In nearly any conversation about the U.S. healthcare system, youâll sense a growing frustration about things like long wait times for appointments, sky-high prescription drug costs, and a lack of focus on preventative care. Itâs easy to feel a bit disillusionedâto want to find relief for those nagging symptoms without having a provider tell you that all of your tests came back normal.
This is especially true for hard-to-diagnose issues like gastrointestinal problems. Many people eager for solutions have turned to at-home solutions like gut microbiome tests. Running from $120 to upwards of $350, these kits often use a self-collected stool sample and/or DNA sequencing to provide a detailed analysis of what microbial species are in your gut. Some offer personalized plans based on your results, while others offer diagnostic tools like a gut inflammation analysis to see if you could have irritable bowel syndrome or IBS.
âIn the last few years, there has really been an explosion of interest in the microbiome,â says Adam Perlman, MD, former medical director of Mayo Clinic and the chief medical officer of Pendulum Therapeutics, a probiotics company. However, a consideration is that the medical world still understands how the microbiome functions. âItâs like the new frontier of medicine,â he says. âItâs still an area that needs more science, and many conventional physicians still don’t feel very comfortable with it.â
The medical world is certain about one thing though: The microbiome is essential for overall health. It is âvery involved in things like brain health, cardiovascular health, endocrine health, and on and on,â says Maya Feller, a registered dietician who works in nutrition education and counseling. Dr. Perlman says it also communicates with our immune system, affects processes like digestion, and can potentially influence our mental health. These links are due to the trillions of microbial inhabitants that call our gut homeâeverything from good bugs to bad bugs to dead bugs, says Fellerâincluding bacteria, viruses, and other organisms. âWe want an abundance of good bugs because thatâs what actually helps to have these outward conversations with various parts of the body,â she says.
But the issue is that scientists donât really know what a âhealthyâ microbiome looks like. Even people with good gut health have vastly different microbiomes, so while we might know that a certain microbe is generally âgood,â itâs hard to pinpoint how it will interact within an individualâs system. That makes any actionable advice quite difficult, even if the data that these tests provide is accurate.
Another problem is that microbiome tests capture a snapshot of what your gut looks like at that given moment. According to Perlman, many factors, like our diet, environment, genetics, and even circadian rhythm, can affect what microbes we host. âWhat’s happening in the gut is heavily influenced by what you eat,â says Feller. âSo if you’re eating outside of your normal and you take a test like this, the results may or may not be meaningful, right?â And your microbiome can change within a matter of days, says Perlman, and even quicker if youâve taken antibiotics, which can cause dramatic changes nearly overnight.