IBS and SIBO Breath Testing with FoodMarble: Real-Time Hydrogen and Methane Monitoring
Dr. Ben Weitz introduces the Rational Wellness Podcast episode on IBS and SIBO with guests Aonghus Shortt, PhD (CEO/co-founder) and Claire Shortt, PhD (chief clinical officer) of FoodMarble, creators of the handheld AIRE 2 breath analyzer that measures hydrogen and methane in real time to track fermentation patterns at home. Inspired by Angus’s wife’s unresolved IBS symptoms and restrictive dieting, the device evolved from early prototypes into a validated product, including published research with Johns Hopkins showing equivalence to a leading mail-in breath test kit. They discuss following North American Consensus SIBO protocols (prep diet, fasting, lactulose or glucose, readings every 15 minutes for two hours with customizable options), additional at-home FODMAP intolerance tests, symptom/diet/stool tracking, and personalization. They note ongoing development of hydrogen sulfide measurement, factors affecting readings, and how monitoring can guide diet, supplements, and treatment choices.
00:00 Podcast Intro
00:59 IBS SIBO Episode Setup
02:29 Why FoodMarble Started
06:54 Early Prototypes to Product
07:46 Clinical Validation Studies
10:06 How to Run SIBO Tests
12:34 FODMAP Intolerance Testing
16:11 Stool Microbiome Links
20:17 Building a Healthier Microbiome
24:30 Daily Tracking and H2S Sensor
27:00 Diet Variability Matters
27:39 Tracking Meals and Symptoms
28:56 Personalization Factors in Data
29:39 Meal Timing and Liquids
30:48 GLP-1s and Gut Transit
31:56 Patient Engagement and App Modes
33:38 Avoidance and Food Reintroduction
34:32 Lactose Myths and Hidden FODMAPs
36:09 How FODMAPs Really Work
39:20 Food Database and Alternatives
40:16 Enzymes and Supplement Testing
41:54 Breath Sampling Technique
44:28 Calibration and Device Longevity
48:18 Breath Testing Misconceptions
49:59 SIBO Treatments and Research
54:51 Wrap Up and Where to Buy
55:37 Podcast Closing and Contact
Claire Shortt, PhD and Aonghus Shortt, PhD are the creators of the Food Marble, the handheld SIBO breath analyzer that measures hydrogen and methane in real time to track fermentation patterns at home. To learn more, go to FoodMarble.com and use the code WEITZ15 to get 15% off.
Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure. Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111.
Transcript:
Dr. Weitz: If you’re looking for clinically useful insights, not wellness hype, then this is the place for you. Welcome to the Rational Wellness Podcast, a podcast for functional and integrative practitioners who wanna practice with greater clarity and precision. I’m Dr. Ben Weitz, and each week, I sit down with the leading clinicians, researchers, and lab innovators to explore the science, lab testing, and clinical reasoning behind modern root cause medicine. This is a show focused on practical, evidence-informed insights that you can actually use in patient care. Please subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube. Please tell your friends and colleagues, and if you could give us a ratings and review on Apple or Spotify, we would certainly appreciate it. Finally, to access the show notes and the full transcript, please go to my website, drweitz.com. [00:01:00]
Today, we are having a discussion about IBS and SIBO, and we are continuing a discussion we’ve been having about IBS and SIBO recently on the podcast. We’ve had recent discussions with Dr. Allison Siebecker and Dr. Mark Pimentel. My guests today are Aonghus Shortt, PhD, CEO and co-founder of FoodMarble, and Claire Shortt, PhD, chief scientist at FoodMarble. Is that right?
Claire: Chief-
Dr. Weitz: chief
Claire: clinical officer, but yeah.
Dr. Weitz: Chief clinical officer- Yeah … at FoodMarble, and they developed the AIRE device, an innovative handheld breath analyzer that measures hydrogen and methane gases in real time. If you know anything about SIBO, you know that the way we analyze it is by measuring hydrogen and methane gas. Rather than relying on traditional lab breath tests, clinicians and patients can now monitor fermentation patterns at home, opening up new [00:02:00] possibilities for managing SIBO, intestinal methanogen overgrowth, IBS, and food intolerances. So today, we’ll discuss the science of breath testing, the development of this technology, how practitioners can best use it, especially when managing patients with functional gut disorders like IBS and SIBO. So, Angus and Claire, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having us on.
Claire: Yeah, thanks.
Dr. Weitz: Absolutely. So you guys are speaking to us from Ireland. And what inspired you to create this FoodMarble device?
Aonghus: Yeah, Ben, it was actually my now wife. She was really struggling with her gut. And it’s a story, I think, in many of the… Many people listening to this podcast, they will have a sense of either directly or indirectly via their, the patients. But she went to a lot of practitioners and, you know, her, you know, her doctor, [00:03:00] gastroenterologist. She did a lot of testing to try and understand, you know, what’s underlying her her symptoms. And she just wasn’t making any progress at all. And, you know, it kind of… She started taking a particular medication, I remember. And it, you know, so many- and the
Dr. Weitz: medication was rifaximin? N-
Aonghus: no, it wasn’t rifaximin. It was actually one, one of these sort of, antidepressant medications that are, you know, kind of low dose.
Dr. Weitz: Oh, the old way they used to treat IBS.
Aonghus: Right. Right. And, you know, she was feeling worse. It didn’t make her feel better, Ben. It feel worse. I just remember thinking, “God, you’re, you know, this is not going well.” And, you know, I’m coming from an engineering background and so I had some… i’d just, I’d finished a PhD recently, and so I had access to the research literature and I dug in and went to see, okay, what’s out there, what could help?
And that’s when I came across breath analysis. And that was really in the context of the low FODMAP diet, which it became a lot more well-known and used in you know, since [00:04:00] then. And, you know, I knew the… I could see breath testing wasn’t available in Ireland. There’s no way we could have, you know, used it at that time.
So I actually went to see, well, you know, could I make one of these? Could I make a prototype to use with Grace? And and that’s what I did. And, you know, she tried. We, well, we both tried it. So we’d cook, like, a particular food. So this wasn’t in the context of SIBO, because SIBO, even then, this is, you know, 2015 or so, and, you know, SIBO, I guess, was known to a certain amount of people, but really wasn’t as as big a deal as it is today. And so this was really- Right.
Dr. Weitz: We generally referred to those symptoms as IBS, irritable bowel syndrome.
