How can I help you feel better?
Healthy guts for every body—SIBO and beyond
I help those with SIBO and other GI issues, and anyone looking to optimize their microbiome for 'inside-out' health benefits.
See Testing for info on SIBO and microbiome tests
Education and Background
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BA, Wesleyan University
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MFA in Music Composition (Purchase College Conservatory of Music)
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MS in Nutrition and Integrative Health (Maryland University of Integrative Health);​
CNS certification
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Allison Siebecker: SIBO Pro Course
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Nirala Jacobi: Sibo Mastery Program
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Jason Hawrelak: Naturopathic and Functional Medicine Approaches to Gastrointestinal Disorders
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Jason Hawrelak: Advanced Microbiome Manipulation
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Frequency-Specific Microcurrent: Core and Advanced Training; Bioflex Laser Basic Certification Training
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In addition to being a gut-centric nutritionist, Louise is also an award-winning composer of classical and theater music, a long-time teacher of music at the private and university level, an explorer of energy medicine and a practitioner of the Qigong and Buddhist meditation that gently rock her world on a daily basis.
To my clients out there––those I know and those I haven't yet met––to my neighbors and fellow souls, all of you with unhappy bellies: I hear you, I know you're there. You have struggled to figure out how to eat, how not to hurt, how to be taken seriously, losing months, years and even decades wandering in the medical wilderness in the process.
Do you have an IBS diagnosis? This is what you're left with when the doctor rules out what you don't have. But what is it? What do you have, why did you get it, where did it come from, and what do you do about it?
These questions, frustratingly, remain unanswered in most medical settings. Instead, the well-meaning doctor may show you to the door while telling you that you have:
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"...a chronic condition that you'll need to manage long-term" (mayoclinic.com).
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Ow. Who wants to hear this?
Or maybe you got diagnosed with SIBO? Lucky that you even got tested––so many don't even get that far. The same set of questions may remain unanswered as you go through an antibiotic treatment, then perhaps a relapse (having 'failed treatment'- this language makes me crazy!).
You are then shown to the door by that well-meaning doctor, who this time has helpful FODMAP-diet guidelines for you to follow....indefinitely.
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Ow. (Those are your gut-bugs speaking).
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We all just want to get back 'home' and get well.
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My original 'unhappy belly' belonged to Sam, my adult son who carried a troubled stomach back from his life abroad, afflicted with what I now suspect was post-infectious IBS after a nasty case of food poisoning.
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Back in the US, Sam wandered in that same wilderness you all know so well, bouncing from doctor to doctor, antibiotic to antibiotic, diet to supplement to herb to probiotic. I felt powerless to help him, though he ultimately got better after about a decade with this malaise nibbling at the edges of his life.
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You know those signs that read “Drive as if your child lives here”? You get a little ‘Ping!’ of resonance and slow the car with your empathy stirred, your heart a little bit more open.
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Sam is my ‘Ping!’ for every unhappy belly out there. Let me help you out of the wilderness, as I am now trained to do.
SIBO Solutions
I'm here to help if you have struggled to figure things out on your own, or have left your doctor's office with a list of low-FODMAP foods and a 'Good luck', after your treatment 'failed'. I suggest, however, that it is the current approach to treating SIBO that is failing the patient.
Louise Beach, MS, CNS
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Eat More Plants
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I got hooked on science after a long career in music teaching and composing because I was lucky enough to experience first-hand the power we all hold to reverse chronic illness (ie my husband’s heart disease) simply by changing what we put on our plates (ie more plants). Once I completed my graduate work in nutrition, my client recommendations, not surprisingly, tended to emphasize ‘Eat more plants’.
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Luckily, the universe didn’t allow me to stop there, but promptly sent clients to my door who (due to SIBO)....couldn’t eat plants at all.
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To help these clients, I immersed myself in hours of study with the leading lights of the SIBO world, learning how to eradicate the misplaced bugs that take up residence in the small intestine and create havoc both in their new home and in the life of the host.
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Subsequent courses with renowned microbiome and probiotic researcher and clinician, Jason Hawrelak, furthered my understanding
of how SIBO and other GI disorders can be treated via a targeted approach using herbs, prebiotics and strain-specific probiotics in protocols that are robustly supported by the most current research.
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Do No Harm
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These protocols are remarkably effective at reducing pathogenic populations in the gut, while at the same time enhancing beneficial bacteria (not a given with standard herbal protocols using, say, berberine, which can cause collateral damage to our good bugs).
And this is indeed Hawrelak’s premise–– to prioritize those selectively-acting herbs that can act as good allies as well as good eradicators and combine them according to the client's needs in his herbal formulas. These formulas are the ones I custom-order for my clients.
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‘Do No Harm’ is a principle that should also be applied to getting clients off of their low-FODMAP diets as soon as symptom-relief is no longer needed. We now know that low-FODMAP diets that are followed long-term can starve the good-bug populations in the colon that are key to a rich and diverse gut ecosystem.
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Hope
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Cultivating this bigger-picture approach, there is every reason to be hopeful about recovery and lasting gains.
One of my heroes, Dr. Isaac Eliaz, elegantly states that in order to get well, it is wise to change the direction we were going when we got sick.
What are the factors that set the stage for your SIBO? Let’s identify these, then address or manage them the best we can to get you well and keep you well.
And let me hold a vision for your wellness, if I may, even if you can't yet muster optimism.
We all operate best in a landscape of hope, rather than in a place of fear or despair. Biochemically, this truth is played out in our hearts, our thoughts and emotions. Messages of ‘hope’ and ‘safety’–– or ‘fear’ and ‘despair’–– are translated into chemicals that are conveyed into our very cells, for good or for ill.
My goal is to support you in body, mind and spirit to the best of my abilities, to usher in healing that begins at the cellular level.
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This is why offering hope to all who come to my door is absolutely central to the way I practice. It is not done glibly, but from a deep well of belief in the body’s innate power to heal that was distilled from my own experience. ​​​​
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