Today, I'm going to go over a GI MAP Stool Test result and help
you explain what it means, so stay tuned. Hey there, if you're new here, my name's
Amanda Malachesky. I'm a certified functional nutrition health coach and a digestive and
allergy detective. For tips and tricks on how to resolve your digestive challenges for good, please
consider subscribing and be sure to hit the bell to be notified when I post a new video every week.
So you ran a GI MAP Stool Test to see what was going on in your belly, but now what? By the end
of today's video you'll have a general idea of how to interpret your GI MAP Stool Test, and you'll
have an idea of which things are really concerning and should take you to your doctor right away,
and which things are more to be dealt with on the diet and lifestyle front with someone like me.
I like to use the GI MAP Stool Test with my clients who haven't made really good progress
by using their basic digestive supports. So I'd like to help you understand how to use
this wonderful tool, so let's get started. All right. So the GI MAP is a stool test
by a diagnostic solutions laboratory, and it's designed to give you an idea of what is living
in your digestive tract from a single stool sample that you collect at home and send back to the lab.
And I really like this test because it gives you a lot of really great information that can kind of
help you guide your approach to how you're healing your gut. However, no test is absolutely perfect,
and a lot of people sometimes get a little carried away with the results of this test and what it
really means. We do have to be careful about making leaps of logic or jumping to conclusions
that aren't supported by research. So I want to talk a little bit about what some of these things
are and how to properly interpret this test. And before I go any further, I should definitely
give a medical disclaimer. Nothing I'm about to say in this video should be
construed as direct medical advice, and if you have any questions whatsoever about what
you're seeing in your test result, you should absolutely go make an appointment to talk with
your doctor or other healthcare provider. Okay. So here is a GI MAP Stool Test result,
and it's basically four pages full of information about the bacteria, yeast, parasites, and even
viruses, and sometimes worms that might be living in your digestive tract. And I want to mostly
discuss the sections about bacteria, but I want to touch briefly on the parasites and yeasts first.
On the fourth page you'll find the results that deal with parasites and worms, and these
organisms are very tricky to actually find on any kind of stool test. The thing that distinguishes
the GI MAP is that it can detect very small quantities of DNA from these organisms, and so it
might find something that another test that just involves looking at stool samples and looking for
eggs and other various body parts of parasites may not find. The trick is that sometimes the
levels of these things that you find might represent a residual infection that you're
no longer infected with. So the relative abundance of those organisms can matter for
how seriously you want to take these results. And then the next section is the fungi section,
and the most famous resident of this section is of course candida, which can be a pathogenic yeast.
And candida is also really difficult to find on tests. It doesn't culture very
well. And so it can be tricky to find out if you actually have a yeast problem. If candida
actually shows up on your GI MAP, it's usually a pretty good indicator that there actually is
a yeast overgrowth, and then treating this is something that you definitely want to discuss
with your doctor or other healthcare provider. Okay, now let's talk a little bit about bacteria.
I think this is the part of the test where people often get a little bit misguided. They see
a bacteria result and they think, oh, I need antibiotics or I need to do a really intensive
antimicrobial treatment protocol to deal with the bacteria on my test. And this isn't necessarily
true. So let's kind of break this down and look at the different bacterial sections.
The first one is on page one, and these are bacteria that are pathogenic. So these are things
like C. diff or infectious E. coli varieties that can make you very, very sick. Some of them are
actually very dangerous and pathogenic, so this can sometimes give you some insights into that.
Certainly if one of these bacteria on this first page is elevated above the reference range,
this is something you definitely want to talk with your doctor about.
And similarly on the second page of the test is the H. pylori results,
and so it gives you an idea about whether or not you have H. pylori, and it also tests for
these virulence factors. So I think it kind of types the different kinds of H. pylori, and some
of them are much more virulent than others. And these more virulent strains can actually be more
likely to cause other kinds of side effects and medical problems later on the longer
that you have H. pylori. So definitely if you have a positive result on H. pylori, this is
also definitely something to talk with your doctor about treating. Research shows that
H pylori infection is definitely correlated with ulcers and gastritis,
but long-term infection, especially with the more virulent strains, can be a risk factor for cancer.
Now, the next section is the part that talks about your beneficial bacteria,
and it kind of gives you some idea of the relative abundance and ratios of different
orders, and classes and groupings of beneficial bacteria. And a lot of people can get a little bit
mixed up about these results and think, oh, it shows that I have this bad ratio and that means I
need to do something specific about my health. And this is really off the mark, unfortunately. And
the reason is, is that the study of the microbiome and sort of what's ordinary and normal is very
much in its infancy, and we really, really don't know what these results really mean or indicate.
There's been no really clear correlation. There's been some suggestions and studies
and things that it looks like are correlated. The most famous example is certain ratios
of the Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes groups of bacteria are supposed to correlate with obesity,
and so obese people are supposed to have a different ratio than people who are not obese.
So there is some correlation, but correlation is not causation, and we can't necessarily make
these conclusions yet. And so, basically what this tells me is you have a unique
blend of microbiome in your gut, and that's about all we can say from this.
Unless some of these bacteria are all wildly overgrown and out of range,
I'm not going to put too much value in this particular section of the test. It just might tell
me that you have a little bit of imbalance that we maybe need to nudge in the right direction,
and that certainly doesn't require really strong antimicrobial protocols or antibiotics.
Now on the next page we have a bacterial section that's a little bit more of a gray area.
So it's a section of bacteria that are supposed to be dysbiotic bacteria. So when they turn up,
they tend to indicate that there's some sort of dysbiosis, or they're known to
be auto immune triggers or other potential triggers of further health problems. And so,
when I see some of these out of balance, again, maybe they need some more aggressive attention,
but usually there's a lot that we can do with your health before we get to the point where we're
subjecting ourselves to antimicrobial protocols. So just for an example, changing your diet
can actually provide a really radical shift in your microbiome within just a couple of weeks.
