Greetings, Eric Bakker, New Zealand MetroPet, thanks for coming back.
We're going to talk about stool testing.
So, question is for this video: How do I know if I need a comprehensive stool test?
Well, you will know you need a comprehensive stool test if you've been unwell for a long
time and no one can seem to help you.
You know you need a comprehensive stool test if you're taking 10, 20, 30 dietary supplements.
Taking all sorts of pills, prescribed pills, or pills from iHerb, or Amazon, or the health
food store, or wherever you're buying them from.
You've been to many different people, everyone's giving you different advice, some of it's
conflicting, some of it's not conflicting.
You're just not getting anywhere, you're going in circles.
Some days you feel better, some days you feel worse.
The weeks are going by, and the months are going by, and the years are going by but you're
still not improving.
This is one reason why you want to do a functional medicine test.
Because you don't want to waste your money on a test that you don't need.
Many people do tests like the organic acids test, for example.
They will do that one.
They will do food allergy testing, blood testing.
They'll do all kinds of urine testing to determine different kinds of hormones, for example.
Some people I see will do 10 tests and then bring me all the results.
What a waste of time and money.
Completely crazy, you know?
You just don't do things like that.
Functional testing's expensive.
It's very expensive, so don't waste your money.
A comprehensive stool tests is one of the best test you could do as a beginning test
when you're chronically unwell.
Or, if you've been on a course of medical treatment and you haven't been well since.
Then it's time to do a comprehensive stool test.
So, let's just recap on that.
Don't waste your money on a whole bunch of tests.
A comprehensive stool analysis is generally the Rolls Royce of tests because you get so
much useful information from one test, more than you would get from many.
Tests like the organic acids test are great tests to determine a whole lot of different
biochemical pathways in the body.
But in my opinion, they're not a great test to do up front.
They're tests I would tend to do after I have a stool test, after I've got the bacteria
back in it's place, I've got some semblance of balance in the gut.
We've killed parasites, we've got rid of some yeasts or some bad bacteria, we brought the
beneficial bacteria up, we've reduced some inflammatory markers.
So we've done a lot of good work, then we can follow up with the tests, like an organic
acids test.
Even doing a hair analysis is a crazy idea in my opinion up front.
Hair analysis going to give you a lot of useful information, but the gut, to me, is the heart
and soul of the human being.
If you get that gut working really, really well, it's going to create a lot of well being
for the body and improve a lot of other test outcomes.
So by doing a hair analysis as a first testis not generally a smart idea.
So I think this is one of the best tests to do is a primary, as a first test, as a determination,
what the heck is going on in the body.
And to base protocol around that, which generally involves diet and lifestyle changes, and maybe
some supplements.
So those are involved as an outcome of the comprehensive stool analysis.
So, as I say to patients, "When you build a house, you start with the foundation.
You don't generally hang curtains up in the house before you've got the concrete slab
down and the plumbing.
You do that usually first.
You get the plans drawn, get the foundation down, build a superstructure on top of that
foundation."
The stool test is the foundation.
Get that right, get the gut right, and then start building other things on top of that
to build a very powerful structure called the human body.
So that's my take on it.
You know, that's why you know you need a stool test if you can't get answers from anybody,
if you spent too much money already, if you've never done a test before but you're wasting
money in other areas.
Now's the time to do this test and to do it properly.
And we're going to talk about that in the next video about how to do the stool test.
So, thanks for tuning in.