Aonghus: Exact- yeah. Yeah. So, so, so sh- she was looking at it from the c- in the context of IBS, and as was I. And we were just looking at food triggers, and so we were doing breath testing in that context. And even though this was a very basic prototype, you could start to see signals. Like, we would make some food, or we would have, like, a glass of [00:05:00] milk or some of these, like, you know, food stuffs that come, that have FODMAPs in them in large quantities, and we’d test with it and it was so interesting to see that, you know, say m- for example, milk. She was, you know, convinced milk was a problem, and she’d drink it, and then there wasn’t much fermentation. And some of these things would give her the confidence to reintroduce that food, because her diet was so narrow at that point.
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Aonghus: So, yeah.
Dr. Weitz: And that, that becomes a real problem for many patients that we end up managing with these types of conditions. They start cutting out more and more foods, often based on this whole category of foods. Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Yeah. We’re gonna cut out high FODMAP foods, and we’re gonna cut out high salicylate foods, or we’re gonna- Right … cut out high histamine foods. And so we just add a category after a category.
Aonghus: Yeah, and what, yeah, what’s left? What’s at the, you know, what’s left that you can actually eat? It becomes super challenging, and it, yeah, it becomes a lifestyle of [00:06:00] exclusion. And yeah, but it’s interesting. Like, that was a little while ago, but she was able to make some changes, and she went from being quite symptomatic to being less and less so over time.
And honestly, now, at this point, she has no restrictions in her diet. So she’s very broadly, she’s feeling much better. And of course, you know, n of one, but, you know, incr- you know, since then, we, you know, we got to myself and some others got the, the company together, and Claire joined quite early on because you know, we were all engineers, and Claire’s a microbiologist.
So, but so she was able to add that scientific background in there. But you, more and more, like, you know, from a very early stage it became clear that this sort of biomarker is, can go way beyond what it’s currently being used for, and can guide dietary change, and then at a more recent times, looking at things like SIBO.
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Aonghus: So, what was the original device like? Yeah. Well, [00:07:00] that prototype was like a bunch of electronics connected with wires like on the kitchen table, and we were, like, breathing onto it, and it was pretty basic. But like, you know, we were… Like, we had a stage of prototypes where the, the… It was a bit- it was a lot more sophisticated, but it was still encased inside of cardboard, right? So it was kind of like we went through so many of those of those iterations. But yeah, it’s it wasn’t until maybe 2018 where we had our first device that we were able to kind of make available to people and people were able to kind of purchase and so
Claire: on. Okay. And I can confirm there’s no cardboard in the current devices.
Aonghus: No, no cardboard. Just a box it comes in. Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: So there were a lot of engineering challenges to start with.
Aonghus: Right. Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: And so now you’ve validated the FoodMarble device against lab analyzers?
Aonghus: Yeah. And, you know, that’s about the time when Claire, I mean, Claire was Claire McValdis as I said, and she was over in [00:08:00] NYU at that point doing a postdoc, and I was just shooting questions to her all the time. Like, what, oh, what does that mean? You know, what about these metabolites? And, you know, all of this sort of stuff. And eventually got her to come back and join the team and I guess your first kind of thing-
Claire: Yeah, my first job- …
Aonghus: thing to validate,
Claire: right? Yeah, my first job was purchase a, like a, the clinical bench top, kind of the main one that is being used, and kind of do a validation, a human validation against that. And then kind of progressing from that. So we’ve done, yeah, clinical validation in terms of the bench top, but also we’ve done validation in terms of the mail-in breath test kits. And w- we had a published study with Johns Hopkins, and in that we did against the mail-in breath test kit and were able to show the device was equivalent to one of the best kits out there.
Dr. Weitz: Excellent. Excellent. I think this is a device that [00:09:00] many practitioners in the functional medicine space, and I guess in the normal gastroenterology space are not at all familiar with. So I think this is gonna be something a lot of people are gonna welcome as a potential new tool to help manage patients.
Claire: Yeah. Yeah. And I think the nice thing about it is because I suppose the the traditional approach would be the patient goes to the hospital fasting and does that test with kind of a, an artificial substrate in some cases.
Dr. Weitz: But the nice thing about- Right, they’re typically drinking some lactulose or
Claire: glucose yeah, or glucose. But the nice thing about our device is the patient’s at home in their natural environment. They can take breath readings whenever they feel like it. They can log their symptoms, their stool, their diet, and a really rich data set. And over time you can see these kind of really interesting patterns and, you know, we’ve a lot, like, we’ve over 30 pieces of peer-reviewed research so [00:10:00] far, and that’s just growing. Every, every couple of months we’re putting out new stuff. So yeah, it’s a really exciting time.
Dr. Weitz: Now, do you advocate when patients first use this device that they go through a two or three-hour breath test every 15 or 20 minutes or something like that to sort of duplicate what happens with the with the home breath testing device?
Claire: Yeah. So on the patient side the first test everyone will predominantly do is SIBO. Probably about 60% do la- lactulose, about the rest do glucose. But everyone starts with SIBO, and they might do one, two, three SIBO tests and treatments depending on their result. And then they’d progress either into kind of the daily testing or they might progress into food intolerance testing.
So yeah,
Dr. Weitz: so they all kind of connect over- So, so what do you call the SIBO test?
What we call it Yeah. I mean, y- in other words, you’re duplicating what they do with the [00:11:00] conventional test?
Claire: Yeah. Exactly. Okay. So everything we’re doing, yeah, the clinical guidelines, we follow the North American Consensus.
Dr. Weitz: Oh, okay. So they- Yeah … they follow a low fiber diet for a day, then they fast overnight. Yeah. Then they consume some lactulose. Or first they take the first breath test, consume some lactulose, and then they measure themselves every 15 minutes for two hours or three hours? Or what do you recommend?
Claire: Yeah. Yeah, so on the, the clinician dashboard we have kind of default settings every 15 minutes for two hours. But the practitioner can actually change the breath intervals if they want to test for longer or more frequently, they have that option there. But we just recommend what’s the clinical standard.
Dr. Weitz: Right. Okay. And how much variability is there when using this device? Do you fi- and once patients n- a- after doing that initial test, and then [00:12:00] maybe you s- institute some sort of treatment, as you go, patients can be using the FoodMarble to…Should we call it the FoodMarble, or is FoodMarble just the name of the company?
Aonghus: You know, FoodMarble’s the name of the company, but most of the doctors and patients just call it FoodMarble, so it doesn’t- Okay … really matter what we call the device. Got like FoodMarble, what do I do?
