Darshit Patel
Often people face issues with bloating, constipation, or pain; it’s the toll of lifestyle that affects the gut and overall health. The complaint mainly revolves around the question, “Even if I eat healthily why does nothing work?”
For a healthy body full of ‘good’ microbiota, you may need to do a lot more than eat just a probiotic yogurt or consume a high-fiber diet. You need to understand the inhabitants of your gut, and their roles. And make choices suiting your needs. The at-home microbiome testing kits provide an insight into your microbiome and could possibly provide a link between symptoms, diet, lifestyle and how to improve.
Direct-to-consumer tests are more than just filling a form, sending in a stool sample, paying a fee, and getting the results in two to three weeks. Some companies even offer nutritional recommendations and foods that are good for you based on your data and gut composition. With decades of research, we are making progress but are still limited in diagnosis/prognosis and promise to cure or treat any diseases.
Although still in its infancy, gut microbiome testing, is ahead of its time and needs careful treading when presenting the expectations to the consumers. Gut microbiome tests are empowering individuals to learn more and take control of their health.
Choosing the Right Test
Your metabolism is influenced more by your microbiome than your own DNA. The behaviour of your gut microbes is shaped by diet, lifestyle, location, stress, and more. Currently we have a link between microbial species, their abundance and possible health implications.
The Technologic Approach
First things first, there is a high difference between 2 words: “Microbiota and Microbiome”. It is very important that we understand these words. Spoiler alert: Understanding these meanings will help you choose the right test for yourself. So, Microbiota is basically the collection of species that resides in an environment (in this case, your gut). Whereas Microbiome means collection genes in present in an environment (again, in this case, your gut). The difference between the two is all about the resolution of the data and about how microscopically we are looking at. While a species (or an individual bacteria) has an array of things it can do, it is difficult to tell its potential in carrying out a particular function, while looking at the genes of these species tell us about which function they are most skilled at.
Let’s take the example of a lady called Maria. If Maria investigated through a microbiota-based approach, the information we could collect about her would be following Maria is a mother, a badminton player as a hobby, and a scientist. Although, when we investigate Maria using a microbiome approach, we would get following information about her: Maria’s efficiency as a mother is 5/5, her domain and skill as a Cell biology scientist is 4/5, and her level as a badminton player is 3/5. Basically, we get to know about which thing Maria is most skilled at doing.
What major companies, or our knowledge of the microbiome falls short of is addressing the black box shown above. The traditional, 16s rRNA gene sequencing remains an invaluable tool for microbiome research due to its cost-effectiveness and ability to provide high-level bacterial community profiling. However, its limited taxonomic resolution and lack of functional insights are significant drawbacks. Metagenomics offers a more comprehensive analysis, including functional potential, metabolic pathways, and understanding microbial interactions, providing detailed insights into the diversity and functions of all microorganisms in a sample.
The Promised Results
When talking about the microbiome, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The gut is home to trillions of microbes, and you need them to survive. With the help of a gut microbiome test, you understand the good, the bad and the neutral, ie the probiotics, pathogens and the commensals as well as their role in your health.
With traditional tests, we could only identify a handful of microbes, but the problem is many microbes can’t be detected there. Which is why microbiome testing brings a new avenue into looking at these microbes that we earlier couldn’t detect. For the first time we can know what is living inside us, and if something must be added in terms of probiotics or nutrition, we can make an informed choice.
We eat poorly, sleep insufficiently, and feel worse. Why? Our gut microbes thrive on our diet, producing SCFAs, neurotransmitters, and vitamins that directly impact our health. SCFAs nourish gut cells, regulate blood sugar, and influence weight control and inflammation. The gut-brain axis, a bidirectional communication system, links gut health to overall well-being. With 60% of serotonin produced in the gut, it’s not just about sleep and stress—gut function is crucial too. The results should provide a comprehensive result covering all aspects of gut residents and function.
What Solutions will I get?
Knowing is just the beginning; acting is essential. Microbiome really tells us about molecular interaction of the food and its metabolism, which brings us closer to precision nutrition recommendation and personalised probiotics. A lot of research on dietary types, food items, and lifestyle has been done on its effect on microbiome, and it has been observed that dietary habits like the Mediterranean diet have really shown positive results on the microbiome. Personalised probiotics are the way to go. These solutions are close, yet too far……personalisation requires a data driven approach integrated with consultations and lifestyle factors. Small changes, inclusions, and exclusions can have a major impact on maintaining a healthy microbiome- which is adaptable and resilient, crucial for health and longevity.
Darshit Patel, CSO and Co-founder of Decode Age
