We recently received a message from a customer who shared some very positive feedback on our Live Bacteria capsules – since she started taking Live Bacteria, she hasn’t had a single bout of shingles. After suffering from repeated flare-ups in the past, that’s something to celebrate.
However, she also mentioned that she’d recently done one of the popular microbiome tests and was told she was ‘low’ in certain strains of good bacteria. Understandably, this made her question whether taking our probiotics was worth it.
This is where it gets important.
While gut microbiome testing can be helpful in giving you a snapshot of your current gut makeup, it’s exactly that – a snapshot. Your gut microbiome is not a static landscape. It’s a living, changing, incredibly sensitive ecosystem that can be influenced by:
- What you ate last night
- How well you slept
- Stress levels
- Any recent medications
- Hormonal changes
- Travel, illness… the list goes on
As Dr. Emily Leeming puts it:
“Everyone’s gut microbiome is unique, as individual to them as a fingerprint. A single test can’t tell you much, and it definitely can’t grade your gut as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.”
We couldn’t agree more.
At Just For Tummies, we don’t believe in basing your gut health protocol on one single test result. We believe in listening to your symptoms, your story, and your lived experience.
If your symptoms are improving – like not having a shingles outbreak in years – that’s something a test can’t always measure, but it matters.
Many gut issues we see can be traced back to long-forgotten events:
- A childhood illness treated with multiple antibiotics
- A stressful period like divorce or bereavement
- Food poisoning on holiday
- The hormonal shifts of menopause
All of these shape your gut over time. That’s why a one-size-fits-all result from a single stool sample doesn’t reflect the complexity of you.
So please don’t be disheartened by test results that don’t seem to match how you feel. If your body is telling you something is working – trust it.
And if something feels ‘off’? You’ll likely sense it already through your digestion, energy, mood, or sleep. That’s where our team steps in – to guide you through a tailored, symptom-focused approach that works for you, not a generic test result. If you would like to know more about a tailored supplement protocol, please get in touch.