Claire: Yeah. Or marble. Marble’s a common one. Yeah. And they’ll ask, send you a question about their marble.
Aonghus: Okay.
Claire: Yeah. Yeah. Whatever people are happy with.
Aonghus: Yeah. And you know- So- Yeah. Yeah. No, I was gonna say, like, like, what many people will do is a sequence of tests. So they might start with SIBO, and they might repeat the SIBO test later after treatment or, you know, and if it’s negative initially, they might switch over to food intolerance tests. So there’s a bunch of different, like essentially FODMAPs you can test with. So, so there’s like lactose, fructose, sorbitol, inulin and there’s actually seven in total. There’s also mannitol, FOS, GOS. But- [00:13:00]
Dr. Weitz: Meaning you send them samples of that food- Yeah … which they consume and then test themselves.
Mm-hmm.
Aonghus: Exactly. So it’s another powdered sort of, you know, substrate you mix with a s- y- with water and drink it. And so it’s just like a SIBO test, but it’s a, it’s three hours. We, you know, so it goes a bit longer, because you’re interested in what happens in the colon too. So you go for that for- Right three hours. And and so that’s great. And it kind of, in our data, we see where, you know, for, typically people just have one or two FODMAPs where they’re getting substantial fermentation. So it doesn’t mean they need to like cut out all the FODMAPs. Coming back to the whole FODMAP lifestyle idea, you don’t need to cut out all of these things. You need to kind of find what actually affects you.
Dr. Weitz: Right. It’s interesting, the two to three-hour thing- Yeah … that the conventional North American consensus, Dr. Pimentel’s recommendation, so to do two hours because- … after two hours depending upon the patient’s transit [00:14:00] time, you’re more likely be looking at that substrate, like the lactulose ending up in the large intestine. Yeah. However, since methane, or w- we used to call it methane SIBO and we now call methanogen overgrowth- Yeah … it can also occur in the large intestine. It makes a lot of sense to c- do the test for three hours rather than just two hours.
Claire: Yeah.
Aonghus: Yeah, it’s a really interesting point. I think, you know, it, there can be sometimes a conflict between the research community and the clinical community in the sense that the research community sometimes can maybe overem- emphasize sensitivity, so they don’t want any false positives, whereas the clinical community tends to favor sensitivity.
So sorry, did I mix them up? So like, like the, the clinical community wants to treat as many patients successfully as possible. Right. Whereas the research community, they want that cell activity where they don’t have any false positives. Right. So it’s kind of like- [00:15:00] You know, I definitely see the logic of testing for longer. And also, by the way, lactulose over, say, glucose, where glucose you’re probably gonna miss quite a few patients where, you know- Right … where the build-up of the, of microflora is towards the end of the small intestine. Right. Right? So yeah, that’s-
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I see the same thing in especially in the functional medicine community when it comes to looking for parasites. And- Right … we go from stool test to find one that finds more parasites. Hopefully being accurate, but we wanna find the positive so we can treat the patients to help them get better.
Aonghus: Right. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that is a good guiding principle in general.
Claire: Yeah. Yeah. But I think, and a lot of clinicians that we’re working with yeah, some will have a preference for lactulose and some will prefer glucose. But some actually do both, so the patient might start with a glucose test and then progress to a lactulose test, and that’s the beauty of having the device. The patient doesn’t need to buy a new [00:16:00] kit. They can use the same device, and they can get the lactulose prescription, or we provide the glucose. And so it makes it quite convenient, and you kind of have kind of that more information, so more rich data.
Dr. Weitz: Since I just mentioned stool testing, a thought occurred to me. Have you guys considered using the FoodMarble or the Air and comparing it to stool testing to see if there’s a correlation between…levels of gases and levels of bacteria that show up on a stool test? And a number of- Yeah … the stool tests now include Methanobrevibacter smithii and some of the other bacteria that produce hydrogen SIBO as well as hydrogen sulfide.
Aonghus: Yeah, it’s a really interesting question. Yeah, it’s funny, I just did a stool test yesterday. But so- That’s not TMI. Well, yeah, I won’t go any further into the
Dr. Weitz: details. W- which test did you do? Which company? Is it one we [00:17:00] have here?
Aonghus: It’s a new company called AlbaHealth, and they do it for children as so it’s kind of for infants.
And so I got one for my kid as well. So I collected a sample- Okay … from her nappy, and I’ve also got mine. So we’ll see like a father-daughter sort of thing. Okay.
Claire: Yeah.
Aonghus: But we did actually w- one int- we are very interested in that connection between s- stool microbiome, which will be a little bit more colonic, and and the breath test. And we did one study which was actually more focused on, we were looking at prebiotics.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. So,
Aonghus: yeah, so, so we had tw- I think it was 20 people. We were looking at two different prebiotics. They tried one. They did a washout and then they tried another. But all the way through, they were doing br- taking breath readings just during the day.
Not a fasting breath test, just taking breath readings just over the normal course of their day. And then they were also doing, they did like a total of 14 microbiome tests, right? [00:18:00] Oh, like s- stool tests over the course of the, I guess, was it maybe six weeks in total, Claire, or five weeks or something like that?
Claire: Yeah, the overall study was eight weeks long. Yeah … and yeah, the, the crossover design. Yeah, one of the- Yeah … prebiotics was a GOS and the other was a wheat dextrin. Yeah, okay … it was very interest- like, I mean, when we first looked at the data, we’re like, “Wow, everybody is so different.” And we’re kinda like- Yeah
Aonghus: “Okay,
Claire: well, how can we interpret this?”
And we spent a long time looking at the data, and I think kind of the most simplest outcome was there is that need for personalization because how people respond to prebiotics, food, antibiotics, it’s all very personalized. So we respond-
Dr. Weitz: And essentially prebiotics are generally forms of fiber.
Mm-hmm. And typically forms of fiber are what feed the bacteria that produce the gases.
Aonghus: Yes. And so- yeah … we were really
Dr. Weitz: interested- And a low FODMAP diet is essentially a low fiber diet.
Aonghus: Y- yes. And so, so we were looking to see what sort of pattern do we see in terms of [00:19:00] hydrogen, certainly. But look, we’re mostly interested in hydrogen at that point.
It was a, it was an early version of the device. And we wanted to see, you know, do people produce more… Is there a signature of people who actually respond to the fiber? And it wa- it, like it was only two weeks, so we didn’t really have enough time to, you know, assess it in like the whole, like what happens long term.
