Methane dominant breath test - Aire 2

[hankpym]

I purchased the FoodMarble Aire2 two weeks ago and have been logging meals and doing breath tests.

Early days of course but most meals rarely go above 4 - except for one day when I experimented with 6 danish butter cookies and that scored a 6.7 after one hour!

I notice that on all my readings that I am heavily methane dominant. On Thursday I purchased some

of these probiotics as they contained the lactobacillus reuteri that seems to be recommended for methane dominance:

nutravita.co.uk/collections...

Tried these for 2 days now and get quite bad acid reflux one hour after taking them - do I persist or discontinue?

Any other suggestions?

[bluejourney]

I’ve had an AIRE 2 for a while, I think it’s great. Really helpful. I am hypothyroid and also have methane SIBO (IMO) I’ve mostly got my methane/hydrogen scores down now by seeing which foods make it worse. I’ve scored a zero on 3 occasions! But it’s always come back up again to between 1 and 3. I don’t take prebiotics at the moment as some practitioners say it makes the SIBO worse. L-Reuteri is said to get rid of some of the methanogens, but you need to be off it for 2 weeks before testing as it will measure as methane itself for some reason (see book ‘Supergut’ by Dr William Davies). The reflux may well be caused by the SIBO, so I wouldn’t take anything that you feel is making the reflux worse.

I’ve found the NHS pretty useless at treating methane SIBO. My local hospital only tests for hydrogen! I’m under a private endo/naturopath now who’s prescribed me a course of Rifaximin and Neomycin, but I’m aiming to get the overgrowth as low as possible before I start them, and I wouldn’t say I’ve conquered the constipation and motility issues yet, which seem to be more or less vital if you want to get the whole thing under control. Methane produced by the methanogens even makes the constipation worse, as well as the hypothyroidism.

I’m not sure about taking probiotics at the moment. I think sometimes with overgrowth your gut just isn’t ready to cope with them. Some practitioners recommend spore based ones so they pass through the small bowel and start acting when they reach the colon, which is where they should be. I’m not sure the research is there yet to know for sure.

Hope this helps. Enjoy your AIRE 2.

[Sallybt]

I was diagnosed with hydrogen dominant SIBO 2 years ago. My Foodmarble readings confirmed this and over the months having treated it I got my hydrogen levels down to virtually zero. I find my methane levels relate very much to what I eat as food naturally ferments while digesting so the level drops within an hour or so. Some food sends the readings up quickly particularly sweet things. I cannot take any pro or prebiotics, make me quite ill. I took probiotics for years before SIBO.