Greetings, it's Eric Bakker, the naturopath from New Zealand. Thanks for coming back. Thank you
for looking at the video. How reliable is stool tests? Are they any kind of an
accurate measurement of what's really going on in the body,
or are they just sham? Is it just someone just scooping money out and just sham test. Well,
it's a crazy world we live in at the moment, and many people don't trust anybody anymore.
Nobody trusts politicians. Not many people trust doctors. Not many people trust me. It's a wonder
if they even trust themselves. But if we look at different laboratories around the world,
some labs have been around an awful long time. The lab that I work with almost exclusively and
have for probably the last 10, 15 years in particular is Doctor's Data, Doctor's Data
or Doctor's Data in Chicago, which I think is Illinois. That's a state. I think it's a state.
I've been to Chicago a couple of times. It's a really cool place. Had a nice cup of coffee
in this cafe, nearly knocked my glass over again, where the gangsters were hanging out in the 1930s.
I love Chicago. Great airport, the O'Hare airport too. Well, it was a great airport. I don't know
what it's like now. But what was I talking about? That's right. There's stool test, Doctor's Data.
Great lab. A long time. All the certifications that you can imagine. The thing I like about
Doctor's Lab is the evolving science. They've got a new test now, the GI 360. It's a seriously good
test where they actually look at the DNA of the microbiota. There's over 45 different analytes
that they measure for on the test. You would not get a finer stool test. Sham? Well, I don't know.
That's probably like calling a pilot who flies one of those big 737s a sham pilot, or saying
sham with anything you like. But the outcomes I've had, not just personally, but the outcomes
I know many colleagues have had with these tests have been absolutely gob smackingly amazing.
I can tell you the amount of times I had a stool test bag, and I was really worried
about a patient, and I referred him straight on to a gastroenterologist who confirmed the
cancerous polyps, or who confirmed the ulcerative colitis, or we confirmed the Crohn's disease,
all the things that I had picked up in the test that the regular medical doctor didn't pick up
because he or she basically said, "Look, just take a couple of these analgesics and come back
tomorrow. It'll all get better." And it never got better. It never got better. So why a stool test?
Well, you're excluding stool all the time. You're putting in food; you're putting out waste. The
stool test is very, very good because it will show you a complete spread of the different types of
potential pathogens in your gut. But not only that, it'll quantify them and it'll give you an
idea how many you've got, a one plus, two plus, three plus. It will do so for beneficials as
well as dysbiotic. It will do so for parasites to great detail. It'll pick up the parasites.
The only way you're going to know is by getting a test done yourself. And yes, it's expensive.
It's a few hundred dollars. But you know what's more expensive? Having a serious disease and then
basically putting your head in the sand for years and ignoring it. That's a lot more expensive. The
undertaker costs a lot more than a stool test, believe me. It's a sad thing to say, but I have
seen patients who passed away that didn't need to die because they didn't do a stool test,
and they developed all sorts of diseases because it remained undetected. But the cases we've solved
in this clinic with people with serious parasite problems, people with serious yeast infections,
the stool test nailed it time and time again. But here's the thing:
the test has to be done correctly. The patient has to be prepared before they do the test.
There's no point that patient being on two weeks of antibiotics and then doing the
stool test the following day, pretty dumb idea, but I've seen it done many times.
There's no point the patient being on proton pump inhibitor drugs, taking every morning,
taking their drink of Nexium, whatever it is, and then all of a sudden, boom, they do the stool
test and they can't understand the results. So preparation of the patient's important,
is a very important thing to do. The best tests are times three, day one day two, day three.
Like they say, what you miss on the roundabout, you pick up on the swings at the playground,
if you get my drift. You might miss Giardia on day one, but you probably won't miss them
on day two or three. You might pick up an egg or you'll pick up something else.
So having a three-day spread increases your chances of finding different things.
But the stool test isn't just for picking up things. It's also for assessing, for example,
the pancreatic elastase for seeing how well-functioning your pancreatic gland is.
So many things can be picked up from this test. And when used skillfully in the right hands,
it's probably the best test you'll ever do in terms of a functional diagnostic test.
No medical test comes near the power of a functional, comprehensive digestive stool
analysis. I haven't seen one yet. And I can tell you absolutely 100% and no lie,
as I mentioned, several times I've picked things up in the test that the doctor didn't pick up and
at times even the bowel specialist didn't pick up, but the test picked it up. And then when they were
referred back to the same doctor, they apologized and they said, "Yes, we have found it now." So
that's what I mean about how good the test is. So if you're serious, it's worth doing.
So what diseases or conditions would you get a stool test done? Well, basically you can get
a stool test done for any type of chronic ill health, anything, diabetes, cancers,
even heart disease. But most people get one done if they've got lots of bloating, lots of gas,
lots of diarrhea or constipation, gut pain. They may have pain in the lower left quadrant, which is
common with many people with diverticulitis. They may, for example, get a stool test completed if
they've got lots of constant on and off diarrhea and then constipation and they're all over the
show, and the test will usually show one red flag straight away. Boom, there'll be something that
comes up, and then be all these ancillary things, all these smaller things that you'll find as well.
Testing is best performed before you come to the clinic or just as you come in.
So you'll have a first visit with a practitioner who'll talk to you and say,
"Well, maybe we should complete a stool test." Then it's complete. It'll take a few weeks to come
back. Then the physician will sit there with you, go over those pages, and then some changes will be
recommended. And as I always say, you don't make huge changes overnight, especially with a really
not so good stool picture. You've got to make slow changes. And then slowly,
slowly, slowly, you can ease that gut back into better health. And then a repeat test,
of course, makes sense, doesn't it? Do another repeat testing maybe in three or six months,
check again. And what you'll find is, if you've worked well and the physicians work
well and guided you, and you've worked as a team, you'll find the results are improving.
Some patients have completed four, five, six tests over two, three years and seen a massive
increase in their health, and the test results certainly change. I can't tell you how many people
I've seen that have never had a stool test offered to them or completed by a physician, even people
spending thousands of dollars in consultations. They didn't get this test. It's beyond me. It's
absolutely beyond me. To me, it's like taking a brand new BMW with all the computerized stuff
to a guy who just does oil changes and it doesn't do a proper diagnostic computerized workup on that
car engine. Because today you can just plug a car engine into a computer, and it tells you,
"Boom, this is what's wrong." The stool test is a similar thing. You plug it in, or plug the stool
into the test and find out what's going on, make changes, get the patient back, and then just keep
assessing, and away you go. That's why I like the stool test, because it yields consistent results.
Thanks for tuning in. I'll put the link in the box below. Thank you.