Transcription
Hey gang, today we're going to talk a little bit about how to do some tests that can give you some insights at home on to whether you're dealing with a SIBO issue and if you're taking steps to eradicate a SIBO issue. These steps can also give you insights into whether you're making progress or not.
And the channel seems to be getting big enough that I've been getting some offers about sponsored video type things and I just kind of turn them all down. I just I don't like the idea of somebody telling me what I should and should not say, you know, like I'm going to listen to that. But somebody made me realize that because of this viewpoint, I haven't shared any of the cool testing tools that I've been teaching clients how to use at home. So this week I'm working on two videos. I'm working on one for this cool little iron testing tool, which is great for me because I have hemocromattosis. And I'm going to do this in another video. I'll put the link to this video in the description below this one when that's ready.
But today we're going to talk about this Food Marble Air 2. And this is basically a breath test that you can do at home. And this company makes an Air and an Air2. And the Air just tests hydrogen levels, but this Air2 tests hydrogen and methane. But this is not a promotional or sponsored video. I bought this with my own money, so we can say what we really want to say about it. We can really give our real opinion.
Now, to use this, you have to have some type of smartphone or smart device because there's an app that you have to use to kind of see what your readings are and such. But when you turn it on, it kind of reminds you of that, you know, that little square thing that they give you a PF change to tell you that your table is ready. But what we're going to look at here is you can do breath tests at home. And breath test is really the best way to check for SIBO today. And this is not an unflawed system. There's definitely some flaws that we're going to talk about in all types of breath testing. and and this has some flaws as well, but it's just the best thing that we have going today to get an idea of what may be going on with what type of gases are being created in the system.
And when you do the test with your doctor, it's it's can often be like a mail-in kit that you do at home or you go into the office and you're going to be there for a few hours because you're doing different tests at different intervals. And that test will run you, you know, around $250, $350 even per test that you do. But if you have this device, you can do all the tests that you want at home. So, I'm going to put some links in the description below to some studies on this device that show that the results are very similar to what you would get from one of these mail-in tests that you would get from your doctor. So, that really impressed me. I'm not going to go too deep into those studies, but I'll put the links in the description below so you can dig into those a little bit.
So, what I've been liking about this with clients is they would normally pay $200 to $350 per test they did, but this thing cost me about $250 and you can use it all you want. So, it's not just one test. You know, the next test you're paying another $200, $250 or so, but this one you just buy it once. So, a lot of people are really liking that. Still, $250 is not nothing. So, I was using this with enough clients that I had them send me an affiliate code so that my clients and students could get a discount. and you can use that, too. So, if you end up getting one, you can use the discount code kick it. All capital letters at checkout.
But before you run off and buy it, I want to talk about some real flaws with this system. I want to talk about some major mistakes that people are making with this and things that this doesn't really do that people think that it does. But I also want to share some real benefits you can get from using this Air2 and the way that we use it with clients. So, to do that, let's jump over to our Smartboard. Here we go. [Applause]
TC Hill is not a doctor and does not claim to be a doctor or licensed in any type of medical field. Don't be an idiot and use anything heard on the show as medical advice. This information should be used for educational purposes only and you should contact your doctor for any medical advice, not get off me.
So remember, I'm not a doctor. I'm not giving anybody medical advice about their SIBO. I'm not saying that if you have SIBO, you need this to fix your SIBO. I'm not saying this is going to tell you whether you have SIBO or not. I don't really view this as a diagnostic tool. Although a lot of doctors are using it that way and the company has another device. I think it's a little bit more advanced that some doctors are using in this manner. Um, but let's look at the ways that the company is suggesting that people use this tool. We'll look at some ways that some other people use it and then I'll show you how we use it and the insights that we try to gain with it and then you can figure out if this is something that's right for you or not.
So the Food Marble company says first of all that you can use this as like a SIBO test and they're not saying that you're going to diagnose yourself either, but they can say that you can get some good indications if there seems to be a SIBO issue going on. So, when we're looking at any type of breath testing situation, we've talked a lot in a lot of other videos about all the malfunctions that can go on with this digestive system and how when there's not enough stomach acid, it allows bad guys to come into the system and set up camp and create a lot of trouble. So, in a normal human body, the way that it should work, our beneficial bacteria should be at the bottom of the digestive tract in the large intestine, at the end of the whole system there. And the amount of fermentation that they create should be a pretty reasonable amount. But when someone doesn't have enough stomach acid or some other things go wrong and allow these bad guys to come in and set up camp either in the stomach or in the small intestine, we shouldn't have a lot of bacteria there. And when we do, it's going to create a lot of problems and symptoms and gas and pressure and bloating and constipation, all these things that we talk about a lot.