But it’s interesting to see that the people who seem to be getting increases in the bifidobacteria levels, which is kind of a healthy you know, like a kind of probiotic species, they were they were getting increases in their hydrogen levels. So you see that correspondence a bit. An increase in hydrogen levels were corresponding to those people.
And then some of the people they took this prebiotic and nothing happened, right? So, so, so it like, it wasn’t changing their stool in, in terms of the, the microbiome sequencing results, and it wasn’t changing their breath readings.
So I think that’s a factor, where some people, you
Dr. Weitz: know, for- Could it be that those people had depleted [00:20:00] microbiomes to begin with?
Aonghus: Yeah. And that’s- Yeah … probably it. And it might have been just a specific mix. A specific community was not well-suited to utilizing that prebiotic. But we think that’s a really interesting potential research avenue to help people find, well, what’s gonna work for me?
Dr. Weitz: Right. I know when I’m treating patients for gut health, we often will do the breath test and a functional medicine-oriented stool test.
Yes. And I’ll look at that commensal bacteria area, and if everything’s way on the left, meaning all the commensals- Mm-hmm … are really low I may not go through, like, a killing phase, or I- if I do, it’ll be briefer because I realize- Mm-hmm … that this person has a very depleted microbiome, and we’re gonna really need to try to build that up.
And if we- Mm-hmm … deplete it even more, you know, it’s gonna be much harder to do that. Whereas if they have plenty of commensals, we can go ahead and kill, and, Yeah … and that means just reducing [00:21:00] bacteria in case Google is listening.
Claire: Yeah. What, what techniques and/or protocols do you follow to kinda diversify or b- br- build up their microbiome when you see their commensals are low?
Dr. Weitz: What’s that? Say that again …
Claire: what products or what ways do you boost their commensal population?
Dr. Weitz: Well, prebiotics, pr- p- prebiotics, probiotics postbiotics, Mm-hmm
butyrate, things like that.
Claire: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Aonghus: Okay. Yeah. No it’s really interesting. You know, it’s, and it’s … I think it’s in the functional medicine community where people are looking at this in a … They’re not just looking at one test result, they’re looking at it more broadly, and ultimately you’re probably getting better results as, you know, as a consequence of that.
Dr. Weitz: And we’re always looking for the right probiotic, and there’s constantly new research on which one is gonna be more helpful. We now have some data that some of the new [00:22:00] anaerobic species may actually become permanent residents as opposed to temporary residents, like a lot of the probiotics. And then we have the spore-based probiotics, which we like to use because we’re hoping that they get right down into the large intestine and don’t end up increasing small intestinal bacteria.
Yes.
Claire: Yeah. And then you kinda also have to ask yourself the question, okay, well, why don’t they have them here in the first place, so what’s the cause of that? And trying to think, okay, well, how can I boost it, but, and also address the cause
Dr. Weitz: Sure … of why they’re like that. Like looking at things that kill,
Bacteria. A- and we have many things in the environment, including pesticides if they’re eating non-organic foods, cleaning products which kill bacteria, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories. There’s people who take frequent bouts of antibiotics. All those things can deplete the microbiome.
Yes.
Claire: Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: Yes. [00:23:00]
Claire: Yeah. And they’re also common. Very hard to-
Dr. Weitz: Yeah … to avoid … I mean, people don’t realize how many chemicals in their regular environment. They give their- Mm-hmm … dog a flea pill or sometimes put something on their skin that kills bacteria.
Claire: Yeah.
Aonghus: Mm-hmm. And do you think that sort of education part of functional medicine in terms of people just kind of absorbing this knowledge is part of how they ultimately can get better?
Dr. Weitz: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. A lot of people think it’s okay, they can eat junk food, they can eat processed foods in plastic containers and not worry about it. And then if you can give them a test and show, “Look, you’ve got really high levels of all these chemicals,” it motivates them a lot more to wanna try to eat clean use cleaner cleaning products and personal care products.
Aonghus: Yeah.
Claire: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. I mean, there’s so many chemicals just in [00:24:00] our everyday environment, in the air, dumped on the food, et cetera.
Claire: I use a, I use an app, so when I’m shopping, if I’m looking to buy a new product, I’m always scanning it the Yuka app, and it’ll tell me how good or bad a particular food is.
Oh,
Dr. Weitz: really? Okay.
Claire: And sometimes I’m, like, surprised. I’m like, “God, this looks so healthy from the package,” but then you scan it, and it gives you a score out of 100, and it’ll tell you all the positives and negatives and-
Dr. Weitz: Right …
Claire: and the additives. And yeah, some foods, they’re really deceiving.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. So when patients are testing every day, what sorts of things do they find?
Is there a lot of variability from day to day based on the different foods they’re eating? How is this… So, they can use this device instead of doing a conventional breath test except that they’re not getting a, at this point, the hydrogen sulfide. But you guys are working on a new device that will include the hydrogen sulfide?
Aonghus: Yeah. Well, so, th- yeah, [00:25:00] there’s probably a few parts to that question. So, yeah, I mean, in terms of hydrogen sulfide we we’ve been working on that for the last two or three years, and we’ve actually gotten some really good results recently, and we’re going through one of our stages of validation on that.
So we’re hoping to make it available to some of our partners towards the end of this year. And so hopefully we can make that more broadly available early next year. So initially it would be starting with, you know, via clinicians and in the research community and then, you know, we’ll see beyond that.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. Yeah, sorry, that was a complicated question. I’m thinking as I’m answering the questions. Yeah. So I, I did wanna throw one more thing in dating back to what we were just talking about before in terms of hydrogen, and we we have this understanding that the methanogens that produce the methane, they feed on hydrogen.
Yes. And so one of the [00:26:00] questions we’ve had is, does taking hydrochloric acid which helps you break down the food and helps with digestion, will that feed the methanogens? Is that something that you’ve looked at? Can that… D- Is that really happening or not? I just, it… There’s so many different thoughts about how to handle SIBO that this device can now help us to understand, I
Aonghus: think it’s fascinating.
Yeah. I don’t think, I don’t think we’ve looked at that specifically. But y- like you’re right that, you know, it never been possible to be able to take these measurements over the long term, right? Like you’re not gonna… No one’s got a benchtop device at home and you’re not gonna do an infinite number of kind of mail-in kits, right?
