink the treatment. Okay. Because uh, again, looking back at the reimagined studies, uh-huh. What they found when they're comparing upper GI small intestine to uh SIBO people with non-SIBO, uh, what they're finding is proteobacteria comes down, colonizes. So we have larger numbers where they should not be. Uh-huh. And then that pushes formicides down. Okay. So then they have lower diversity, right? They have dysbiosis up top. Uh-huh. An antibiotic is only going to drop diversity more. Right. Vermicides are going to be more susceptible to that antibiotic. And you're going to get the resistant stuff coming back. And then you go on another antibiotic and another antibiotic. And a lot of times, I think to kind of drive that home, if someone does an antibiotic initially, we know antibiotics increase motility. So sometimes people feel relief for a short period of time just because it's moving things a little bit. Uh-huh. Maybe we're getting lucky and that antibiotic is hitting something else, maybe a chronic infection, maybe a parasite that just happened to be susceptible to what they took. But you know, when we're looking from an antibiotic standpoint for SIBO, again, you're you're gonna keep knocking down the proteobacteria. And so the example there being the first time you take it, you might get a little bit longer relief. Uh-huh. The next time you take it, it's shorter. The next time you take it, there's no relief. Uh-huh. It's just bringing up the resistance. So, what do you do then?

Brooke Stubbs 14:30

I mean, I have patients who have been on this cycle. Yes. And so many of them. And so is the next pay is the next phase to test to figure out exactly what's going on, or is it to, you know, is it testing for, like you say, the proteobacteria or taking that really specialized sample, or is it looking at oxidative stress and circadian rhythms? And what tell me about that? Where do you go next?

Angela Pifer 14:54

Uh when someone comes to me with seven positive SIBO tests, I say that's nice and I set them aside. Okay. I'm going to onboard you, like, I know that, but I don't know that. Right? Because I'm not going to just jump to that conclusion. Just not going to say that completely. So I'm going to look at it from there and say, I want to know everything, what's going on. I want to look at your history. I want to look at the last five years of your labs. I've had some people with um autoimmunotrophic gastritis that somebody ran the markers, but they never diagnosed them and told them how to fix it. And they've been on the SIBO wheel of treatment. Uh-huh. Well, that's not going to do, we have to fix the autoimmunitrophic gastritis. They're not digesting. They're they're getting an immune tack on the parietal cells that's reducing stomach acid greatly. Uh-huh. And now they're massively B12 deficient and they're not digesting their fluid. Right. SIBO antibiotics are not going to help with that, right? So to me, we really again, and this to me is with like any condition that we would be treating. We have, are they sleeping? Where's their stress level? Uh, do we have any chronic infections that we need to take care of? Um, how, you know, how's their thyroid function? I just look top down and start like going through that set. Like, what do I need to correct top down? Love it. I can always stabilize someone. I can get their bowels moving. I can slow their bowels down if they've got loose, you know, stool. Uh-huh. I can stabilize that really quickly. Uh-huh. I can start to uh get a vagus nerve treatment. I'd love True Vega for that, the handheld device. It's wonderful. It's so easy. Easy. Two minutes, hold it here, not hard. Um, so we can do that. We can get light in the morning. I can start to work on getting their sleep reinstated. I can figure out if they need more bile support. I can figure out if they need more stomach acid support. I can help them make their food easier to digest, not restricting. I don't put anyone on low FODMAP. Okay.

Brooke Stubbs 16:47

Um I did a well then let's hear about that because I know there are people out there that are like, I can't do beans, and we're saying these FODMAP diets are, you know, causing GI upset. What do you do to help them tolerate those foods?

