Gut Health – Microba and other tests.

If we took our gut and flattened out all of the tiny folds inside, it would have a surface area the size of half of a badminton court. It is made up of several layers of mucus atop a physical barrier one cell thick. Underneath that cell layer there is a complex net of immune cells, blood vessels and nerve cells, all waiting to interact with what passes though what should be a barrier to everything but beneficial nutrients. When damage happens to that intricate arrangement, the immune system can come in to contact with proteins and other biological chemicals which are not usually able to pass across the gut barrier. This in turn can worsen health conditions, and contribute to inflammation, which then causes the person to develop such symptoms as fatigue, depression and arthritis. This is the condition known colloquially as “leaky gut”, although it’s proper scientific term is “increased intestinal permeability”.

With the advent of the Human Genome an Microbiome Projects and the explosion in the availability of DNA sequencing technologies, we no longer have to guess what is happening in the bowel.

More and more people are being disabled by symptoms of chronic abdominal pain, bloating, constipation and diarrhoea. While these symptoms often do change with a change in diet, sometimes they fail to respond completely. Other issues, such as skin and autoimmune conditions, often also improve as gut function improves.

Dr Barbara has experience ordering and interpreting tests of gut function from Integrative Laboratories, such as Doctor’s Data and The Great Plains Laboratory. Of recent times, she has been very happy to move across some of her testing to Microba, a Brisbane- based biotechnology company which is able to test the DNA in the tiniest of stool (poo) samples to give a comprehensive report of what is really going on in the bowel. One of the features of this test is that it can report on the stool microbe’s ability to make both helpful and harmful biological chemicals, and so comment on the stool microbial population’s capacity to influence inflammation, mood and other health issues.

In turn, the testing can then help identify appropriate changes to the diet, and sometimes supplementation with prebiotics and/or probiotics, in order to restore the bowel microbial population to a diverse, healthy community. The first step toward healing the gut is to avoid the foods which cause gut damage, and to eat foods which encourage the growth of beneficial gut organisms.

You may remember this being featured on the ABC television series “Catalyst”.

Testing from the Integrative Laboratories is not available on Medicare.

References:

1. The Human Microbiome Project Consortium (2012) Structure, function and diversity of the healthy human microbiome Nature volume 486, pages 207–214 (14 June 2012)

1. E., Molteni, L., Radaelli, M.G. et al. Diabetologia (2006) Increased intestinal permeability precedes clinical onset of type 1 diabetes 49: 2824. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00125-006-0465-3

2. Fukui H. (2016). Increased Intestinal Permeability and Decreased Barrier Function: Does It Really Influence the Risk of Inflammation?. Inflammatory intestinal diseases, 1(3), 135–145. doi:10.1159/000447252

3. Marion-Letellier, R., Amamou, A., Savoye, G., & Ghosh, S. (2019). Inflammatory Bowel Diseases and Food Additives: To Add Fuel on the Flames!. Nutrients, 11(5), 1111. doi:10.3390/nu11051111