If you've been wondering which stool test to choose to figure out what's going on inside
your gut, stay tuned.
I'm going to talk about which one is the right one for you.
Hey there.
If you're new here, welcome.
My name's Amanda Malachesky.
I'm a functional nutrition coach, and I also call myself a digestive and allergy detective.
I make videos every week to help you sort out the ins and outs of digestive problems
and what you can do to help yourself feel better.
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Sometimes I see questions on Facebook groups and other online forums about which stool
test is the best test to take to figure out what's going on inside of my gut.
So today, I want to talk about specifically what you should look for in the stool test
that you're going to choose.
If you want to get the best and correct information for your particular situation, it's really
important that you choose the correct test.
So today, I'm going to help you sort through the details and options available to figure
out which one is right for you.
So let's get started.
The first thing you need to decide is whether you want to do a culture-based stool test
or a PCR-DNA analysis type stool test.
There are really two different kinds of tests, and the results you get from them is a little
bit different, but they both have benefits.
The culture-based stool test is often what your conventional doctor might run in his
office or your naturopath or functional medicine MD.
The conventional labs, Quest and LabCorp, definitely offer a single stool collection
test that you can get easily through your conventional doctor.
And a lot of times people will come to me saying, "I already had a stool test and nothing
came up."
But some of the functional stool labs, including the Genova Diagnostics stool test, the Doctor's
Data test, and the BioHealth Lab's 401H do a three-day stool collection.
And usually when you're given this test by your naturopath or other functional practitioner,
they're going to recommend that you take what's called a Biofilm Buster for three days before
the test.
Any stool test is always just a snapshot in time, and so the single stool test is very
likely to miss things that are happening there.
The three-day test is an opportunity to kind of see what's cycling through over a couple
of days.
And if you've taken the Biofilm Buster as recommended, you have a much higher likelihood
of catching the bugs that you are looking for.
The advantage to a culture-based test is that you get to have a snapshot over a couple of
different days, and you have a higher likelihood of actually capturing something interesting
on your stool result.
The downside to the culture-based test is that in order to get a result on a culture-based
test, you have to have enough of the organisms to even culture.
So sometimes things that are a little harder to find, especially candida or other yeasts,
which are notoriously hard to culture, may not turn up, but that doesn't necessarily
mean you don't have a yeast problem.
The other type of stool testing is called PCR analysis.
This uses a computerized program to identify the DNA of organisms present in the stool.
The PCR test is much, much, much more sensitive.
It can detect organisms down to just a couple of cells worth of material, which on the one
hand might give you some false positives, like you may have just a couple of individuals
of bacteria or something and it may not really be a problem.
But on the other hand, for people who have been really trying to figure out what's going
on and not getting answers, sometimes it can provide the missing clue that you've been
looking for.
Another advantage to the PCR test is that it's usually just a one-day sample.
So if you're someone who struggles a little bit with constipation and you have trouble
pooping multiple days in a row, this might be a good test for you as well.
The primary provider of this test is called the GI-MAP by Diagnostic Solutions Laboratory.
I'll leave a link for their lab below.
So now that you have decided whether you want to do a culture-based stool test or a DNA
stool test, now the question is, which lab do you work with?
I already mentioned there's kind of four main labs that functional providers use.
They are Genova Diagnostics, Doctor's Data, Diagnostic Solutions Laboratory GI-MAP, or
BioHealth Lab's 401H.
I think the first important thing to consider is what's included in the test beyond the
analysis for bacteria, parasites, and yeasts.
All these different tests have slightly different test offerings and have a little bit of a
different add-on.
So for example, the GI-MAP includes digestive markers for things like elastase and beta-glucuronidase,
which are just interesting markers that may say something about your digestive system.
Some of them include a marker for secretory IgA.
It's sort of the immune fluid that the inside of the intestine secretes to keep your intestines
healthy, so measuring that can be kind of useful.
You'll want to look at the different markers and consider what are you needing to learn.
Are you thinking that there is some immune issue going on that you might want to see
what that secretory IgA looks like?
Are you worried about your pancreas?
Some of them have markers that can give you information about your pancreas.
Some of them have information that can reveal whether or not you have inflammatory bowel
disease.
So you'll want to look and compare the different offerings and see what things are most valuable
and useful for you.
Of the four tests, the one that I feel has the most valuable information is the GI-MAP
because it gives you this DNA-based analysis so we get a pretty clear picture of what's
in the GI, and it also has a series of the different GI markers.
Just so you guys can get a sense of what actually is included in your stool results.
I'm going to show you a previous result on one of my stool tests from the GI-MAP test.
You can see that there are lots of different tests for pathogenic bacteria, viruses, parasites,
including worms, as well as candida, and yeasts, and other sorts of organisms.
Then after that, there's also information about how your intestinal health is doing
with several different markers.
So there's a tremendous amount of actionable clinical information on these tests and can
give you a sense of how you're doing.
It also includes information about levels of your beneficial bacteria, which have definitely
been shown in research to have a correlation with your digestive health, but the Doctor's
Data test also has most of the same markers.
But then, this gets into the next question of, how much are you willing to spend?
The cost is definitely different between all four of these tests.
The least expensive one is the BioHealth 401H, which is a culture-based test, and the most
expensive is the Doctor's Data.
So you have to consider what you're able to do.
If your naturopath or physician orders these tests for you, they may be partially or fully
covered by your insurance plan.
If they're being ordered by a practitioner like myself, they're not probably going to
be covered by insurance, so you'd be paying cash out of pocket, and that is a consideration.
And just so you have an idea of what you're looking at for a cash pay outlay for these
tests, the cheapest one is the BioHealth 401H, and that's around $279 for a cash pay price,
all the way up to a little over $350 for the Doctor's Data test.
So there's sort of a range there of prices, but there you are.
One additional test that sometimes is used in conjunction with the stool test or after
you've kind of exhausted your research with the results you're getting from a stool test
is the Organic Acids Test.
The reason this test can help is sometimes because of the nature of the digestive system,
and sometimes you're not getting the dysbiotic organisms to shed in your stool, sometimes
you need to look at other exhaust streams to kind of understand what's happening in
the gut.
The Organic Acids Test is a urine test that looks at the metabolites of various metabolic
processes in your body.
And sometimes, even though you may not find much on a stool test, you might find metabolites
of bacteria, or fungus, or yeast, or molds, or things like this in your urine sample on
the Organic Acids Test.
So if you have worked with a stool test already and you haven't really gotten the results
you're looking for, it's worth trying to find a practitioner who can help you run the Organic
Acids Test and take a look and see if there's other indicators that you have dysbiosis happening
in your gut.
So have you ever run a stool test on yourself?
Which test have you chosen and why?
Leave us a comment below.
Well, I hope that today's short video has helped you figure out which stool tests might
be right for you.
If you have any further questions about that, I encourage you to leave a question for me
down below in the comments.
Or if you would like to talk about accessing stool testing for yourself to try and understand
what's happening in your digestive system, you can feel free to schedule a free 30-minute
assessment session with me by visiting confluencenutrition.com/contact.
I'd be happy to talk with you about what that process would look like and what stool testing
can tell you about what's going on in your gut.
And if you'd like to get a little bit more information about how things like stool testing
and Organic Acids Testing fit into the larger picture of your healing process and what you
can do to resolve your gut issues, please go ahead and download your free copy of the
Roadmap to Gut Recovery.
You can get that by visiting confluencenutrition.com/roadmap.
There's a link to that in the banner of my channel homepage there.
So I hope that you are having a great day, and I wish you all the best.
I will see you next time.