Your gut map, one marker at a time
A plain-language tour of a stool panel and what each finding changes.
A gut panel looks intimidating and mostly is not. Six markers do the heavy lifting: digestive capacity, inflammation, the immune layer, the good bacteria, the opportunists, and the enzyme that recycles your estrogen.
A stool panel arrives as twelve pages of unfamiliar names and coloured bars, and almost everyone reacts the same way. They scan for anything in red, decide they are full of parasites, and arrive genuinely worried.
Chapter oneWhat a gut panel actually measures
These panels use PCR to count the DNA of what lives in your gut, alongside markers for how well you digest, how inflamed you are, and how your immune layer is holding up.
The counting part is impressive and also the part people over-read. A named organism at a low level is usually a normal resident rather than an invader, and treating every red bar is how people end up worse.
“The value is in the interpretation, not the panel. The same twelve pages produce very different plans.
The value is in the interpretation, not the panel. The same twelve pages produce very different plans.
Chapter twoThe six markers that decide the plan
Of everything on the report, six markers change what we actually do. The rest is context, useful for confirming a picture rather than driving a decision.
This is the part I wish more people knew before they pay for one of these: the value is in interpretation rather than in the panel. The same twelve pages produce very different plans depending on who reads them.
Chapter threeDigestive capacity comes before anything else
Pancreatic elastase tells us whether you are producing enough enzyme to break food down. When it is low, nothing downstream is going to work properly, and that becomes the first target.
Steatocrit tells us about fat digestion, which points at bile. Both of these come before anything aimed at bacteria, because feeding undigested food to a disturbed population makes the population worse. This is the bloating conversation in audio if you prefer.
Chapter fourInflammation and the immune layer
Calprotectin measures inflammation in the gut wall directly, and it is the marker that decides whether we need to involve a gastroenterologist rather than proceeding alone.
Secretory IgA is your gut immune layer. Low means your defences are worn down, often after a long stressful stretch, and high means they are actively fighting something. Both change the order of treatment.
Chapter fiveThe estrogen recycling marker
Beta-glucuronidase is the one nobody expects on a gut panel. It is the enzyme that unpackages estrogen your liver has already prepared for removal, sending it back into circulation.
High readings genuinely explain heavy cycles and breast tenderness, and they are invisible on a blood hormone panel. This is where gut work and hormone work turn out to be the same work.
Chapter sixWhat the first six months look like
The first six months follow a fairly consistent order: digestion first, then inflammation, then rebalancing the population, then rebuilding the lining, then a retest to see what actually moved.
We retest at ninety days for the markers we targeted, and the panel we compare against is your own previous one rather than a textbook, because your baseline is the only fair comparison.
Bring a panel you already had run, even an old one. In half an hour we will know which markers matter for you.
Where this connects
Dr. Nina reads the full panel, connects it to how you actually feel, and builds the plan from there. She sees patients in Atlanta and virtually worldwide.
More about Dr. Nina →The long reads, chaptered so you can take them a piece at a time and come back where you left off.
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