During my whole SIBO journey I did two stool tests to see what the heck was going on in my colon and I know all of you are curious about that too.   The tests I did so far were the Genova GI Effects Stool Profiles which are not cheap but were useful since the one in Sept 2014 identified the fact that I had a blastocystis homins infection, a moderate imbalance with too many pathogenic bacteria, too few beneficial bacteria and too low of levels of butyrate and short chain fatty acids (SCFAs).   I had almost no Lactobacillus or Bifido species and way too much m.smithii, e.coli, and a few other nasty critters.

After treating SIBO for another 8 months, staying on a Low FODMAP diet and treating the blasto I retested in Sept of 2015.  Things got better and worse.  On the plus side my blasto infection was gone, the pathogenic bacteria were lowered and I now had plenty of lactobacillus and bifida species.   Due to the several years of Low FODMAP eating though my butyrate and SCFA levels were worse, in the red zone and I still had way too much m.smithii to deal with.

Now I’ve been increasing my pre-biotics, probiotics, fermented foods and FODMAP levels over the last few months since this test was taken and wanted to be able to track changes in the microbiome w/o having to spend a ton of money on more Genova testing.   UBiome came to the rescue with a big sale at Halloween.  I bought the Gut Time-Lapse kit which gives me three kits to test over time so my plan is to test every 2 months for the next 6 months to see what is happening with the microbiome as my diet has filled out and I’m getting more fiber for the good critters to eat.  My hope is that the m.smithii will get crowded out somewhat by better bacteria, my diversity which is still low will rise and that the butryate/SCFA imbalance will improve.  Granted I will probably need to redo a Genova test at the end of the six months to test that but I can still tell a lot from the $99 spent at UBiome.com instead of spending another $500 right now on the Genova test.  So tomorrow I’ll be swabbing my poop and starting the process, should be able to report back in a few weeks so stay tuned.