Challenges

Your gut and your brain communicate throughout the day. And the trillions of tiny bacteria, viruses and fungi living in your digestive tract — known as your gut microbiome — may influence your mood, cognition and more, according to recent research. Knowing this might lead you to wonder: How healthy is my microbiome? Is there a way to check?
It’s not common for healthcare providers to test their patients’ microbiomes. A doctor might order a stool test to check for infections if a patient comes in with gastrointestinal problems. But these types of diagnostic tests are not intended to give you a comprehensive breakdown of your personal set of microbes.
You won’t be surprised, however, to learn that the Internet offers plenty of options if you have $150 to $400+ to spare. A quick Google search will pull up a dozen or so companies offering at-home microbiome testing kits. They all work roughly the same way: You mail in a stool sample, wait a few weeks, and receive a report detailing the composition of your microbiome. Some even come with recommendations on foods to eat or avoid.
For the average person, are these kits worth the money? “Probably not,” says Chris Damman, M.D., a gastroenterologist at the Digestive Health Center at the University of Washington Medical Center. “I think they can be fun and interesting, but how actionable they are is questionable.”
There are a few reasons for this. For starters, researchers still don’t know what an optimal microbiome looks like — the research isn’t there yet. So while you can find out which microbes are in your gut, you won’t know what the results actually mean. Not to mention that, by the time you get your report, the composition of your microbiome may have changed; it can fluctuate based on what you’ve been eating lately and the medications you take, and even whether you exercised or not during the week of your test.
And although there’s a growing body of scientific evidence pointing to the gut microbiome’s role in human health, it’s still a stretch for a company to claim it can give you customized health guidance based on your test results. “We’re still in the very early days,” Damman says.
The bottom line: Save your money. There’s an easy way to support the health and diversity of your gut microbiome without knowing the who’s who of your own personal microbes: Eat a wide variety of plant foods, exercise and spend time outside.
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