Angela Pifer 17:00

Yeah. So part of it is there's some intolerance. Part of it is I'm fearful of the list that I have been told to watch for because if I eat this, right, I'm going to make SIBO grow. Okay. And what we have to think about is if you're a re if you've gone on a low a low FODMAP diet and you're a responder, meaning that you have symptoms that are dropping because you're on the low FODMAP diet, studies have shown that means you've got low diversity to begin with. Uh huh. Yes. We rely on these gut organisms, you know, they collectively can produce 50 to 70,000 different digestive enzymes. Not all at once, but it depends on what we have. Uh-huh. Um, let's talk about beans. I mean, you take 100 people off the street that don't have gut issues and you feed them a cup of beans if they haven't had them in a while, they're gonna have GI distress. Okay. Okay. So if you keep feeding them that, yeah, the organisms that can pop up and start consuming that will start to do that. And then you will have less GI symptoms because you're getting that stuff broken down a little bit easier. So I'm always looking at, again, if you know, if you're stressed, your vagus nerve is causing uh is being dysregulated, you're not gonna digest well. So supporting digestion, there's, you know, um intolerase, VODMAP, there's some really good digestive enzymes out there that are very uh kind of fermentable, carb-based that could help helping people um improve the digestibility of their food. There's some foods, even when we when we look at uh grains, adding extra water, cooking them longer, um, starting with smaller portions. If you're gonna do beans, uh, white beans, mung beans, uh, and black beans are the easier to tolerate of the beans. Uh-huh. So we could stick with those and start with tablespoon portions. I mean, you could cook up a batch and put it in ice cube trays, pop them out into an ice, you know, a bag into the freezer, and just pull out a small amount just to start the introduction. Yeah. I always tell people Until food is liquid. Yeah.

Brooke Stubbs 18:57

Okay, okay. I love this. This leads to two things I wanted to mention. I always tell people start with the foods you already gravitate towards that you know don't affect you. Yeah. And then those other ones, there's a threshold to which your body can handle each of those foods if you're looking to reintroduce them. Yeah. But then you mention um chew your food until it's water. And I love this. And I was just thinking as we were talking, we're talking a lot about the vagus nerve, we're talking a lot about the parasympathetic system.

Angela Pifer 19:25

Yeah.

Brooke Stubbs 19:26

So many people eat on the go in a stressed state. Talk to me about that. Talk to me about how important it is to slow down. Not just so you have like your body can sense that you're full. Talk to me about what it does to digestion. Yeah, absolutely.

Angela Pifer 19:41

So, so what I would say is uh the proper way, let's want to talk about that for a second. The proper way to kind of stimulate digestion top down and start to kick into parasympathetic is to give your body the proper signaling that food is going to be coming in. Uh-huh. So it's looking at the food, it's smelling the food, it's thinking about how it's going to taste. I love it. That's why the cooking process is so important because you're doing all this work and you're smelling things coming in. And then once you're actually going to take a bite, you take the bite, you put your utensils down and you taste it. What does it taste like? What's the texture? Like just get be in the moment with it. Uh-huh. And then chew that bite until it's completely liquid before swallowing. Uh-huh. I always have people do that with the first bite, uh-huh. And that just sets the tone for the meal. Uh-huh. So when we flip over to the other side of not doing any of that, and like a lot of us do, I can down an energy bar like that. You know, I mean, none of us are, you know, valuable, valuable. Uh so, you know, but it's, you know, we have to put it in, we have to chew. It's like take a moment, look off into the distance, think about what your food tastes at least. I mean, like, just try to be a little bit more in the moment with what you're doing with that food and actually taste it. Uh-huh. And then that way it's a little bit more signaling. But um, I, you know, again, for people on the go, I'll recommend bitters. Okay. Bitters are like a quick shot of food's coming. Okay. Yeah. It's no different if I tell everyone here uh to think about putting a slice of lemon in their mouth. Okay. My mouth starts watering, your mouth is starting to water. You do say it. That's what bitters. That's what bitters. His mouth is watering. That's what bitters you do, the digestive track. Um, I prefer ones with gentian. Okay. Um, uh, just for the liver stimulation as well for vials.

Brooke Stubbs 21:26

And they don't have to be refrigerated.