So, when we're looking at breath testing, a person will usually be told to do some type of prep diet for like 24 hours or so. They're going to remove all these types of foods that have the ability to ferment. All these foods with like fermentable sugars and fibers and things like that. So, there's a lot of foods that you really need to remove when you're going to test this out. And the idea is to just remove anything that's creating all this fermentation from the bacteria and try to calm things down in the large intestine. too. So that when you're going to put this solution in to test out what happens, it can give you a better idea of is that increase in gas that we're seeing from this test of the gas that we're doing. Is that happening here or is it happening down there further or is that just the large intestine? So they try to clear things out for a day or so and then the person would do some type of baseline reading as the first test and say okay this is my number without anything that's stimulating any type of fermentation or excess gases and then we provide the body with some type of stimula like a glucose solution or some other FODMAP and then we watch how long does it take for that rise to happen. So that's basically how most breath testing situations work. Whether you're going to use this Food Marble Air 2 thing or doing some type of breath test with a doctor, you would test it throughout intervals after introducing that stimulant.
So what we really need to understand with this is that the transit time from person to person is really going to vary. And if somebody is even doing a breath test, they're probably doing that because they're having some type of digestive symptom. And when there's some type of symptom going on, that's because there is some type of problem or malfunction happening. And we've talked in a lot of our videos about the wide variety of different malfunctions that can occur that can alter the transit time. There are problems that can cause things to move through way too fast. There are problems that can happen that can really slow things down and create these chronic constipation issues or these delayed gastric emptying issues where some people don't have food even leaving the stomach for hours. So there's a lot of variations there. So usually the people that are doing this test are we already know they're broken in one way or another. And now we're going to run this test in a way that we're assuming that their body is going to operate like a normal human body just because we didn't didn't give them any fermentable foods for a day or so. So this is a flawed view right from the beginning. Yet this breath testing thing is the best thing we have going. So why not get information from the best thing we got going? We can still gain some insights. I'm a fan of gaining whatever kind of information we can gain. So I'm okay with this point of view. Um, I don't have clients do this. I don't have them do this thing where they use the pouches. You can get pouches from the company with different types of stimulants that you're going to give the body, whether it be glucose or fructose and things like that. But I don't have them do that. I don't go that route. So, that's one method that I don't really use that the company might suggest.
They also suggest that you can do kind of like these different FOBMAT tests where you're just looking at one single thing at a time where you could do a prep diet for 24 hours and then you're going to look at just glucose. You can do a prep diet for 24 hours and you're just going to look at lactolose. So you can kind of pinpoint which of these FODMAP fumes are creating more of the trouble for you. And I just view that as I just don't love doing tests where I'm going to do something that I wouldn't do in normal life. I want to see how the body is reacting to the foods that I would be normally eating in a day. So, I'm not normally going to drink a juice of lactolose kind of thing. And different people with different uh malabsorption issues and different transient times are going to absorb more of some of those fluids and they're going to send more of those fluids through the intestinal tract creating that reaction that they're really looking for. So, that's going to vary from person to person. So, I think it's okay to look at those if you want to. I just wouldn't view them as a a slam dunk diagnostic of the wh exactly what's going on. Sometimes when people eat foods, it's going to react differently than a stimulus liquid would.
Um, the other thing that the company says to do is to gain food insights. So, a person could just use this and do these tests every day. eat a specific type of food, monitor that food in the app, and then run your test to get an idea of what type of reaction each food is creating. And then you can get a better idea of what foods are creating the most trouble for you. And I I like this point of view. I don't feel like this is wrong. I'm okay with people doing this as long as they use these insights. Okay? So remember, you don't know how long it's taking things to move through there. Just because you ate a food an hour ago and you're testing it, you don't know is that something that was doing okay before, but then it got to a specific area in the small intestine or at the beginning of the large intestine where you hit where there's a really major overgrowth in that area. All of a sudden, all these gases are being produced and that's creating an increase in the gas, but you thought it was something that you just ate an hour ago. So, when you're going to do this method, you really want to kind of pay attention and take it with a grain of salt. You can eat a food and say, "Okay, I did see a spike there, but I'm gonna see what happens when I eat this the next time. I'm gonna see if I have a similar spike. I'm gonna eat different things throughout the day. I'm not going to eat the same thing every day so I can see if there's other days where maybe I don't get that type of reaction."