Right. So, and everyone is so different. The results are so different. Like, you know, there’s the, the, the standard breath test protocol, that’s great, but, you know, in terms of what we actually eat, we, it’s so different, [00:27:00] right? Right. Like, you’re in the supermarket and you look at somebody else’s shopping cart, they’ve got very different…
There might not be any overlap with the food that you have in your shopping cart, right? Right. So people are eating very different things. They have different lifestyles. Mm-hmm. Different s- like, a lot of these supplements are acting on the microbiome or they’re, you know, indirectly they might be just slowing your transit or making it faster, and that’s gonna affect your breath readings.
But you wanna see, like, like, you know, say if somebody’s, i- it they’re struggling with constipation and they’re taking a particular supplement to try and address that, you wanna try and understand, well, is this doing anything? Like, because, you know, sometimes it takes a little while for the effects to kind of kick in.
And so, so this kind of, like, the o- one aspect of the device is, especially for, like I should say, because we’ve got the, the medical device which patients will use with their clinician, but we also have a consumer device where, you know, people can get it from our website, foodmarble.com and they’re able to use the device [00:28:00] to track day to day what, like, “How do I respond to the meals I eat?”
You know, th- they can record their meals, they record, you know, all of these aspects relating to their diet, like stool, symptoms, and so on. And and it just helps get a better understanding of, what does my profile look like?
Right. And how does that change when I make changes in, in, in my diet or lifestyle?
Dr. Weitz: And I’d like to let everybody listening know that if you wanna order the device and you use the code WEITZ15, you can get 15% off by going to the website. Is it foodmarble.com?
Aonghus: Yes. Yeah. Food, foodmarble.com. And if you’re a clinician and you’d like to check out the healthcare side, y- there’s a link on there, too, so you can go over to the healthcare side as well.
Dr. Weitz: And as a practitioner, you can become an affiliate and order these devices for your patients.
Claire: Yeah. Thank you. Yes. Exactly. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, just on the, like, what factors influence it, I [00:29:00] mean, as I said earlier maybe it was before the podcast started, but we’ve over 30 pieces of peer-reviewed research, and if we can see stuff like age, sex, BMI, diet, well, all influence- Thanks … the daily breath pattern. Yeah. And even when you pass a stool, at what time of the day has an influence. So we’re starting to really understand how these daily gas measurements can help guide different interventions for different people. And again, it’s back to that personalization.
What works for one of your patients might not work for another, and we’re trying to really, how can we support people to make better decisions based off data on their particular patient?
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. One thing that occurs with me, we’ve been using portable glucose monitors for patients. Mm-hmm. You know, continuous glucose monitors.
And it’s interesting how foods that you think are either gonna be good for blood sugar or you think are gonna be bad for blood sugar. Depending upon how much [00:30:00] is eaten the how quickly it’s eaten, the order of the foods.
So, like, if you eat your food quickly, you’re more likely to see a bigger spike of blood sugar.
If it’s a larger amount, if you eat the carb before the protein and the vegetables. I imagine the same thing must be occurring with the changes in the breath gases.
Aonghus: Yes. I, like, it’s, so an interesting thing, for example, you see with liquids, you see the effect much faster. So the liquid just kind of passes through around the edge of the stomach.
And so you get a res- or, like, a, a response much faster. So because a lot of foods will spend quite a bit of time in the stomach. So, so it- … it’ll take a while for it to get down into the gut. And so we see, like, like- And,
Dr. Weitz: and even worse if they’re taking these new medications to lose weight.
Yeah.
Aonghus: Yes. And you’ll have some people who start on GLP-1s, for example, who already have slow transit. And they might [00:31:00] already have slow gastric emptying, and now they take something which slows that again.
So, so we think that’s a real challenge. And o- one thing we, I will say in GLP-1s, in some of the data we’ve looked at, for people who, for, a lot of people in that sort of higher BMI brackets, they tend to be a little bit more skewed towards diarrhea.
And one thing we’ve noticed is for some people who are on the diarrheal side and they start GLP-1s, their GI symptoms go away. So, so that has b- been fascinating because our expectation was we wanted to see to what extent are the GLP-1s provocative of sym- of GI symptoms. But in this cohort where they have kind of more rapid transit, that actually maybe it’s beneficial from a GI symptom point of view.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting. So, let’s see. Do you find that and are clinicians finding that when [00:32:00] patients are testing themselves, they get more involved with their treatment? And I imagine that this could potentially improve compliance
Aonghus: Yes. And it, you know, it’s interesting. We have people who get a device as a consumer, and n- and they’re sending their results to their doctors, and then their doctors is, are using FoodMarble.
And then we’ve got patients who they’ve been working with a doctor, and then they switch over to the consumer side so they can actually, you know, continue it from a more self-led perspective. So I think a lot of it comes down to the, the patient themself. You know, so a lot of the patients, the people who go to a doctor, they have a little bit more of a predisposition to, you know, to kind of be guided through a process and to get that kind of insight.
And so we do see the patients who use it with clinicians are a little bit different to for example, the consumers who get a device. You know, they will… they’ll be a lot more kind of driven towards trying to [00:33:00] understand themselves and s- a, a more self-led approach.
Right.
Claire: And one, kind of one point on that, we let the clinician or the practitioner decide how much the, the patient can do.
So we have a very simple app where the patient can only do what’s prescribed or scheduled by their practitioner, but then we also have the open app where they can do whatever they want, when they want. So it’s up to the patient to decide. Yeah. I
Dr. Weitz: can certainly see patients where you wouldn’t want them testing themselves- Yeah.
all the time because they just get too obsessive with it. Yeah,
Claire: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: Just like we were talking about the, some of the patients who are hardly eating any foods.
Claire: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. That becomes a real challenge for practitioners, and I can see where this device could be really helpful when trying to reintroduce foods.
Aonghus: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, people g- get a really sort of, they kind of get a, a somewhat obsessive about avoiding particular foods, and you’ve got these sort of like avoid and restrictive sort of behaviors. And, [00:34:00] and-
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. It’s partially because they’ve been sick for a long time, and now they’re- Yes … finally feeling better, and they don’t wanna risk that happening again.
Mm-hmm. But having a- Yeah … very restricted diet is not good for their long-term health.
Aonghus: Absolutely. So giving them a little bit of proof and a little bit of confidence. If that’s what it was like for my wife, she’s like, “Oh no, there’s no way I can eat that.” And then, but when you see something quantitative to say, “Oh look, there’s actually no fermentation here,” it at least gives you a little bit of confidence to to try it and even if it, you’re starting small.
