Gut Health

Is It SIBO or Is It Lyme Disease?

If you’ve been struggling with symptoms that don’t make sense and won’t go away, you may be suffering from one of these two commonly underdiagnosed diseases:

Lyme disease

or

SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth)  

And because the two conditions present very similarly symptomatically, it can be very tricky to determine exactly what’s going on.

To add an extra layer of complication, the answer to “Is it SIBO or is it Lyme disease?” may be:

It’s both.”

Some experts estimate that up to 70% of people infected with Lyme disease also have SIBO.

But knowing the correct particulars of your diagnosis will be a boon in sending your recovery in the right direction… so you can actually start feeling better ASAP.  

What Is SIBO?

SIBO – Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth – is precisely what it sounds like. It’s a condition where there are far too many bacteria in the small intestine, an organ that usually contains very few (10,000 times fewer than the gut!) 

Most of the time, these extra bacteria have traveled to the small intestine from the gut. And because the small intestine is where our food gets processed, those bacteria have a lot to snack on – especially not-yet-digested sugars and starchy carbs. That causes two big problems: 

  1. It encourages bacteria to grow out of control in an area where it’s not meant to be, to the point where even beneficial bacteria (probiotics) can’t remedy the situation.
  2. Bacteria transform the undigested carbs into hydrogen or methane gas, which can cause gas attacks, painful bloating, and other uncomfortable GI issues.

And while SIBO starts in your GI system, its effects don’t stay there. In fact, SIBO symptoms can affect your entire body. 

What Is Lyme Disease?

Lyme disease is a bacterial infection carried and transmitted by tick bites. If an infected tick bites you, you’ll probably develop severe flu-like symptoms within a few days. Unfortunately, unless you realize you’ve been bitten – and most people don’t – you’ll probably just chalk it up to a nasty case of the flu. 

Left untreated, Lyme bacteria hang out in the body until they sense the best time to attack. And they can attack anywhere in the body at any time. That usually starts with whole-body inflammation – including in the gut. Intestinal inflammation leads to leaky gut, which can easily set off a chain of disease-causing events.

Plus, most ticks carry multiple infectious bacteria. So if you have Lyme disease, there’s a good chance you have at least one co-infection as well. That can add layers of complexity to properly diagnosing the situation.

Overlapping Symptoms Make These Conditions Hard To Decipher

Both Lyme and SIBO can cause whole-body symptoms that seem unrelated to each other. That makes it much harder for most doctors to diagnose them properly. In fact, it can take years for some patients to get a correct diagnosis.

Lyme disease is especially sneaky. It causes one set of symptoms when you’re first bitten, and different symptoms once the bacteria settle in for the long haul. The immediate symptoms can make you feel like you have the flu, and include fever, nausea, and abdominal pain. The longer-term symptoms stump most doctors, and they include anything from exhaustion to joint pain to chronic constipation and other GI symptoms. 

The SIBO symptom list cont