And also, regular courses of probiotics can also have the same effect. So again,
out of balance results on this section of tests are not a cause for panic or concern.
It's just an opportunity to say, okay, my guts not looking great. Let's start with
the low-hanging fruit, see how far we get. And if we still have a problem, then we can consider
moving on to a more aggressive approach with the help of your health care provider.
And one really key thing that I want to just point out, which is becoming a lot more clear to me
as I work with people who have SIBO and other things like this, is that your symptoms don't
necessarily correlate with what we see on this piece of paper. Sometimes it does. But sometimes
dropping the amount of overgrown bacteria doesn't really resolve your symptoms. It may be that the
cause of those symptoms has nothing whatsoever to do with the bacteria. So this just, again,
reminds us that we always need to just keep backing up our approach to focusing on the basics,
getting clear about what makes our symptoms better and worse, whether that's food, whether that's our
sleep habits, whether that's our exercise habits, whether that's probiotics or whatever. So it's
really important that we have this perspective and not just randomly grab at what we consider to
be a possible silver bullet solution that really doesn't have anything necessarily to recommend it.
And finally, at the bottom of the test there's a number of digestive health markers that
can be quite useful for you if you have chronic digestive problems. The first pair are elastase
and steatocrit. Steatocrit is testing for fecal fat, so that's undigested fat in your stool.
If steatocrit is elevated, this can indicate that you have a condition called bile acid
malabsorption. And then elastase, if it's low, indicates a condition called exocrine
pancreatic insufficiency. And so in both of these cases, there are parts of your food that are
not being broken down properly for different reasons and they can cause chronic diarrhea.
So these values can be kind of interesting or useful for you if you're someone who has really
chronic diarrhea. This can give you some good information that you can take to your doctor, and
luckily there are some really effective treatments for these conditions that can really help people
clear these problems. Beta glucuronidase is a marker that's supposed
to correlate with bacterial activity, and so it sounds like that could be useful. But it seems
like it really hasn't been very well validated, and there's a lot of different things that can
alter the value of this number. So things as simple as just being a man versus a woman, or how
much you exercise or whatnot. So it's definitely a value that should be taken with a grain of salt.
The next number is the occult blood. And if you have an elevation in this number,
it's absolutely a time to run and not walk to go see your doctor.
Blood in the stool can be a very serious side effect of some
other more serious gut conditions. So definitely talk to your doctor if that number is elevated.
And now the IgA numbers. So secretory IGA, or sIgA, is the mucus layer immune system that is
a normal part of our gut physiology, and it's a really, really important part of our immune
system. And the theory has it that an elevated level of secretory IgA is something that happens
when you have a more acute gastrointestinal problem. And then a low value is said to indicate
someone who's had a long-term chronic gut problem, and the secretory IgA has over time
just been sort of depleted and worn down. On the other hand, these lab values, again,
haven't been very well validated scientifically, so they're maybe potentially interesting,
but don't take them terribly, terribly seriously. And the anti-gliadin IgA is supposed to indicate
that you're being exposed to gluten. And so sometimes people who are trying to do
a gluten-free diet are using this number as a reference point for how their diet is going.
I've typically seen these values over 100, even for people who are on very, very strict
gluten-free diet. So I'm not really sure that this number really correlates well with
actual gluten exposure, unless it's very, very high and out of range.
And then finally, calprotectin is a more standard and traditional lab marker that's supposed to
correlate with inflammatory bowel syndrome. So if you have an elevated number for calprotectin,
this is also a time when you should definitely make an appointment to talk to your doctor.
So what does all this mean? Well, again, if you have any of the things that seem
like more serious medical concerns, so these would be pathogenic bacteria,
H pylori infection, an elevated calprotectin, occult blood in your stool, you definitely want
to go make an appointment with your doctor. But with the ordinary bacteria and the potential
autoimmune trigger, potential dysbiotic bacteria, these results really just mean that first we need
to pay some really good attention to your diet, and lifestyle and things like probiotics and see
if we can get a shift in your symptoms and some of these numbers that way. And if not,
only then are you going to go move ahead to a more aggressive antimicrobial protocol.
Have you ever run a GI MAP test? What did yours tell you? Tell me about it in the comments.
So that's how to interpret a GI MAP Stool Test. Get the information, but don't panic.
Get help from a doctor if you need. And then pay attention to your basic health foundations with
your diet and your lifestyle piece to lay the groundwork for improving your overall health.
If you're not sure how to do the basic digestive support, there's two main ways I can help you.
The first is you can download my free guide, The Roadmap to Gut Recovery.
In that guide I give you the step-by-step process that I use with all of my clients,
and that is the basic process for getting some of these foundational steps in place to improve
your digestion. You can download your free copy of that by visiting confluencenutrition.com/roadmap,
and I'll leave a link for that below this video. Or if you've already tried a lot and you're left
feeling kind of confused about what's next or how you should proceed or sequence things
for yourself, I'm an expert at helping people sift through all of these confusing details and
helping you come up with a doable plan. If you want to learn more about working
one-on-one with me, you can make yourself a free 30-minute assessment session with me,
and then in that session we can talk about what's going on for you, whether I can help you
or not and whether you'd like to move forward working with me. You can make that appointment by
visiting confluencenutrition.com/contact, and I'll leave a link for that below this video as well.
So I hope this video helped you feel confident about interpreting your GI MAP results and helps
you understand that you don't need to panic about things on it. It's just really one more piece of
information for moving your case forward. If you like this video, please click like and consider
sharing it, and also consider subscribing. And I will be sure to see you next time. Take care.