Claire: Yeah. And I think a good example of that is when people purchase the consumer device, we ask them what foods that they suspect are driving their symptoms, and lactose is number one. People will always assume lactose is driving their symptoms. And- It’s interesting when we look at the test data for the different food intolerances.
Lactose has the lowest positivity rate out of all the different food intolerances, but it has the highest suspicion rate. So people often suspect it’s an issue. They’ll restrict it from their [00:35:00] diet. And then when they do the test, they’ll see, okay, well, actually, this is not a significant driver in my sym- of my symptoms.
I’m not producing that much gas. So they
Dr. Weitz: have that option to- It’s interesting. It’s a high FODMAP food.
Claire: Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah …
Claire: and there’s some lesser-known FODMAPs. Say, sorbitol, so it’s found in stone fruits and low-cal sweeteners. So, I mean, lots of people are consuming these in large quantities every day.
That’s one that people don’t often suspect to be a driver of their symptoms, and it has the highest test positivity. So it’s often kind of what you don’t expect. And kind of from our data, it’s hard for people to identify what’s the driver of their symptoms without really kind of doing the different tests sometimes.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, so this is great, ’cause there’s all these questions when managing SIBO patients. Like, what is the best sweetener? If you look on the low FODMAP diet you’ll see that stevia is low FODMAP, but if you talk to Dr. Pimentel, he’s very much against stevia, and he finds that it makes patients worse.
But now you can find- … out for that individual patient, [00:36:00] is stevia something that’s gonna aggravate their symptoms or not?
Claire: Exactly.
Aonghus: Yes.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, and- Is it gonna produce fermentation?
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Aonghus: Yeah. It… because there’s a number of interesting layers to, to the different FODMAPs in that they are quite different.
Like, in that, like, like lactose it’s largely a kind of genet- well, to to a large extent it’s a genetic thing in the sense that the, the lactase is, it persistence and whether your body’s still producing lactase or not, which, you know, and, y- like it’s- Well,
Dr. Weitz: is lactose intolerance different than lactose being a high FODMAP food?
Aonghus: It’s exa- it’s the same thing essentially.
Dr. Weitz: It’s the same thing. Okay.
Aonghus: Yeah. It was when Sue Shepherd came up with the low FODMAP diet in her research over in Australia in Monash, it was really interesting where she was actually gathering together some disparate strands of knowledge in one respect.
Like lactose intolerance was known, fructose was known as a bit of a culprit as well from [00:37:00] a food perspective, and, like, there’s just general awareness about things like onions and garlic and some of those carbohydrates challenge people’s digestive system. And so- Her, one of her big insights was, okay, it’s actually the fact that these are all, or very often, highly fermentable foods.
And so that’s a really big factor and there’s aspects around water like in terms of like sucking in water as well, f- but-
Dr. Weitz: Oh, really? What is…
Aonghus: Yeah. Well, so, so the smaller molecules, when they’re in the gut, they have a tendency to draw water into the lumen. So, so it’s kind of like- Huh
yeah, so stuff like- So
Dr. Weitz: that would create like a feeling of bloating?
Aonghus: Yeah, bloating and diarrhea. So it’ll contribute towards diarrhea. So stuff like-
Dr. Weitz: Oh, okay …
Aonghus: yes, so, so that’s like the action of lactulose when it’s been used as you know, like in when people are constipated. Right. But you know, you’ll have fructose is a small molecule.
But you know, that, so you’ll get a lot of kind of osmosis, a lot of water gets sucked in. And so there’s a few factors and, Right.
Dr. Weitz: The same way consuming [00:38:00] magnesium will bring water into the colon.
Aonghus: Right. Right. So, and so like that was a really great insight to realize, okay, it’s all of these fermentable things, but you know, when it comes to lactose, it’s about the enzymes.
Do you have do you have lactase persistence or not? Like genetically, are you gonna produce lactase? But then like fructose is kind of like everyone kind of has this ability to absorb fructose, but there’s a limit. There’s a limit on that. And and as well, there’s like factors like, you know, fructose in the presence of glucose, they can be co-absorbed.
So, so it’s like w- like all fruits have fructose, but like lots of them have at least as much glucose or more glucose, so they can get co-absorbed together. And so it means that the fructose doesn’t affect people because there’s enough glucose to kind of co-absorb So, so, so you get all these interesting effects that they’re all a bit different, and it is quite personal to an individual.
And then like you’d think of like [00:39:00] inulin, for example, or FOS or GOS, that’s really about your microbiome. Like, like y- you, you don’t … Like the body doesn’t have enzymes to break those things down, right? Mm-hmm. It just doesn’t. So, but it depends on the bugs you have because for some people they’re just not gonna get that much fermentation fro- from those, and then others will get a lot.
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Aonghus: Huh.
Claire: Yeah. And in our consumer app, we’ve a really extensive food database. So, you could be in the shop, you could scan a barcode of a processed food, and we’ll provide an estimate on terms of FODMAP content. But even just a number of whole foods, we’ll let you know, okay, which FODMAPs are present, in what amounts, and then we’ll also be able to say that
Say, for example, you do a fructose test and you’re positive, you produce a lot of fructose, but you eat a lot of fructose in your diet. And okay, what will I eat instead? So you can actually look up in the database, and we’ll give you suggestions on what you could eat alternatively that would be similarly nutritionally balanced.
So yeah, we’re trying to make it easier for people to [00:40:00] understand this complexity, ’cause it is complex, and no one’s expected to know the nutritional content of every food that they eat. But we’re trying to make the app as easy as possible for people to make those decisions when they’re out in a restaurant or having dinner or, like in a supermarket or stuff like that.
Dr. Weitz: I wonder if anybody’s looked at patients who consume digestive enzymes, hydrochloric acid, and/or herbal bitters prior to eating, and then measuring their fermentation.
Aonghus: Yeah. Well, we’re very interested in where like the effect of enzymes because they’re, you know, you’ve got so many enzymes where like the, you know, you, say inulin.
Like you, you’ve, you, you’ve got like there’s an enzyme that some people can use for inulin, but like when you break down, inulin is just a big chain of fructose. It’s just a bunch of fructose molecules attached together. So you break down the inulin, that may actually just produce a lot of fructose for [00:41:00] you.
And if you’ve a problem with fructose that’s not gonna be a good thing. So it again, like the enzyme part is a very personal aspect because you kind of want to… If you’ve a problem with a, a particular FODMAP, the enzyme might help, but it could also hinder. So it just really depends on the specifics of your body.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting. Interesting.