Again, what this does, what the company's saying is that this can tell you what foods you need to avoid. And I just don't like having the viewpoint of, oh, let's do some things to figure out what foods we should run in horror from for the rest of our life. When there's things going wrong, we like to fix the actual underlying cause and then a person can then eat a wider variety of foods. They don't have to run in horror from a food for the rest of their lives. As humans, we should dominate our food. We should be able to conquer that food and we should not be running in horror from the food. Now, there's a lot of foods that we eat today that no matter how well you're conquering your food, over time, they can cause some trouble because we shouldn't be eating this stuff anyways. But for the most part, a human body should be able to conquer that food. And that's the goal is to fix enough malfunctions so that you can eat your food and you don't even know you ate food. You don't even know you ate it. You don't have any type of symptom or horrible situation come up. You just ate food and you went about your day. That's our goal. That's what we like to see people do.
So, this food fear confusion, as I call it, is that somebody's going to eat a food and they're going to, "Oh, man, I blew a 8.7 after I ate that. I'm never eating that again, but it may not have been that food. It could have been something going on further down the line." And people when they do these kind of things take it to a next level and they're like, "Oh man, I I watched an episode of ALF and I blew 9.1. I ain't watching ALF again. That aliens eating cats. That's not right for me." So, you don't want to look at it that way when you're looking at this just because this is a complicated system. You don't know the rate at which things are moving through and you don't know exactly where your problems exist. Just be okay with that. I've seen a lot of people that even did really well with this testing of the food things and they're like, "Oh, I really figured out some foods that were giving me a hard time." And you know, it's very possible to figure that out. Just if you're really paying attention and your transit time is at least reasonable enough, you can gain insights from that. Plenty of people have gained insights on that. I just hate to see people get that fear of, "Oh, I ate this food. I got this number. I'm never eating that food again." It's not always super accurate. So, you want to take these things for what they are. Okay.
Now, what other people do that I've heard of, and I'm okay with this, is they'll do this 24-hour prep diet and they'll try to avoid these prebiotic fiber foods, which is a lot of different things. You know, it's like legumes and fruits and alcohol and sugars and starches and things like that. So they'll remove all those foods and then they'll do that first test where they do do a breath test to see what they get and then they'll introduce some type of food with a fermentable fiber in it or maybe they'll just take some in inulin and a little bit of liquid or something like that. But when they do that then they're going to check every 30 minutes to see if there's a rise. And they can say that you can keep measuring for 90 minutes up to 3 hours. Once you get to that three-hour mark, you're probably getting into the large intestine and most people are going to have an increase in that testing number anyways. But again, like this is not super solid just because we don't know the transit time of a lot of people. But with this Air2 device, they're looking at anything that is an increase of two points. Like if your base was like two and you went up to four at any time in that 90minute period or so, that that could be an indication that there's a SIBO issue going on. And if you go up to six at any point, like any of your tests are over six, then that's a pretty strong indication that there's a SIBO issue going on. And one reason that I'm okay with that is that even if someone's just having bloating because they don't have enough stomach acid to acidify their food and break it down correctly, then in most cases, bacteria has come in. Some type of varmint has come in because it comes in on the food. That that acid in the stomach is the barrier to the whole digestive tract. And when it's not working correctly, things are coming in. they're going to set up camp, they're going to move down. So, when that's the case and somebody's having those type of symptoms, they almost always have some type of overgrowth. So, when we're looking at blowing a a number that goes over six, that can be a pretty strong indication that things are going wrong, especially if a person is having symptoms.
