GI Health - Is your Gut OK?
5 Signs Your Gut is not OK
1. Persistent Digestive Symptoms
Ongoing bloating, nausea, diarrhea, constipation, or abdominal discomfort can be a sign your digestive system is not functioning correctly and may point to underlying issues like dysbiosis, inflammation, infections, or malabsorption.
2. Signs of Intestinal Inflammation
Changes in stool color, consistency, a strong odor, seeing blood in your stool, or experiencing frequent urgency or pain, gold standard testing markers like fecal calprotectin can help distinguish inflammatory bowel disease (like Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis) from irritable bowel syndrome.
3. Unexplained Skin problems
The gut often speaks through other systems such as with conditions like acne, eczema, and psoriasis which can be linked to an unhealthy gut. The gut-skin axis means that inflammation in the gut can sometimes manifest as inflammatory skin issues.
4. Mood Changes or Brain Fog
The gut and brain are strongly connected, and gut health can impact emotional well-being. A disrupted gut can contribute to mood swings, anxiety, depression, and even brain fog. A large portion of the body's serotonin, a mood-regulating chemical, and other neurotransmitters, are produced in the gut, making it vulnerable to imbalances.
5. Persistent Sugar Cravings and Stubborn Weight Issues
An overgrowth of certain bacteria in the gut can lead to increased cravings for sugar. A diet high in refined sugars can cause inflammation and further disrupt the balance of good bacteria in your gut. Stubborn weight issues or metabolic symptoms can be linked to gut imbalance. Functional stool testing can reveal imbalances in the microbiome that traditional testing might miss.
Antibiotics, stress, poor sleep, poor diet, and other lifestyle pressures can disrupt your microbiome’s balance. If things don’t bounce back with basic support, targeted stool testing can offer clarity.
These symptoms and concerns often motivate functional-minded clinicians to recommend stool testing as a window into root causes, not just symptoms.
Gut Health 101
Do you ever get this feeling, in your gut, that something just isn’t right?
Now that you are thinking about that, do you know what is actually happening in your gut? Do you know that when the gut microbiome is off, you may experience symptoms that just do not make sense. Sometimes these symptoms happen quickly causing acute pain or distress but often times they have been creeping up on you with increasing discomforts and symptoms that may manifest as bloating after every meal… fatigue you can’t explain… stubborn skin flare-ups…or something else.
Sometimes, your gut sends subtle messages that something’s not quite physically right.
And it’s not always about digestion.
Your gut health and the bacteria that make up your microbiome impact your brain chemistry, immune system, your weight, risk of heart disease, cancer, dementia, Parkinson’s, autism, ADHD, depression, joint pain, and more. Without having the right information, it’s easy to chalk these symptoms up to “I must have had something that did not agree with me," "just stress,” or “getting older.”
Pointing to Gut Health
Nausea when eating and drinking. Early satiety or feeling full fast when just starting to eat. Bloating after every meal. That stubborn constipation that just won’t get better or provide relief. Or maybe it’s the opposite: frequent, urgent trips to the bathroom without reason that leaves you wondering what is happening inside.
Maybe you are feeling tired for no reason, noticing changes in your skin, or dealing with mood swings you can’t explain. While these symptoms may seem unrelated, they often have one thing in common: your gut health. Many people live with gut issues for years just dealing with what comes their way and without realizing the underlying cause. Sometimes, the key to understanding these mysteries is to look a little closer and see what is going on in your digestive system --- by testing your stool.
Testing for Answers
OR
Gut Screening for Prevention
As a practitioner, who has worked as a gastrointestinal specialist, I find the GI MAP (Gastrointestinal Microbial Assay Plus) test to be a great guide for uncovering GI mysteries. The GI MAP is a comprehensive stool test used to analyze the gut microbiome, helping to identify pathogens, gut flora balance, assess beneficial and opportunistic bacteria, evaluate digestive and immune markers, checks antibiotic resistance, and provides practitioners with information to develop personalized treatment plans to address the root cause.
When used as a screening tool, and even without overt symptoms, stool testing can serve a preventative role, giving insight into digestive enzymes, gut health and connection to other conditions, absorption capacity, microbiome diversity, inflammation, and immune activity. With this information lifestyle or dietary adjustments can be better informed.
Who should get a GI MAP test?
Individuals experiencing persistent digestive problems like nausea, diarrhea, or constipation.
People with symptoms not clearly explained by traditional/western medicine, such as fatigue, brain fog, or skin issues.
Those with a known or suspected imbalance in their gut microbiome.
People with autoimmune conditions or other chronic diseases that may have a gut-health component.
If you’ve been wondering what is going on with your health and why you don’t feel like yourself, your gut might have the answer. With the right information from advanced testing like the GI-MAP, you can stop guessing and stop feeling like there is no answer and start targeting the imbalances in your GI and focus on what your body needs.
Personalized Gut Health Program
Click the Link below to join our 6 month Gut Health Program, tailored to you, where we will focus on the 5R Protocol to heal the gut: Remove, Replace, Reinoculate, Repair, and Rebalance.