How I Finally Healed My Gut From IBS and SIBO

Summary

Amanda Malachesky describes her decade-long experience with IBS symptoms and how she eventually found a more effective, individualized path. Her main lesson is to investigate what is happening in your own body rather than relying on assumptions or randomly trying diets, supplements, and protocols.

Strategies and approach

• Start with personal history and observable clues. Amanda reviewed when her symptoms began, what made them better or worse, and her health history. Clues included symptoms linked to hormonal changes, difficulty digesting fats, worsening symptoms with stress and poor sleep, food sensitivities, and a past bout of amebic dysentery.
• Build from foundational supports toward more targeted investigation.
  • To manage stress, she took daily walks, used meditation recordings, aimed to go to bed at 10 p.m., and went to therapy. These helped her resilience but did not resolve her IBS.
  • A low-FODMAP diet reduced her symptoms somewhat and suggested fermentable carbohydrates might be contributing.
  • She tried digestive enzymes and stomach-acid support for fat digestion, but these experiments did not help.
• Use the results of each experiment to guide next steps. Rather than treating a failed approach as proof of a diagnosis, she used what she learned to refine her understanding of possible contributing factors.
• Seek further assessment when foundational changes are not enough. Her hormone-related symptoms led her to seek evaluation and receive an endometriosis diagnosis. She later had wide excision surgery, which reduced some pain, nausea, and hormone-related symptoms, though her bowel symptoms continued.
• Investigate other possible contributors with professional help. Testing found methane SIBO, parasites, and yeast problems. She pursued treatment with help from a local naturopath and reports that her symptoms improved substantially afterward.
• Aim for a manageable, individualized outcome. Amanda says her gut became quiet and no longer dominated daily life. She still avoids or limits some foods, including gluten and lactose, and occasionally experiences minor symptoms.

Her overall method was to observe her symptoms, identify plausible causes, try targeted changes or treatments, and use the results to decide what to investigate next. She emphasizes that IBS can have different contributors for different people, and that her story is personal—not a guarantee of the same outcome for others.

Presenters and sources

• Amanda Malachesky — Presenter, certified functional nutrition gut health coach, and host of the Calm Digestion Method.
• Andrea Nakiyama — Amanda’s functional nutrition mentor, credited with teaching her to start with foundational supports and avoid one-size-fits-all solutions.
• Amanda’s local naturopath — Helped her with treatment for the infections identified.