So, here's the way that we use it, and we just use it, like I said, as a piece of information. I like it when you can add pieces of information to give you more insights. This body's complicated. it's hard to know exactly what's going on. We like to do a lot of different measurements just to get an idea of what kind of insights can we gain about how the body is operating. And we view tracking the food that you're eating in response to the numbers you're getting as okay, not optimal, not look at this and go off of exactly what you're seeing, but we view it as okay if you're just going to kind of pay attention. And man, every time I have onions, my numbers really spike. That must be the type of fermentable fiber that's really driving everything crazy. Maybe I need to avoid those onions a little bit. But understand that the symptoms are not always going to match up with the numbers. Remember, we talked in a lot of other videos about all these different things that can go wrong in this digestive tract that has the ability to create symptoms. So gases and increased amounts of gases is not the only underlying cause of digestive symptoms. There's a lot of other things that can go wrong. So just know that the symptoms are not always going to line up for every person.
So what we like to do is we like to take a client and allow them to use this test just to see where they are. Fine. Doing this first, you know, doing this 24-hour thing to see do you get a big spike when you put these things in. That's all fine. But what we really like to see is just what are your numbers when you're eating the foods that you're eating and you're experiencing these symptoms? What kind of numbers are you getting? Are they really low? Are they 1.2? Are you up in the four, five, six, eight, or nine range? That's a big piece of information. If you're blowing 8.2, 9.3 most of the time, then that's a strong indication of what's going on. So then what we like to do is take steps to fix the problem. We want to use antimicrobials to kind of wipe out all these bad guys. We want to fix digestive malfunctions that are going wrong so we can shut the front door and more bad guys aren't coming in every single day. We want to fix these low stomach acid issues. We want to fix bile that is not flowing correctly because it became too thick and sticky to flow correctly. So when we can fix the actual underlying cause, then we can continue to test these numbers. You know, once or twice a week is even fine. A person doesn't have to make themselves completely nuts blowing in this thing every 15 minutes every single day. You just don't need to do that. But if you can take steps to improve the underlying cause, monitor your progress, then you get to see, am I making progress? Am I going in the right direction? Are things going slower than I want them to? Maybe I need to use another antimicrobial with this. Maybe I need to increase a dose. Maybe I'm using just a really low dose of something because I'm being a little bit more cautious. Or maybe the die off from all this bad guys was really causing a lot of symptoms for me. So I I I notched things down a few notch. So all we want to do is just look to see, oh my, wow, today I blew a five. That's way less than 8.6. I hadn't blown a five before. I'm almost one of the cool kids. I'm going to continue to do what I'm doing so that I can continue to make progress. A lot of people when they're trying to fix digestive malfunctions give up because they didn't fix everything by Thursday so that they could go to a hoown. Well, sometimes it takes more time than that. So, when you're looking at more measurements, sometimes you can see the progress in those measurements that'll motivate you to keep doing that work. That can be very beneficial for a lot of people.
The other thing this can do is help us understand is it time to repopulate with beneficial bacteria yet. A lot of times when there's a SIBO issue or any kind of major overgrowth, if somebody just puts probiotics in there, you're going to create this battle between all the good guys and the bad guys. And that's really going to magnify a lot of symptoms and the person's going to be like, "Well, that ain't for me." So, if you can use this tool to kind of monitor how things are going, it'll give you an idea if it's time to start using probiotics and stop using all the antimicrobial stuff. We have another video where we talk about a probiotic test that we do where we wipe out all the bad guys with some antimicrobials and then we introduce this specific probiotic to see, okay, do you have symptoms magnify when you put this in or does it feel okay? If it feels okay, maybe it's time to start populating and stop doing all this killing bad guys off thing. So, if you have this tool, this is another way that you can kind of pinpoint that a little bit more than just testing with a probiotic.
So, because of these flaws with the breath testing and the transit times being different from person to person, I've seen people talk about this and just because of these flaws, they're like, "Ah, throw it in the trash. You can't use that." But if you understand the flaws, you can see that there's a lot of benefits you can get from just adding another tool in your arsenal. So, I don't feel like everybody needs this tool to fix their SIBO. If somebody has to mortgage their house to buy a $250 tool, then that's probably not right for them. You can just do some other steps. But if this is not a financial burden for you and you just want to put something else in your favor, gain more insights if you're moving in the right direction, I found that this is can be really helpful.
So, I hope this was helpful. If you decide that you want to get one, we'll put the link in the description below and you can use our Kick It affiliate code at checkout to get 15% off if you want to do that. But right now, if you want to check out how you do the simple test, it's really easy to do. We made a video on how to do the test with the Food Marble Air 2. I can't wait to hear about your results.