Careful! The risks of treating SIBO with TikTok

It is a trend in social networkswhere thousands of girls teach what food remove or how to do a diagnostic test at home. But SIBO is not just that your stomach swells and acting on our own, by word of mouth or imitating influencerswithout the control of a doctor, is very dangerous.

“No one with a heart problem would think of not going to the cardiologist, right? Well, the same goes for this.”Silvia Gómez, a digestive system doctor specializing in functional digestive disorders at the La Paz University Hospital in Madrid, emphasizes to EFE.

This expert, author of “Microbiota universe”which treats intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), acknowledges that today a “boom”, amplified in social networks. Everyone knows about the microbiota and everyone believes they have SIBO.

It is not a cause but a consequence

The first thing to be clear about, he stresses, is that SIBO is not the cause, but the consequence of a digestive disorder. First reason why it is useless to self-diagnose it and start doing what has gone well (or says it has gone well) for another person: if the cause is not addressed, it will reappear.

It tends to affect more women, aged between 20 and 25 years and from 45. But what does it consist of? In short, in that certain bacteria of the -also already viral- microbiota of the large intestine migrate to the small intestine because something has disturbed their well-being.

He has very non-specific symptoms: abdominal discomfort, bloating, increased perception of intestinal sounds, gas, diarrhea, constipation, etc., Carmen Aragón, from the Spanish Society of Endocrinology and Nutrition, lists to EFE.

“Thinking that all digestive symptoms -alert- are due to overgrowth is dangerous, because they may correspond to pathologies that need treatment, such as inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease or intolerances.”

Everyone’s stomach bloats after eating.

Specialists are concerned not so much about the increase in SIBO cases, but because digestive pathologies are also increasing as a result of bad lifestyle habits.

A brief immersion on TikTok or Instagram is enough to see thousands of videos with millions of views in which someone -mostly young girls- offer their tricks to get rid of this uncomfortable problem that swells their guts: what foods to stop eating, how to shop at the supermarket, treatments “natural alternatives” to drugs…

“Now all the young women who do not have a flat stomach, which we are the majority, attribute it to SIBO”and then they start “make very important food restrictions. And of course, the gut goes down, but why don’t you eat?. Besides, “We all swell up our guts after eating. So if you don’t eat, well, you don’t bloat either.” warns.

False positives

The diagnosis of SIBO is made by endoscopy or with what is known as a breath test, nothing invasive, comfortable and accessible, even available online at a price of around 60 euros; however, it leaves a not inconsiderable number of false positives.

The result of the test is influenced by what has been eaten before, if you are constipated or with diarrhea, if you have respected the times or if you have moved too much, but many do not know this.

It is useless to take a test yourself without an expert to interpret it for you. In addition, SIBO is treated with an antibiotic, which only a doctor -not a nutritionist- can prescribe.

Gómez reiterates: if the origin of SIBO is not treated, the bacteria will continue migrating. “Overgrowth is the first thing that shows its face and what raises the alarm, but you have to scratch, because it can be intolerance, but it can be something more serious.”

and although “Of course you are not going to die of SIBO”, It does affect, and a lot, the quality of life of patients, he points out.

Source: EFE