Nutritional therapy often involves diagnostic testing to help us figure out what’s going wrong with our clients. Diagnostics may include stool tests, adrenal stress tests, hormone tests like thyroid, urine, bone resorption…the list goes on. They are a very useful component to any NT protocol.

I have been reviewing and studying the GI-MAP stool based test from Invivo Healthcare in the UK recently.

Here’s a quick overview.

This is a very comprehensive test analysing the 9 areas noted above but measuring nearly 90 individual markers.

It can advise on the presence of all sorts of lovely things like

• pathogenic harmful bacteria
• the wonderful and often problematic H .Pylori bacteria
• the current state of your good or commensal bacteria
• any fungi or yeast infections like Candida
• ever popular viruses like the Ebstein Barr Virus which is part of the herpes family
• hard to think about parasites like worms
• the health of your digestion process
• gut imbalances or dysbiosis
• your immune response markers
• inflammation levels
• antiobiotic resistant genes

It uses DNA analysis on a single stool sample captured by the client which is sent off via Fedex to a lab based in the U.S. You can expect results in 7 -10 working days and with a cost price of around €400, it ain’t cheap but it is comprehensive enough to allow a solid protocol to be built around the results.

A growing number of NT’s are adopting a “test first, protocol second” approach these days which I believe is a good sensible approach to take but it always always comes down to the client in front of you and whether that approach works for them.

There is no one size fits all but it is really interesting to start learning about the different diagnostic tests that exist out there, how to order them, interpret the results and form solution based protocols from them.

Yours in health and happiness,

JP