Mind your microbiome - gut bacteria after illness

After a lovely bout of stomach flu raced its way through our house, I started noticing some of those tell tale signs of clostridia in my son. Short fuse, no patience, high frustration level, elevated anger response, yes something was going on. We sent in Organic Acids Test (OAT) and the brand new GPL-TOX tests for us all. More on the TOX test in a later blog.

Well, the results were as expected, elevated HPHPA, a sign of clostridia. Luckily we know what to do and are on that path but I started to wonder, what had happened? We had a good year and a half since we had any clostridia / yeast flares. And then it dawned on me, the stomach flu. Nothing disrupts the microbiome quite like that little gem. And while we started immediately back on probiotics, the damage had been done. Had I not done testing, I would not have known our current probiotic regime was woefully inadequate and needed bumping. Yes, the behavior symptoms told me something was going on but my lab test really validated that and drove my treatment protocol. This is a great reminder that lab testing is not a "one and done" thing. If you don't test periodically, how do you really know what is going on?

And speaking of testing, I will be doing a webinar for The Great Plains Laboratory on lab testing from a parent's perspective December 16th. I will post a link to register (it will be FREE) and feel free to post questions or message me if you have things you would like to see covered. Parents are in a unique position to really use lab testing to make changes that can be impactful for their child's, and their own, health. But, lab testing can be confusing and I would like to help make it less so.

So, again, remember that illness can severely disrupt the microbiome and often after an illness can be a good time to retest, especially something like an OAT when you want to get a good assessment of gut function.