Hospitals

A swab of poo is just part of understanding your gut microbes

Many people are talking about and researching how the microbes in your gut can affect […]

Many people are talking about and researching how the microbes in your gut can affect your health and even your mental stability. If we really want to understand how they relate to disease, there needs to be a genetic census, but that’s not all. This is why the American Gut Project isn’t just taking stool swabs, they are asking enough questions that should get you qualified for a new credit card or a passport renewal.

In a four-part series for NPR, freelance health and science writer Katherine Harmon Courage is documenting her experience taking part in the project. She’s not alone though, her husband, mom and dog have joined her.

A lot of the questions in the 8-page pack that must be answered include things like where you were born, your race – some health questions like do you have asthma or have you had your appendix removed. But the challenging part is keeping a record of what you are eating. For Courage, she didn’t struggle with recalling what she had for breakfast, but she wondered if some of the missing details (like whether her toast was made with regular, whole or sprouted grains) could change the accuracy of the data and the results.

I asked Rob Knight, at the University of Colorado, Boulder and one of the leaders on the American Gut Project, if there were a million other questions he would like to ask study participants. Had he wondered if skipping details would mean he was going to miss some potentially big lessons about diet and gut health later.

But he had a pragmatic outlook. For now, he said, It’s about opening the project to as large a population as possible, not gathering every possible piece of data. A 30-page questionnaire might turn up a few more correlations, but it would undoubtedly deter people, too.

The obviously awkward part of this process is the actually swabbing. Knight told Courage that it’s important to avoid having too much actually…stuff on the swab. Just a quick swipe of some used toilet paper can give them the full picture of what’s going on in your gut. She will find out what her (and her dog’s) microbe big picture looks like soon after it’s analyzed at the American Gut Project’s lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

(The most recent piece posted for NPR is part two in the series.)

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