Greetings, Eric Bakker from New Zealand, the naturopath from New Zealand.
Thanks for coming back and looking at my videos today.
I've got a few videos to go through.
I've got a whole bunch of questions here from different people as usual.
I'm going to do a series on stool testing today.
I've got many different questions from subscribers regarding stool testing.
I get them all the time.
How do I do a stool test?
What's the relevance of the stool test?
Do I really need it?
Is it a waste of money?
What do I need to check for?
What specific test is the best test, so.
So here's a question from somebody in America and the question is, "Is comprehensive stool
analysis worth it?
Why should I do a stool analysis test?"
This is a great question, and it's a question I get asked many, many times.
Now, in my position, I've been a naturopath for a long, long time, but I've also worked
for several companies as a technical person, meaning I worked with many different practitioners.
Medical doctors, chiropractors, naturopaths, herbalists, all kinds of people.
And I've trained a lot of people up in testing.
Various companies I've worked for over the years, particularly my earlier years of practice,
I got trained up by various companies on how to interpret stool tests properly, by the
labs themselves.
So I had a few trips to America, learning how to really interpret these tests, but most
of my experience came from basically authorizing a test, working with patients, trying to work
it through and been doing that for over 20 years, you tend to get to know the tests quite
well and the applications.
Is a comprehensive stool analysis worth it?
That's a question that many people ask me.
So, why should I spend $300, $400?
I think it's about $400 US dollars.
Why should I spend that kind of money on a test when I've already spent so much money
on supplements, consultations, and tests, and they've all led me down the path to nothing?
This is something I've heard a thousand times from people.
They would say to me, "I'm not spending any more money on a test.
What a load of crap.
Why should I do this?
What's it going to give me?
Is it going to give me any benefit?"
There are many different tests you can do on somebody.
If you go to a medical doctor, there are a huge amount of tests that they can do.
But the tests that medical doctors don't generally do are comprehensive digestive stool analysis,
so this is a test that a medical doctor will never really do because it's not really in
their ballpark.
They've not trained in this area.
They're not specialized in gastrointestinal work.
They'll refer to a specialist.
And even a GI doctor, gastrointestinal doctor is not going to authorize this test unless
he or she has had training in things like microbiology or functional medicine, parasitology,
unless they really understand those elements of GI medicine, they're not going to basically
research or study them.
The only test a GI doctor'll do, generally, will be a parasite test, or maybe a bacterial
test.
Or maybe an endoscopy or coloscopy.
So, then we'll do the standard tests.
Now, the amount of people I've seen that have had these standard tests that came back with
nothing is phenomenal.
Where they couldn't find anything with the patient and they put it down to Irritable
Bowel Syndrome or something like that, where the patient got sent back to their medical
doctor, who got them kicked over to the psychiatrist that'll put them on Prozac or something, because
it was imagining things happening in their digestive system that the doctor couldn't
find.
Now, I've heard this again and again and again.
So if you can't find something in a test, well, it must be in the patient's head.
It must be what they're imagining.
It can't be in their digestive system.
Comprehensive tests are really authorized by people like me or doctors with training
in functional medicine.
People are more interested in the function of the body, to correct the body before it
actually gets sick, before it goes into a full blown disease state.
A CSA, or comprehensive stool analysis can be used both as a preventative measure and
it can also be used to assess and to diagnose people, to see what's wrong with them.
On several occasions, I can tell you how good a stool test is.
On more than one occasion, I've had results back from a patient which immediately made
me aware the patient had Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
I contacted the patient, I said you need to get back to your doctor and get a referral
to a GI doc immediately for a colonoscopy.
And on more than two occasions, I've had the patient come back saying, "I was wrongly diagnosed,
Mr. Backer.
You were correct.
I actually had ulcerative colitis, but the doctor missed it."
So, that's how good these stool tests are.
They can actually pick up diseases where some GI doctors, even, skip the actual proper diagnosis
because they didn't test for those sort of things or they didn't maybe do an endoscopy
or coloscopy on the patient to properly check them out.
Is a comprehensive stool analysis worth it?
It is definitely worth it, if you've been unwell for a long period of time.
So if you've had many years sickness, especially GI sickness, but any kind of sickness.
If you've had, for example, autoimmune disease.
If you've been on pharmaceutical medication for many years, if you've just been unwell
for a long time, this is a very good test to do, because we always try to improve a
person from the inside out.
We always try and improve their digestive system up to a high level, so their digestion
and absorption can improve and their excretion can be good.
This means you're giving the body all the minerals and vitamins and nutritional contingent
factors that it needs to maintain and build excellent health.
If you've got a poor gut, you've got poor health, so it's a great starting point for
many people.
I'm surprised how many people have never had a comprehensive stool test that have been
antibiotics, for example, and have never been well since.
Or they've been overseas to a country, it could have been like the Caribbean or the
Pacific, they picked up some tummy bug, but they never had a proper stool test.
They just got put on antibiotics.
These are the people that really need stool testing.
The people that have had a lifestyle that was relatively normal, an event happened,
and they were never well since.
So they need to test to find out what went wrong.
For the sake of $400, because the tests I utilize predominantly, it's a lab called Doctor's
Data Labs in Chicago.
I've been working with the company over 20 years.
They do an incredibly good stool test.
The CSA Times There, including parasitology, it's about $400.
Is your health worth $400?
Probably is.
It's gonna show you things that maybe have never been brought to your attention before.
Maybe you've been looking in the wrong areas, in terms of treatment.
This is going to help to save you a lot of time and money by proper assessment and the
great thing, once you've done this test, you've got a baseline, so you've established what
we found and the treatment protocol gets put in place and then you can re-test down the
track, and the second test can be a bit cheaper because if you didn't find parasites, you
just do the microbiology only component for example, it's gonna be lot cheaper.
And that will give you an idea if you're on the right track.
If you're wasting your time, wasting your time, or if you're actually achieving an outcome
that you're looking for.
So if you think about it, if you're unwell and you want to get well, you need to make
some kind of assessment or measurement to find out what you're dealing with and then
put some treatment plan into place and then re-check, eventually, once or twice or three
times to make sure that things are going well and then just keep going, and you should come
right.
If you don't test and measure but just treat, it's a bit of a waste of time, when you think
about it.
Time and money.
So, why do a stool analysis?
Do a stool analysis to determine what the heck is going on inside.
It's a proper report by a good lab to determine what needs treatment, what doesn't need treatment.
That's why you do a stool analysis.
It expediates therapy.
It speeds things up.
It stops you wasting your money and your time.
Two very important things in your life are time and money, so you don't want to waste
either, and a test will stop that waste.
So, that's why I recommend you do it.
Okay?
For the sake of a few hundred dollars, I recommend you do the test.
But you've gotta do it properly, and that's what we're gonna talk about in subsequent
videos.
So do try and watch this series of videos on stool testing if you have an interest in
them and I'll talk a bit about the stool test and about its application further on in other
videos.
And don't be afraid, of course, to ask any questions about stool testing.
I'm always quite happy to answer those questions.
Okay?
Thanks for checking out the video.
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Thank you.