If you have any of the symptoms of IBS or Crohns, colitis and diverticulitis, it’s safe to say your gut microbiota is unbalanced and unhealthy. With too many “bad” microorganisms (yeast, bacteria, viruses, parasites) and not enough good ones.

But sometimes it’s useful to know exactly what and how your gut flora is unbalanced and that’s where stool testing comes in. The standard medical (on a health care plan) stool test is not thorough enough and so it’s worthwhile to get a comprehensive stool analysis from a reputable diagnostics lab.

In the U.S. you need a doctor (naturopath, homeopath, chiropractor etc.) referral to order the test kit, but you can spearhead this and tell your practitioner what testing you want done. Some of the labs (like Metametrix) have great patient education pages.

Here are three labs that have excellent testing and lab facilities:

Genova Diagnostics

Metametrix

DiagnosTechs

At the Goldberg Clinic, Dr. Paul Goldberg takes the gut microbiota analysis one step further: Once he knows what you are infected with, he has the lab test to see which anti-pathogen agents are effective against your nasties. He has them test substances like: colloidal silver, wild oregano oil, grapefruit seed extract and drug antibiotics.

Genova Diagnostics also provides this ‘antibiotic sensitivity’ testing, but they test with different natural agents – and I like Dr. Goldberg’s sensitivity testing list better!