What is GUT DYSBIOSIS I hear you ask? Good question!

Dysbiosis meaning - “an imbalance between the types of organisms present in a person's natural microflora, especially that of the gut, thought to contribute to a range of conditions of ill health”. Oxford Dictionary.

Put simply, our gut bugs include bad bacteria and they can overgrow in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) in the large intestine, and they can move into the small intestine (SIBO) where we really don’t want them to be. They can also wreak havoc in the stomach - hello helicobactor pylori (save for another time!).

When this happens we don’t have enough of the good guys to balance them out. And it’s here that our body reaches a state called dysbiosis.

They produce all kinds of irritable and horrible gut symptoms.

Bloating. Pain. Reflux. Nausea. Constipation. Diarrhrea. Or both!

They make you feel uncomfortable or worse hold you hostage in your home as you try to get out the door in the morning - wanting never to be far from a toilet...just in case!

But they don’t stop their trail of destruction there. They can lead to systemic, chronic health conditions and disease like allergies and autoimmune conditions. They can have quite the impact on our energy, weight, immune system and mental health over time.

We want them in the right balance but overuse of antibiotics, other medications like antacids, alcohol, lack of fibre, water and generally eating a crappy diet high in processed foods can all disrupt the balance and leave us susceptible to dysbiosis and pathogenic infections - queue parasites! And don't they all just love the sugar!! They’ll be having a nice little party in there at your expense.

The moral of story is that we want plenty of the good guys to keep our bad guys in check and our gut functioning well BUT throwing down probiotics is not necessarily the first step when you have dysbiosis - depends what’s going on.

Thankfully there are functional tests available that can look for all these things - the good, the bad and the downright ugly 🐛🐛🐛. I work with these kinds of tests all the time in clinic to pinpoint what's going on in order to get to the root cause of your symptoms.

If your gut is giving you grief and you don’t know where to start or maybe you’ve been told you have IBS and been left to go on your merry way, get in touch. We can have a chat and see how I can help you.