Signs of a Healthy Gut
Can you check for signs of a healthy gut at home? Over the last few years, the general public has become more aware that gut health can play a part in our overall health. Our guts are linked to mental health, sleep, and boosting our immune systems. Most of the time, we don’t pay much attention to our gut. Not until we feel sick or start to get pain, discomfort, or digestive issues on a regular basis. Prevention is always better than cure.
However, if you find yourself struggling with digestive issues that you cannot account for, getting your gut health checked by being tested is one of the best ways to get to the source of the problem.
The symptoms that poor gut health can cause are often due to a lack of healthy gut bacteria or too many pathogenic bacteria being present in the gut. However, it is not just bacteria that are present in our gut. We also have viruses, fungi, and single celled organisms called protozoa. These can cause us to feel sick if they are higher in number than usual. Testing will identify which of these issues is causing the symptoms.
You may wish to try and address the issue yourself first because professional testing can be expensive. This can be done by changing your diet. Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and fermented foods such as sauerkraut, kefir, or kimchi. Alternatively, you may wish to take a probiotic supplement. They can contain millions, or even billions, of healthy bacteria to get things back on an even keel.
Food Intolerance
Something else you can do before getting a test done is to keep a food and symptom diary. Sometimes, digestive issues can be caused by food intolerances. Therefore, keeping a diary can help identify which foods are causing the issue. Unfortunately, unlike a food allergy, the response to eating that food may not be instant. It can even be a day or so after eating the offending food. Hopefully, if food intolerance is the issue, you can spot a pattern of symptoms occurring. It can include anything from a few hours after eating a specific food up to a few days afterwards.
If the food diary does not flag anything specific, you can be tested for food intolerances. There are quite a few testing companies that will carry out the test for you. Once you have paid, the company will send the necessary paraphernalia along with instructions for how to take your sample. You then send in a sample of blood, which the company tests against dozens, if not hundreds, of foods, and then lets you know the results. Some companies will offer nutritional advice afterwards, but this usually costs more money and is not always necessary.
The Problem with Testing
If the symptoms you are experiencing are debilitating, your general practitioner may well run tests for you for free (in the UK). However, it may be necessary to pay a private company to do the test. In addition, when your doctor runs tests, they may not test for everything and also tell you that the result is ‘’normal’’.
However, ‘’normal’’ could be within a certain range, and you won’t be told which end of ‘’normal’’ you are. In addition, age, gender, ethnicity, or underlying health conditions may affect the result. For this reason, paying a private company to do the test may be preferable, as they test more thoroughly and provide more detailed results.
Faecal Testing
One of the most popular tests for gut health is faecal testing. This involves putting a sample of your poop in a test tube. However, before paying for a test, it is a good idea to have a look at your poop first. It is not pleasant, but it is an effective way of identifying problems quite quickly. First of all, look at the colour. Yellow colour can be a sign of fat digestion issues or an infection, and black or red stools could be due to bleeding internally. This needs to be reported to a doctor immediately, as it is not normal.
However, if you have been eating beetroot, be aware that this can colour your pee and poop and may be the reason for the discolouration. If you eat a lot of vegetables and your poop has a green tinge, it could be a sign that you are not digesting your food efficiently. This can also cause faeces to sink as they will be much heavier than usual, which is another sign to watch out for.
The other thing to check is the size and consistency of your poop. Floating poop is another sign that fat digestion needs addressing. There is obviously a problem if you have regular or consistent diarrhoea or constipation. Finally, you should empty your bowels on a daily basis. If you are going to the bathroom several times a day or only once a week or less, you need to get it checked out.
The “Poop Test”
The poop test can give important information about your gut health. This includes identifying which bacteria are present, including pathogenic bacteria, parasites, or other organisms. Although some pathogenic bacteria may be present in the gut but not in the faeces. Faecal testing can also help identify digestive issues, problems with absorption, or if there is inflammation in the gut, as in the case of inflammatory bowel disease.
In addition, the presence of short-chain fatty acids shows whether or not the gut bacteria are fermenting food efficiently, which helps support healthy digestion and metabolism.
Once you have the results of this test, more tests might be necessary to dig deeper into the problem. For instance, the test may identify that you are not absorbing fat when there is more fat than usual in your poop. However, this doesn’t explain why you are not absorbing it. It could be something serious like pancreatitis or cystic fibrosis, so it is really important to have further tests.
Testing for SIBO
SIBO stands for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. As the name suggests, it does exactly what it says on the tin. This can happen for a variety of reasons, including a change in the type of bacteria that normally live in the intestine, or a decrease in the amount of stomach acid that kills bacteria. Food can get stuck in the gut and start to ferment, which causes too many bacteria to be present. This can cause diarrhoea, abdominal pain, bloating, gas, and even weight loss.
There are several ways that this can be tested for and diagnosed. One way is for a clinician to collect a sample of intestinal fluid during an upper endoscopy. The sample is then tested in a laboratory. Alternatively, SIBO can be identified by the presence of a chemical called 4-hydroxyphenylacetic acid in the urine. A simple urine test will identify this.
Alternatively, SIBO can be tested for with a breath test. This can be done at home as well as in a laboratory. It is necessary to not eat or drink anything other than water for twelve hours beforehand. Then you drink the sugary drink provided and take several breath samples every two and a half hours. The breath collected is then tested for hydrogen and methane.
Full instructions are provided if you use an ‘’at-home’’ kit. You should not do this test if you are taking anti-biotics or have taken them in the last four weeks. It is also advised that you don’t take any other medication for a week before the test and avoid specific foods. This is because they can skew the results.
Testing for Leaky Gut
Ideally, the cells that line the wall of the digestive tract are all packed tightly together and form a tight seal. Unfortunately, inflammation and other digestive issues can cause the mucous layer that protects these cells to be broken down and the cells to leave gaps. This enables microscopic pieces of undigested food and toxins to get through and into the blood stream. The result of this is that the immune system sees these bits of food or toxins as dangerous and, in trying to destroy them, causes inflammation.
The test for this is a urine test. The procedure is to drink a liquid that contains two types of sugar molecules, one larger than the other. A molecule is the smallest unit that a substance can exist as. If the gut is leaky, the larger molecule of sugar will make its way into the blood and into the urine, where it shows up in the test. If the gut is healthy, the larger molecule will stay in the gut and be excreted in the faeces. As mentioned, the gut is home to fungi as well as bacteria. Another cause of leaky gut is too much of a fungus called candida. This is tested for in a poop test.
Be vigilant and monitor how you feel is the best thing for checking if your gut is healthy. Check what your poop looks like, and any changes in your toilet habits. Be reassured that there are simple tests that can get to the root of any problems that may occur, so that you can make the necessary changes to restore your gut to good health.
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Click here to access clevelandclinic.org article, Leaky Gut Syndrome .