Gut Health Test with Microbiome Wipe
At-home collection. Meaningful insights. Personalized plan.
Gut health is a foundation for wellness. Thorne’s Gut Health Test provides a detailed analysis and a personalized plan that targets your GI discomfort to optimize wellness. Learn how to create meaningful changes in your gut’s microbiome with the combination of cutting-edge sequencing and patent-pending wipe technology that makes the sample collection process simple.
What is reported
Intestinal Permeability • Stool
Understand your personal risk for how easily particles can pass through your intestinal wall based on your microbiome composition.
Intestinal Permeability Score
Gut Dysbiosis • Stool
Measures the presence of any dysbiosis – an imbalance in the bacteria in the gut. An optimal balance of gut bacteria is associated with health, wellness, and a reduced risk of various disease conditions.
Good BacteriaBad BacteriaConditional BacteriaProbiotics
Digestion • Stool
Learn how your age, prescription medications, over-the-counter products, surgery, injuries, and various lifestyle factors can impact your digestive capabilities.
Digestion Score
Inflammation • Stool
Understand your personal risk for inflammation and patterns of inflammatory activity.
Inflammation Score
Enteric Nervous System Imbalance • Stool
Learn how your bacterial makeup impacts the real-time communication between your gut and brain and how it affects your autonomic and central nervous systems, nutrient metabolism, sleep, mood, food cravings, stress levels, and more.
Nervous System Imbalance Score
Diversity • Stool
The quality and the quantity of the microbes in your gut influence multiple metrics of health, weight, and metabolism, as well as your personal risk for disease. Your Beta-Diversity score compares your microbiome to the healthy microbiomes of others.
Beta-Diversity
Micronutrients • Stool
This is the score associated with your gut’s capability to produce folate (vitamin B9), vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and niacin (vitamin B3) based on the makeup of your microbiome.
NiacinB6FolateB12
Short-Chain Fatty Acids • Stool
Short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) help maintain a normal level of inflammation in the gut, while also supporting the gut’s immune function. Your score reflects the capability of your gut to produce SCFA based on your gut’s microbial composition.
ButyrateLactatePropionateValerate
Immune Readiness • Stool
Your gut’s microbial composition plays a key role in keeping you healthy when you are confronted with immune stressors. Your score is derived from an advanced proprietary equation.
Immune Score
Pathogens • Stool
Pathogens in the air, food, and drinking water can cause immediate and undesirable symptoms. Your sample is screened for 11 undesirable pathogens, including viruses and parasites.
How it works
1 • Order and Activate
When your purchase is complete, everything you need for your at-home test will be delivered to your door. Use the activation code on the back of the test kit to activate your test online at Thorne.com and then complete your health profile.
2 • Collect Sample and Send
Following the directions included in the test kit, complete your sample collection in the comfort of your home. Then use the prepaid shipper to mail your sample directly to the lab.
3 • Receive Results and Recommendations
Your results are reviewed by an independent, board-certified physician. Within 5-6 weeks you will receive your personalized results with meaningful insights and recommendations to improve your health and wellness.
Potential Indicators
The Gut Health Test identifies and quantifies bacteria, viruses, fungi, yeast, archaea, and parasites from a small stool sample that provides an unparalleled analysis of the composition of your microbiome.
The test can benefit individuals who are experiencing GI issues such as:
IBS
Diarrhea
Constipation
Gas
Bloating
Cramping
Abdominal pain
Nausea
Heartburn
The test is useful for individuals who are looking to optimize gut health for:
Athletic performance
Recovery
Immune function
Biohacking
Full-body health
Mood/Brain Health
Gut Health 101
Why is Gut Health important?
The gut microbiome is the internal environment of the GI tract in which tens of trillions of microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi, archaea, and viruses all live together. And while the gut microbiome is influenced by demographic factors like age, genetics, and where a person lives, the gut microbiome’s composition is also greatly impacted by what comes into it at its entrance and what eventually exits it. Because the GI tract plays such a key role in multiple bodily functions, including digestion, vitamin synthesis, neurotransmitter support, and immune function, it’s important to keep this intricate system in balance to maintain the optimal function of these vital processes.
