Imbalances in the gut have been linked to a range of physical and mental health issues, including obesity (1), cancer (2), dyslipidemia and insulin resistance (3), as well as anxiety and depression (4).
As a result, more and more practitioners are using gut testing when working with new patients to establish what may be causing some of their symptoms and create an effective treatment plan for addressing them.
However, this might not be enough to find the cause of your symptoms
That’s because, while gut tests can help identify problematic aspects such as pathogenic bacteria and parasites, they don’t actually get to the root cause of why these issues are present in the first place.
For example, copper, mercury and other heavy metals can encourage an overgrowth of bacteria and parasites in the gut as they work to sequester and detoxify these harmful elements (5).
As a result, if you only have stool testing and then focus on reversing the issues flagged in that test, such as pathogenic bacteria and parasites, it’s more than likely that you will eventually find yourself back at square one; for example, because the copper and/or heavy metals in your body have not been addressed.
It’s like pulling weeds. If you only pull out the stem, the weeds will eventually grow back; just like parasites and harmful bacteria in the gut. If, on the other hand, you go deeper and remove the roots, that weed won’t return.
Now, I’m not saying that gut testing isn’t useful. It is. BUT you cannot stop there if you really want to help yourself get better. Add in that stool testing can be expensive, so you don’t want to waste money doing the test only for it to yield mediocre results.
Hair mineral testing is an incredible cost-effective compliment to gut testing that will not only help you understand the root cause of what’s going on with your gut microbiome (for example by clearly showing their copper and heavy metal levels), but also create an effective long-term solution to tyour health issues so they can feel better and stay better.
References
- Turnbaugh PJ, Hamady M, Yatsunenko T, Cantarel BL, Duncan A, Ley RE, Sogin ML, Jones WJ, Roe BA, Affourtit JP, Egholm M, Henrissat B, Heath AC, Knight R, Gordon JI. 2009. A core gut microbiome in obese and lean twins. Nature. 457(7228), 480-4.
- Ahn J, Sinha R, Pei Z, Dominianni C, Wu J, Shi J, Goedert JJ, Hayes RB, Yang L. 2013. Human gut microbiome and risk for colorectal cancer. J Natl Cancer Inst. 105(24),1 907-11.
- Le Chatelier E, Nielsen T, Qin J, Prifti E, Hildebrand F, Falony G, Almeida M, Arumugam M, Batto JM, Kennedy S, Leonard P, Li J, Burgdorf K, Grarup N, Jørgensen T, Brandslund I, Nielsen HB, Juncker AS, Bertalan M, Levenez F, Pons N, Rasmussen S, Sunagawa S, Tap J, Tims S, Zoetendal EG, Brunak S, Clément K, Doré J, Kleerebezem M, Kristiansen K, Renault P, Sicheritz-Ponten T, de Vos WM, Zucker JD, Raes J, Hansen T; MetaHIT consortium; Bork P, Wang J, Ehrlich SD, Pedersen O. 2013. Richness of human gut microbiome correlates with metabolic markers. Nature, 500(7464), 541-6.
- Simpson, C.A., Diaz-Arteche, C., Eliby, D., Schwartz, O.S., Simmons, J.G. and Cowan, C.S., 2021. The gut microbiota in anxiety and depression–A systematic review. Clinical psychology review, 83,101943.
- Ackland ML, Bornhorst J, Dedoussis GV, et al. 2015. Metals in the Environment as Risk Factors for Infectious Diseases: Gaps and Opportunities. In: Nriagu JO, Skaar EP, editors. Trace Metals and Infectious Diseases [Internet]. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press; Chapter 17. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK569691/
