Collecting your poop is no fun; let’s just state that. However, there is so much information we can glean from a small stool sample to serve as a guide toward optimal gut health.
When it comes to gut health, many aspects need to be addressed in order to achieve optimal functioning. These include:
⁃ Stress management
⁃ Dietary choices, including eliminating inflammatory foods
⁃ Microbiome optimization
⁃ Healing the gut lining
⁃ Eliminating pathogenic organisms including yeast, bacteria, viruses, mycotoxins, fungi and parasites
⁃ Optimizing digestive function
Well, that can seem like a lot of work! Does all of this even need to be addressed in every person? One place to start is to do a proper digestive stool analysis which provides a roadmap to which aspects likely need the most support. The stool test covers the following:
⁃ Probiotics that are deficient and/or over-abundant
⁃ Yeast
⁃ Parasites
⁃ Viruses
⁃ Inflammatory markers
⁃ Fermentation capabilities (your probiotics do this work!)
⁃ Indicators of digestive sufficiency (i.e. if any foods are moving through undigested)
⁃ Other markers like red or white blood cells, secretory IgA production, stool pH
This test proves helpful when we suspect there may be digestive pathogens as it digs much deeper than a simple APL stool test, but it’s also useful to guide therapeutic choices to help heal the gut in almost any situation: chronic gut issues, chronic disease, polypharmacy, mental health concerns, immune dysfunction, and so on.
Having a healthy gut is foundational to our overall health and functioning and is an often neglected aspect when it comes to chronic health conditions. Eliminating pathogens, healing inflammation, restoring probiotics, rebuilding the gut lining, making a few tweaks to your diet and managing the stress response will lay the foundation for your road to optimal health.
We are here to help support you on this journey.