Claire: And I mean, we get a lot of people writing to us to say, “Thank you. I mean, I’ve been taking this list of supplements for the last number of years, and now I can finally see which ones are working for me and which ones I don’t need to take anymore.” ‘Cause I mean, supplements are expensive, especially if you’re taking a long list of them.
So they can really personalize what works for them and their digestion. And, you know, as Grace’s digestion changed over time, if people kind of improve their diversity and their diet and make these changes, what will suit them longer term again will change, so it, it’s kind of nice to have that way to kind of track that response over time.
Dr. Weitz: In terms of using the device, when you take a conventional breath test, there’s [00:42:00] instructions to breathe a certain way, make sure you breathe out all your air. Your device is a little bit different. Why is that?
Aonghus: Yeah. So we s- we at an early stage, we put a lot of effort into understanding what is the best way to get the most accuracy.
Like, what’s the optimal way of doing the exhalation?
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Aonghus: And we wanted to do something that wouldn’t… We didn’t wanna exclude too many people, because you can’t have somebody exhale for an excessive length of time or hold their breath for an excessive length of time, ’cause a lot of people just can’t do that.
So, so with our device the device and the app guide you in this, but essentially you’re holding your breath for th- you’re kind of pausing your breathing for three seconds to let to let that mixing occur, because you need that mixing inside of the lungs, and then you’re exhaling for five seconds.
And the app, the device will actually buzz and count with you so that you’ll exhale for the five seconds. And the key thing is, you know, we’re measuring the [00:43:00] air towards the end of that five seconds. Because we don’t really care about the initial air, because the initial air is coming from your mouth, and it’s coming, you know, coming, you know, from n- not in, not inside your lung, right?
So, so, so it’s coming from, like, your bronchus and so on. So, Oh,
Dr. Weitz: okay … so
Aonghus: you need to get that deep deep lung air. And so get, y- so it’s important for people to be consistent in how they do it. But actually, that as, as a kind of a procedure works really well, because you’re i- like, it is challenging when you’ve got, like, a kit and you’re using it, and it ha- you kind of have to get it right the first time.
So I know from doing my stool test yesterday, you’re like, “Oh my God, I need to do this exactly right, or, you know, it’ll be wasted.” So, yeah. So, so we try and guide people as well as possible in just doing that as well as they possibly can.
Claire: And kind of one addition is if someone doesn’t breathe for long enough or they release the button, we tell them, “Okay, you need to take that breath reading again.”
‘Cause I think it’s important to kind of have that kind of consistency and accuracy throughout the test. [00:44:00] And I think practitioners like that, ’cause when they get the report, there’s, they’re, they don’t see that kind of invalid sample. And so we try to make it as easy as possible for our patients, because we have some people who are in their teens using our device up to in their 90s, so it has to be simple.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting, yeah. And patients with various disorders that make it difficult to breathe. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, COPD,
Aonghus: different things like that, for sure.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. So I think one of the exciting things is the ability to customize the food recommendations both while they’re getting treated and then after treatment.
What about the validation of your device? Does it have to be does it have to be tweaked periodically so it’s accurate?
Aonghus: Well, so every single breath, when you turn on the device-
Dr. Weitz: Okay …
Aonghus: the, the device is communicating w- with our systems. So it’s communicating what are the conditions how, you [00:45:00] know, how have…
It can tell how it’s aging, how the sensor surfaces are changing, and it communicates that back. And so, our servers are able to say, “Okay, you know, you need to account for the temperature’s a little higher, you know, the humidity is a little different,” you know. So we, every single reading, we are making micro adjustments to get the maximum accuracy.
Dr. Weitz: Wow.
So you’re, on, on your side of how you’re analyzing the data coming through, you’re able to tweak it to, depending upon how the device is working.
Aonghus: Yeah, and it’s
Dr. Weitz: completely- And what the tempera- what the environmental factors are.
Aonghus: Yeah. Because that makes, all of those things change the results.
So, so we just wanna ensure that there’s a seamless way of colle- collecting the data in as accurate a way as possible. And, like, the, the person never sees it. Like, they just see, oh, my device is working and I’m doing this. But we just have to do all that stuff automatically in the background.
Dr. Weitz: [00:46:00] I see.
I see. ‘Cause I, I know Dr. Pimentel says that when you have, like, a breath testing device, it has to be continually tweaked to make sure it’s accurate. Yeah.
Aonghus: Yeah. I think he’s- Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: I think he said the devices they have in the labs have to be tweaked, like, every day or something.
Claire: Mm-hmm.
Aonghus: Yeah. Yeah, so the devi- yeah, the lab-based devices, they get calibrated and, you know, the, the of slightly unfortunate thing is for, you know, for a lot of labs and hospitals, sometimes they, you know, they’re not even aware that they need to be calibrated or maintained.
And so it’s- Right … it’s a challenge of a device that has to be used for hundreds of thousands of people over a long period of time. It fundamentally it’s easier in a way to have a device that’s just used by one person and d- you know, doesn’t need to kinda kinda last for hundreds of thousands of samples.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. So how long d- is this device, can it be used for? How many samp- is there a [00:47:00] finite number of samples you can take?
Aonghus: Well, I mean, the device the amount of usage that s- an individual do would u- usually far, it you know, the, the device will last for far longer than what they will use it for.
Dr. Weitz: Okay …
Aonghus: so they don’t need to worry about it.
Dr. Weitz: They’ll already be past their condition and before the device stops working.
Aonghus: Yeah. So like all, all sensor-based devices eventually lose sensitivity, but, you know, with an individual just having their own device, that shouldn’t be a problem unless they use it for a very long time.
Claire: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like years. And we are, and we are- Right. Yeah. Okay. So if there’s ever an issue with a device we have a one-year warranty, so we can check it remotely to see, okay, how’s everything looking, and then you know, we can address the issue.
Dr. Weitz: And by the way, for those listening, the cost of this device is less than the typical breath test that’s being [00:48:00] administered in doctor’s offices and being given to patients to do at home.
Claire: Yeah. W- I think it was important for us to kinda always make it accessible. Like, that’s kind of one of the primary reasons to starting FoodMarble, so yeah, we’ve c- we’ve kept it quite accessible in terms of cost.
Dr. Weitz: Right. So that’s great. What’s the biggest misconception people have about breath testing?