Angela Pifer 21:28

You can carry them with you. No, carry them with you. That's amazing. I like uh Quicksilver Scientific because it's got a little pump on it. Bitter X is a really good one. There's lots of bitters out there. But it's a little pump, so you could take it with you, just pump pump. You said Quicksilver. Quicksilver, again.

Brooke Stubbs 21:40

I was just over at their booth. Yeah, it's a really good one. What else are you excited about right now in longevity medicine? I mean, there's so many things here at A4M. Goodness. It's overwhelming. It is overwhelming. You kind of just have to see what you can see right in front of you at one time, yeah, completely not try and see it all. But yeah, um, to me.

Angela Pifer 22:00

I don't know. I'm I'm most excited about the lifestyle aspect of it. And not I I like a lot of the gadgets and the tools, don't get me wrong. They can be a lot of fun. I have a red light panel at home. I have an infrared sauna at home. Yeah. Um, if I had space, I'd have a hyperbaric chamber. Uh-huh. Um, there's a a company near me that does all this that I go to that has a cryo chamber. Like it's fun stuff. Yes. But none of that is gonna outweigh where's your muscle mass? Uh-huh. Are you sleeping well? Uh-huh. Where's your oxidative stress? Right. There's some real basics that you have to look at and you can't pill your way out of it. No, there's no supplement or cherry on top.

Brooke Stubbs 22:41

That's gonna take a the place of a foundation of good lifestyle happens.

Angela Pifer 22:45

Getting out into nature, all of that, and it's we've we've just become so, I don't know, even like the COVID and the isolation that caused for everybody, I think it's just gonna be really hard to recover from. I do even even now. Even now, just just because of the it it drove a lot more people kind of inward to be secluded and feel like the connection is social media when it's not. When it's not, yeah, it doesn't do that. That's what we all were doing. Yeah, all of us were just like, oh my gosh, what's happening in this and that? And uh we've gotten really used to engaging that way, and we have to step back out of it. I think people lost what's important going through that, and also again, what's bringing you joy? Yeah, I see this a lot for people coming to me with SIBO, trying to be their own researchers, and I get it, my God, they're trying to feel better. I do the same thing, but it's it's a lot of research all the time. Yeah, and that's creating its own heightened sense of stress that's gonna leave it.

Brooke Stubbs 23:42

Give it to the experts, enjoy your life. It's the oxytocin. Tell me, is it more than oxytocin? What is that joy, what does that connection do to the gut?

Angela Pifer 23:52

Uh, I try to recommend things, I I try to figure out how to people, uh how to help people get back into something that's creative that they're doing with their hands. Yeah, okay. That's where the joy part. I'm like, I appreciate if your joy is going out with your friends and doing all the stuff. Hopefully it's not going out and drinking a bunch, you know. Let's have some happy behavior. Oh yeah, let's talk about alcohol too. But yeah, just just from the joy piece, real quick, uh, get into watercolor. Like if if uh there's I say watercolor, anything, painting, pottery, jewelry making, something creative, crafting, something, something that you have a class you go to that's maybe a couple times a month. Uh-huh. Doesn't seem too overwhelming. Sure. But you get to go there, you're with a group of people, you get to meet new people. It's you get to see what other people do, and you get you're in there and you completely check out of everything else. I love it. That's what I love about it. It's like this social, creative, working with your hands, calming your system down, and you're not worrying about your stuff. So that's I like something like that.

Brooke Stubbs 24:54

It's almost like I don't think we talk about it enough. And it's so important to overhold overall health. Before we have to wrap up, I want to hear about alcohol. We know it's a toxin, we know it affects the liver, but how does it affect microbes and the GI tract?

Angela Pifer 25:08

Yeah. Um, so I think a lot of people feel it affects the liver and it does, but it's also causing neural inflammation, is why we feel the way we do. Think about the head, the hangover and the alcoholic feeling. That's it.

