SIBO breath testing has exploded in popularity in recent years. But, surprisingly, many GI doctors refuse to order these tests! Why on earth would doctors refuse to order a test that can help so many people? Are they ill-informed, or is there something they know that we don’t..? Unfortunately for the functional medicine community and the online SIBO community, it appears that the later is the case.
There are many studies comparing SIBO breath tests (using either lactulose or glucose) to the “gold standard” aspirate and culture. So, it’s widely known from that data that these tests are imperfect. But, looking at those numbers, many of us believed that they were still worth using. I believed that until about a year ago.
It turns out that these tests are FAR WORSE than we ever realized, to the point that they are plain old unusable. In the videos below, I share data using breath testing with scintigraphy that shows the potential for:
- 88% false positive rate with lactulose breath testing
- 48% false positive rate with glucose breath testing
- Questionable proof for the ‘glucose missing distal SIBO’ hypothesis
If you’d like to read the articles referenced in the videos, scroll to the bottom of this page for access to those and my notes.