Aonghus: That’s a good, that’s a good question. Mm-hmm. That’s a good question. You know, it, I guess it de- I guess it depends who you ask. Like, I mean, SIBO’s something which I think ha- the, the understanding has evolved dramatically in the last 10 or 15 years. A lot of that is Dr. Pimentel and Dr. Rezai, and others in Cedar Sinai.
And thankfully there’s more and more people involved so that the amount of data being generated is much higher.
Dr. Weitz: And by the way, in the conventional gastroenterology world in countries other than the [00:49:00] United States, is SIBO a generally accepted concept or not yet?
Aonghus: I think it, the awareness of it is growing. The US is probably ahead, and, you know, there’s other countries like the UK and Australia where it, you know, it’s, it, there’s decent awareness, let’s say. Mm-hmm. With breath testing was only really used for lactose intolerance testing, like g- going back far enough. So that’s kind of where it came out of.
So yeah, I mean, I think the sort of, in a way, one of the frustrations sometimes for us is that people look at it purely from a SIBO perspective. And SIB- like, SIBO is a, a really important issue, but for many people, they also need to consider how they you know, how do they respond to the food they eat.
So we think it’s, we think it’s broader than just considering SIBO because even when SIBO can be resolved, people can still be symptomatic. And whatever happens, your diet’s gonna is gonna be a factor in terms of SIBO as well. Mm-hmm.
Claire: Yeah. And I think [00:50:00] kind of your question about, kind of what’s the openness in the GI space about SIBO, I think I mean, over the last few years it’s growing in interest definitely.
And kind of more interestingly, ’cause I think the standard of care is always using rifaximin or other antibiotics depending on the gases produced by the patient. But there’s a much greater openness to using kind of the herbal approaches to tackling these patients and their symptoms, because they’ll often see that for certain patients, they don’t respond to treatment right away, and there’s, they’re kind of looking at these alternative routes, and they’re kind of definitely more open about that, which is great to see because, I mean, antibiotics are useful, but sometimes they don’t work, and it’s good to kind of try other avenues then.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. No, there’s many patients who’ve been through multiple rounds of rifaximin and are still struggling. Mm-hmm. And so we find a lot of times that the herbal and nutritional approaches can be very helpful in those cases. [00:51:00]
Claire: Yeah, 100%.
Dr. Weitz: As well as patients that just don’t wanna take antibiotics.
Aonghus: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s understandable as well. And, you know, a lot of patients that, you know, rifaximin is not a choice for them. So the choice is between, you know-
Dr. Weitz: It’s also very costly.
Aonghus: Very co- very costly. Their insurance doesn’t cover it, and then they’re stuck with kind of, you know, a potentially harmful antibiotic, I mean, let’s be clear or some other approach.
So,
Claire: Mm-hmm …
Aonghus: yeah.
Claire: And one thing we kind of started doing with some of our customers on the, the healthcare side is, so when patients are going through different treatments for SIBO, we’re actually gathering the treatments that they’re taking, and we’re also gathering kind of outcome data. So we’re starting to see that different patients respond better to certain treatments.
And I think that’s important because rifaximin’s not gonna suit everyone. And, like, over time we wanna be able to provide kind of treatment prediction to clinicians from their dashboard.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. I think another cool thing about this is this makes it more [00:52:00] possible for less expensive case studies and other studies to be published by practitioners.
Because in the integrative space, we have the Johns Hopkins study. You mentioned Johns Hopkins- right … using your device. And that’s one of the few studies that has actually shown that herbal supplements can be equivalent to rifaximin for the treatment of SIBO. But we need- … more studies in that regard.
Yes. And because scientific studies are so expensive, I think this device o- makes it reasonable for clinicians to be able to do case studies and start getting some more… It’d be nice to get more of those published to find out exactly- … which specific combinations of herbs and nutritional supplements are beneficial.
Is it a good idea to add, you know, digestive enzymes? Is it a good idea to add, [00:53:00] you know- Yeah … probiotics, et cetera?
Aonghus: Yeah, and we’ve, we were involved in a study recently where the results came out and on GI Ally, which is a really interesting product and we’re able to see the changes in breath readings, we’re able to see the changes in symptoms and see that, you know, this herbal product, I think it was 89% of people had a symptom improvement, which is dramatic. Like, it’s really- Yeah … and so like you said, there’s so many combinations of things that have not been considered or analyzed and- … and, yeah. And like, like supplements that people know work pretty well, but like, you know, there’s not necessarily that much data to kind of support it yet.
Dr. Weitz: Right. Yeah. Allison mentioned that product. I think it’s a combination of, is it berberine and garlic, allicin and- Allicin … pomegranate? And pomegranate.
Aonghus: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That’s right.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting.
Aonghus: Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: Great. So this is [00:54:00] very exciting. And I’m glad to be able to tell people about a device that can be helpful in managing this very common gastrointestinal infect- I think it’s the most common gastrointestinal condition, IBS.
Aonghus: Right. Yeah. It’s a hu- a staggering fraction of people, and when you consider SIBO as well, there’s just a ton of people affected. And, like, we want, like, we mentioned research. Like, we want to understand how SIBO interacts with other conditions, and to see where, you know, maybe there might be ways of addressing other diseases or conditions using kind of more conventional SIBO treatments and approaches.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. I definitely think that SIBO is an underlying factor in many cases of reflux, for example.
Aonghus: Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes.
Claire: Yeah.
Aonghus: Very interesting.
Dr. Weitz: All right. Awesome. So final thoughts, and how can listeners find out more about the device?
Aonghus: Yeah. Well, if you if you’d like to [00:55:00] know more anyone, please check out foodmarble.com. You can also check out foodmarble.com/gi. You can check out some of our research as well on the website. And I think it’s you’ve got a code as well, Dr. Weitz
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, you can use the code Weitz15 to get 15% off
Aonghus: Yeah But yeah, like we’re really excited to answer any of your questions. If you are interested in research, we’re very excited to, to get involved and help where we can. And and yeah, there, there’ll be more releases coming in the future. But yeah please reach out if you’re interested.
Dr. Weitz: That’s great. Thank you so much, guys.
Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would very much appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and give us a five-star ratings and review. As you may know, I continue to accept a limited number of new patients per month for functional medicine. If you would like help overcoming a gut or other chronic health condition, and want to prevent chronic problems, and want to promote longevity, please call my Santa Monica Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition office at 310-395-3111, and we can set you up for a consultation for functional medicine. And I will talk to everybody next week
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