I was thinking, has it actually been asked on here just what proportion of us have significant gut problems along with our general fatigue.
Research has shown a very high percentage of us with dysbiosis, even though some of us don't have gut symptoms. ME/CFS researcher Mady Hornig has a video out showing dysbiosis in patients with and without IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).
I have gone from severe and mostly bedridden to fairly mild ( a 6 on the disability scale) by treating sibo and dysbiosis as the cause of my ME/CFS.
Ken lassasen at (
https://cfsremission.com/my-story/) has recovered from ME/CFS 3 times by treating gut dysbiosis, is fully recovered and has been for years now.
All I need to do to become mostly bedridden within 1-2 weeks is increase my carb intake to about 200 gms a day, from the 80 gms a day I'm doing now. Carbs feed sibo and dysbiosis. It takes me from a 6 down to about a 2-3 by feeding my dysbiosis!
But treatment for something like SIBO or gut dysbiosis, can often bring benefits....for a certain amount of time, before the issue recurs. So it seems to show something else is triggering the whole thing
The reasons sibo is so often recurrent or chronic, are many,
but ME/CFS is not the cause. Most people that have recurrent sibo don't have ME/CFS, yet they often spend years trying to get rid of it but can't.
This quote below refers to people
without ME/CFS using the term "patients". The older we are, the higher the percentage of people with recurrent or "chronic" SIBO.
Approximately 45 percent of patients will have recurrent SIBO following completion of antibiotic therapy, with recurrence rates higher in older adults, post-appendectomy and chronic use of proton pump inhibitors.
[21]
In my mind, the fact that so many people without ME/CFS have chronic SIBO, makes it clear that ME/CFS is not what makes SIBO chronic and recurrent in us. That's just the nature of SIBO in about 45% of
all people.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK546634/