You’re doing everything ‘right’ diet-wise and you’ve been told everything ‘looks normal’ …. but you’re not feeling great, you’ve got horrible debilitating symptoms and you just KNOW everything is a long way from ‘normal’. If you’re experiencing this kind of situation, the only way to sort things out once and for all is to get to the root cause of your issues. What’s the best way to find the root cause? Usually through private lab tests. Here follow four really important reasons to use lab tests to test your gut, in order to get the best result possible for yourself.
1. Lab tests for yeast infections
If you think you have a yeast infection, then stool and/or organic acid tests are the only reliable way to know for sure.
- Looking at your tongue
- Spitting into a glass of water and watching what your saliva does
- Taking online questionnaires
All of these are non-diagnostic for yeast overgrowth in the gut.
Health care providers can diagnose oral thrush by looking in the mouth, but oral thrush does not necesarily equal Candida in the gut.
Questionnaires can be helpful for organising your symptoms and your thoughts, and pointing you in a particular direction for further exploration, but they are not diagnostic. Although they can hint the something might be wrong in that particular region.
If you’re worried your diet is impacting your gut health, I’d highly recommend downloading my online course The Ultimate Gut Health Programme to help support both your digestive sysem and hormone health, whilst avoiding triggering symptoms.
It’d be impossible to include all you need to know in one blog, but the programme will have all you need to know to ensure you’re soothing your digestive system, whilst eating delicious and filling foods.
2. Lab tests for parasites
These are useful if you suspect you’ve picked up a parasite on your travels (or indeed at home).
Very often it’s parasites which can give rise to IBS-type symptoms – it sounds horrible I know! But again, the only way to know for sure if this is the root cause of your problems is to test.
I use a new type of test called a PCR test. These are much more accurate than the tests we’ve used in the past. I’m sure everyone is very familiar with this term now!
PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction testing – and it’s great for accurately testing for parasites.
Why?
Because they actually check for the presence of the parasites’ DNA in your gut, so they’re highly sensitive. Previous tests were just looking for entire parasites which may have come out in the stool sample, and they didn’t always tend to.
PCR testing is also great for testing for candida and other yeasts.
These are two really common causes of IBS-type symptoms.
3. Lab tests for ‘leaky gut’
If you’re getting non-gut symptoms, some of these can be traced back to having ‘leaky gut’ or intestinal permeability.
Symptoms throughout your body may have their root cause in your gut. These conditions include the following –
- Autoimmune reactions and diseases
- Food allergies or sensitivities
- Asthma
- Skin disorders like eczema and psoriasis or acne
- Arthritis and other body aches or pains
- Fatigue
- Changes in mood, weight and appetite
There are several tests we can run to check the health of your gut and to ascertain whether or not the condition of your gut is impacting, or even causing, further symptoms throughout your body. Comprehensive gut testing is highly effective for this.
4. Lab tests for SIBO
If you’re having IBS-type symptoms but haven’t tested your gut, you may unwittingly end upaggravating things. For example, if it turns out you have a condition called SIBO.
SIBO is when you have bacteria growing in the wrong part of your digestive system. This causes nasty symptoms including terrible bloating – if you suspect you may be affected by SIBO you can read all about it here.
The only way to know if you have this condition is by carrying out a breath or stool test. If you don’t test you won’t know that’s what you’re dealing with and trying to treat it yourself, for example with probiotics, may only make things worse.
So, the bottom line is, if you’re getting any of these symptoms lab tests are a really good place to start.
In addition, there are more really compelling reasons to give it a go, including –
- It takes the guesswork away
- You’ll get much quicker and effective results
- It’s a very good motivator – when you can see what you’re dealing with, actually written in black and white, it’s really very motivating.
If you would like to speak to me about any aspect of your gut health, then please use this link to book into my diary for a FREE 30 minute chat so I can find out more about what is going on for you. Alternatively please use the ‘Learn More’ link below.
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