Brooke Stubbs 25:19

I always just thought that was that that middle metabolite, that acetylaldehyde that was causing, but it is, it is inflammatory. It's in the neuron.

Angela Pifer 25:29

So um I I think the biggest thing is if you have a nightly habit, don't I have you know, women coming to me, oh, I hear what you know, red wine's good for me. Yeah, and so I'll have them measure out their glass. Like just grab your glass out, pour water, you know, wine, whatever, wine or water into where you usually would measure it out. Because some they're very deceptive in their shape and patch that many ounces. I think they're specially designed for that. Yes, but I don't feel that having a vice every single night is a good idea. So, like, let's try to just keep this to a couple times a week, and that might even be a little bit too much for people. I think so. It really might be. So, just from a microbe perspective, I mean, we do so much that knocks our microbes down. So it's just gonna it's gonna change the environment. You're adding a toxin, you're gonna divert uh your liver's ability to process other toxins and get them out. You get more toxin loading, you're gonna get an imbalanced gut. Absolutely. So you get an imbalanced gut, you get more brain inflammation, it interferes with sleep. Um, not good for aging at all. Right. Right? So, but it's fun. Yeah. On occasion.

Brooke Stubbs 26:32

On occasion. On occasion. Okay. Yes. So we don't have to be teetotalers, but we but yeah, we have to watch it. And I think moderation is a difficult concept for most people, but it really is.

Angela Pifer 26:45

And I'd even say for the guys listening, uh, yeah, a few beers a night, not a great idea. A beer a night, not a it's a you're in the same realm. You're in the same realm. This has turned into a vice. Yeah. This is not good. That's been socially acceptable and it's gone a little farther. Yeah, and then abdominal ultrasounds. I love referring for those looking at liver, looking at is there any fatty liver happening? Love it. That sort of thing, and connecting that back with gut, and then, of course, of course, we need to pull off alcohol then. I love it. I love it.

Brooke Stubbs 27:13

Anything else you want to talk to our listeners about today?

Angela Pifer 27:17

Yeah, for anyone that is listening, I just say we are trying to simplify SIBO. Okay. It's not a primary condition. Okay. SIBO does not equal antibiotic treatment. Okay. And at this point, the algorithm has CIPRO in it, it has Bactrum in it. People are being given those out of the gate without resetting the terrain and actually re-realizing and figuring out what's loading their system. I mean, half my patient load has mold. Again, I'm get the people seven to twelve providers. So this is not just a person off the street that all of a sudden two months ago, oh my gosh, I started bloating. Okay, so I appreciate that. I have a niche. Uh, but we have to we have to, you know, parasites, probably the number one functional driver for SIBO. Uh, mold would be the second one that I see. Okay. I see a ton of mold. So we have to start thinking if I have a person that has chronic mold, and now this downstream issue has developed into a SIBO issue, and I'm giving them antibiotics, I am not doing anything to treat their root cause. Nothing to treat their root cause. They're probably still in the environment, they're still sick, and you're just gonna put them on the hamster wheel of treatment. So treatment may be necessary at some point, may be necessary, but we just really need to rethink it. And I'd also say if you're thinking that, well, I don't use antibiotics, I use herbals, you're still knocking down everything. You still are. So, again, not as much collateral damage. I give you that, absolutely, but even berberine and studies will create extinction in certain species. Okay. So we have to think about that. It's not just it's natural, it's an herb, it's great, if they are, but we still have to be careful about their collateral damage that they can cause.

Brooke Stubbs 29:07

Thank you so much for being here today. Can you tell our listeners where they can find you, if you're on social media, where they can, how they can work with you?

Angela Pifer 29:14

Yeah, absolutely. My website is sevo guru.com. Okay. And then I do have a direct to consumer uh where I sell uh the vibrant labs and uh professional line supplements direct to consumer, and that's functionalmedicineshop.com.

Brooke Stubbs 29:27

Love it. Yeah, great. Thank you so much, Angela.