I Talk About Health Every Day. Here’s Mine.
My gut test results, what I changed and why stress became the part I realised I wasn’t paying enough attention to.
At Drips, I spend a lot of time talking to clients about their health.
What their results mean. What’s worth paying attention to. What probably isn’t. And what they can realistically change.
So I thought it was only fair to share a little more about what I actually do for my own health.
I test regularly, and each year I tend to choose one area of my health that I want to understand more deeply.
This year, it was my gut.
This isn't a case study or a perfect before-and-after. It's simply my own experience — what I tested, what came back, what I changed and what I’m still learning from it.
Why I Finally Tested
There was a personal reason for choosing gut health.
Digestive tract cancer runs in my family, and it has always sat somewhere in the back of my mind.
You might assume that being a nurse — and running a business centred around proactive health — would mean I was extremely organised about getting myself checked.
I wasn’t.
I did exactly what I hear from clients all the time.
Work got busy. Life got busy. Nothing felt particularly wrong. Other things seemed more urgent.
So I kept putting it off.
This has also been the biggest year DRIPS has had. We’ve grown the team, expanded what we offer and looked after more clients, while I’m still out on the road seeing clients myself and running everything behind it.
I’m incredibly proud of that.
But growth has weight to it too. More decisions. More people relying on you. More things still sitting in your head at 10pm.
Good stress is still stress. Your body doesn’t grade it.
So earlier this year, I finally did two things.
I spoke to my doctor and was referred for a colonoscopy. I also completed a comprehensive microbiome stool panel through NutriPATH.
They are two very different tests, and I think that's an important distinction.
The colonoscopy was the medical investigation I needed because of my family history. The microbiome test was something I chose to do separately because I wanted a broader look at my gut environment.
What Came Back
The colonoscopy found a small polyp, which was removed and came back reassuring.
There was also an area of inflammation around where the small and large bowel meet.
I’m now booked for routine surveillance in three years.
My gut test gave me a different type of information. Three results particularly caught my attention.
SECRETORY IgA — 108.7
Secretory IgA is an antibody found along mucosal surfaces, including the gastrointestinal tract, and forms part of the gut’s immune defence [1]. My result was well below the laboratory’s minimum reference of 510.
AKKERMANSIA MUCINIPHILA — Not detected
Akkermansia is a bacterium associated with the gut’s protective mucus layer. Mine wasn’t detected at all.
LACTOBACILLUS + BIFIDOBACTERIUM — Low / not detected
Several species from these bacterial families were either low or not detected. They’re commonly associated with maintaining a balanced gut microbiome.
But not everything was off.
My pancreatic elastase — a marker used to assess pancreatic digestive enzyme output — was strong.
And that’s where things became more interesting to me.
A note on testing: A microbiome test and a colonoscopy answer very different questions. My colonoscopy was an appropriate medical investigation because of my family history. I chose microbiome testing separately to look more closely at my gut environment. Microbiome testing does not screen for or diagnose bowel cancer.
The Part I Wasn’t Paying Enough Attention To
Stress.
The gut and brain are in constant communication.
That communication happens through neurological, hormonal and immune pathways, including the vagus nerve and the HPA axis involved in our stress response. Research has associated chronic psychological stress with changes in aspects of gut immunity and the microbiome. [2]
That doesn’t mean I can look at my results and say:
“Stress caused this.”
I can’t.
There are many things that can influence the microbiome, and one stool sample is a snapshot.
But the results did make me look much harder at the year surrounding them.
I was already paying attention to my food, blood markers, testing, supplements and the things I could measure.
What I hadn’t been giving the same weight to was stress.
And when I looked at the year I’d had, that suddenly seemed like quite a big thing to leave sitting at the bottom of the list.
Everything plays a part — including the things we can’t put neatly into a number on a pathology report.
So, What Did I Actually Change?
Food
Food was the easiest place to start.
I’m on the road a lot seeing clients, which means if I haven’t planned ahead, food very quickly becomes whatever is easiest between appointments.
So rather than trying to eat perfectly, I built myself a five-day meal structure with high-protein meals, lots of slow cooker and pressure cooker recipes I could prepare ahead, and salads for lunch.
I also became much more deliberate about variety and plant foods.
Pomegranate and blueberries became regular additions — not because there’s anything magical about one particular food, but because they’re rich in polyphenols, plant compounds that interact with our gut microbiota and are being studied for their effects on microbial composition and function.
It was less about finding a “perfect” diet or a “gut health diet” and more about consistently giving my gut a wider variety to work with.
Supplements + IVs
I also added a deliberately short supplement routine around what I was trying to address.
Not 15 different supplements.
Something I could actually follow.
And yes, IVs are part of my own routine too. Glutamine is one I use regularly.
For me, these are tools within a much bigger picture rather than the entire picture themselves.
Movement
This was probably the harder part.
I’ve always been very all or nothing with exercise. Either I’m training hard for a competition or I’m doing very little.
But this year, training at that level simply hasn’t fitted consistently into my life.
So I’ve had to lower the threshold and change what I consider worthwhile movement.
A slow walk counts. Reformer Pilates counts. Twenty or thirty minutes counts.
It doesn’t have to be intense, competitive or leave me exhausted to be worthwhile.
The Thing I’ve Changed My Mind About
I’ve stopped treating stress as the softer, less important part of health.
It’s very easy to focus on things we can measure.
Blood results. Biological age. Microbiome results. Body composition. Nutrient levels.
Numbers feel concrete.
“Manage your stress” can sound vague by comparison.
But stress doesn’t sit separately from everything else happening in the body. It intersects with sleep, appetite, behaviour, immune function, the nervous system and gastrointestinal function.
My gut test didn’t prove that stress caused my results.
But it made me pay much more attention to the relationship.
And it made me realise something else.
You can’t supplement your way out of everything.
I still use supplements. I still have IVs. I still test.
I believe those things can have a place. But they work alongside food, sleep, movement, recovery and how I manage stress.
Not instead of them.
No protocol outruns the foundations it sits on.
The Same Applies To My Clients
A result on its own is information.
The year someone has had around that result gives us context.
What were they eating? How were they sleeping? What was happening at work? Were they exercising? Were they caring for someone else? Were they travelling constantly? And could they realistically follow the last plan they were given?
Because I don’t think the aim is to collect the longest possible list of tests or create the most complicated protocol.
It’s to understand what’s useful, what deserves further investigation and what you can realistically do something about.
I test because I’d rather know than wonder. And then I decide what deserves the attention.
Thinking About Your Own Gut Health?
Gut microbiome testing is available through DRIPS as part of our broader approach to preventative and personalised health.
Testing is only one part of the picture. Understanding the results alongside your health history, symptoms, lifestyle and other relevant clinical information is where that information becomes more useful.
Disclaimer: Gut microbiome testing does not diagnose gastrointestinal cancer and is not a substitute for appropriate medical investigation, diagnosis or screening. If you have gastrointestinal symptoms, a significant family history or concerns about gastrointestinal or bowel cancer, speak with your GP or appropriate medical specialist.
Clinical Disclaimer:
Pabst O, Slack E. IgA and the intestinal microbiota: the importance of being specific. Mucosal Immunology. 2020.
Karl JP, Hatch AM, Arcidiacono SM, et al. Effects of psychological, environmental and physical stressors on the gut microbiota. Frontiers in Microbiology. 2018;9:2013.
