Bloating

Constipation

Diarrhea

Nausea

Have l gut your attention! The above are common symptoms l hear in clinic daily and the point is they are symptoms and to avoid these recurring we need to get to the source of the problem. When it comes to our health you will hear me say how important it is that we “test, don’t guess”. Considering all disease starts in the gut, and so too does all health, we absolutely must understand and optimise our microbiome to thrive.

Your gut microbiome should look like a flourishing rainforest with beautiful soil, sun, rain, canopies, animals, flowers you get the picture a lot of diversity. When looked after, in return your microbiome gives you optimal health and vitality, a boost in immune system function, improvement in mood, it synthesises important vitamins and assists with waste elimination creating a healthy digestive system.

How do we know if our gut microbiome looks like a rainforest or overgrown with weeds?

Through comprehensive microbiome testing we eliminate the guess work this allows us to see what your personal gut microbiome looks like, the diversity and most important what job these microbes do to promote health or reduce health. And through comprehensive questions and note taking for every individual client.

Microbial diversity is the key to a healthy, resilient gut, improving your diet is one of the most important steps to addressing your gut health. This may be a matter of removing inflammatory foods, foods that create inflammation and irritation, increasing dietary fibre, fibre is food for our microbes and without we lose our gut diversity.

For change to happen change needs to be made.

Dietary changes – Your practitioner will be able to provide you with dietary suggestions around what types of food will encourage the growth of beneficial bacteria.

Improving Stress response – Unmanaged stress can lead to the stress hormone cortisol being released causing inflammation

Alcohol intake – Causes inflammation in the GIT effecting diversity and allowing non-beneficial bacteria to increase.

Exercise – Keep moving, a sedentary lifestyle has been shown to effect diversity, moderate exercise has been shown to increase inflammation.

Sleep – aim for 7-8hrs sleep a night this is a time of repair.

Antibiotics and other medications – These can disrupt your microbiome causing inflammation, digestive problems and allowing pathogens to be overgrown which can reduce health.

Environmental toxins – The world we live in today has a big effect on our gut microbiome including what we eat, drink and what we put on our largest organ our skin.

What do I need to do?

Your Practitioner will provide you with a MetaBiome™ Microbiome Sampling Kit and provide you with further information. You will also be emailed some simple questionnaires around your diet and lifestyle for you to complete.