Thorne’s Gut Health Test takes a deep dive into your gut health and provides personalized recommendations for lifestyle, diet, and nutritional supplementation based on your unique gut biome composition.
NEW: A Novel Wipe for Easy Sample Collection
At Thorne, the cutting-edge technology we use has enabled us to introduce a new microbiome wipe that gently collects a stool sample with less fuss and mess. This one-of-a-kind wipe makes the collection process as simple as your regular bathroom routine. To improve the user experience of stool collection, the sample collection kit includes a dissolvable wipe in which the sample taken is dissolved in a DNA-stabilizing solution. The solution that contains the biological sample is sent to the sequencing lab in a sealable container.
How the measured microbes impact your health
Thorne’s Gut Health Test is sequenced using “whole genome shotgun sequencing,” which uses next-generation metagenomic sequencing that identifies and measures the DNA of every microorganism present in the stool sample, thus providing a detailed analysis of your gut’s health.
The test focuses on five foundational gut-health pillars that have been designated as such by the Institute for Functional Medicine:
Intestinal Permeability
Intestinal permeability is the measure of what types of material pass through your intestinal wall and how easily they do it. If the cells in the gut’s walls lose their “tight junctions,” then the gut becomes more permeable and allows more bacteria and toxins to pass from your gut into your bloodstream. The measure of your gut’s permeability will help you understand your risk for “leaky gut” based on the microorganisms present in your gut that can cause dysbiosis, or structural damage to the GI lining, or changes in regulation and signaling mechanisms.
Gut Dysbiosis
An optimal balance of the bacteria in your gut has a positive effect on your overall wellness. When the bacteria are not in balance, a condition known as dysbiosis, you can begin to experience undesirable GI symptoms. The Gut Health Test analyzes the balance of the good, bad, and conditional bacteria levels present in your gut and their research-backed associations to health, wellness, and disease conditions.
Digestion
Proper digestive health facilitates your body’s optimal absorption of nutrients. Age, prescription medications, over-the-counter products, surgery, and injuries can adversely impact your digestive capabilities. Learn whether your microbiome is populated with the right types of bacteria and in the right quantities to properly support the digestion of the food you eat. Poor digestion leads to undesirable symptoms like gas, bloating, diarrhea, and constipation.
Inflammation
An imbalanced gut biome can cause inflammation in the entire body. Understand your risk for inflammation and patterns of inflammatory activity based on the microorganisms that are present in your gut and their effects on whole-body inflammation.
Nervous System
An imbalanced your gut biome can adversely affect your enteric nervous system – your “gut-brain axis” – which can adversely impact mental capacity, cognitive function, and mood. Learn how your bacterial makeup influences the real-time communication between your gut and your brain, which impacts your autonomic and central nervous systems, nutrient metabolism, sleep, mood, food cravings, stress levels, and more.
In addition to the five foundational gut pillars, the Gut Health Test measures these other key indicators of your gut’s health:
Pathogens
Your sample is screened for the bacteria, viruses, and parasites that can cause adverse GI symptoms or disease conditions.
Total Fungi
Learn if your gut has a normal level of fungi present or if you are at risk for developing a fungal overgrowth.
Short-Chain Fatty Acids
This measure analyzes the bacteria and genes that regulate your gut’s production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). Your gut’s capability to produce the SCFAs is important for helping to maintain normal inflammation and immune function.
Diversity
Know the quantity and the quality of the various species that inhabit your gut. A lower beta diversity score indicates that the bacterial population of your gut is similar to others who have a healthy gut.
Probiotics
Review a quantitative analysis of your current probiotic levels and receive a list of commercially available probiotics to guide your supplementation choices or to help determine if your current probiotic supplementation is working for you.
Micronutrients
Learn your gut’s capability to produce B vitamins based on the abundance of B vitamin-producing bacteria present. B vitamins are essential for energy production, metabolism, blood cell production, immune function, and more.
Immune Readiness
Know your body’s readiness for an optimal immune response to foreign pathogens – bacteria, parasites, and viruses – based on your microbiome’s ecosystem.