High quality gut biome testing services: It’s never too late to test! Gut health matters at every age. And the sooner you have a baseline sample, the better. During the first year, a baby’s microbiome sees dramatic shifts. This path sets the trajectory for their health, all the way through adulthood. For this reason, we encourage parents to sample as soon as possible, from age 0 to 3 years old and beyond. A child’s gut is still maturing until the age of 3 to 5 years old. Up to this point, you have the best opportunity to check in on your little one’s gut health and make changes, if needed. Even if your child’s gut has reached maturity, you can still take steps to influence their health! For older children and adults, gut health testing can reveal a lot. Discover even more info at gut health test. Track and optimize your family’s health – Test proactively and take action early to support a lifetime of better health.

Did you know that your little one’s brain is growing super fast during the first two years of life? It’s like they’re building a supercomputer in there! But here’s something even cooler – The bacteria in your baby’s gut might be helping with this brain-building process. Yup, studies with animals have shown that the gut microbiome is important for healthy brain function. And now, scientists are starting to think that the same may be true for cognitive development in infants. So, what does this mean for you and your baby? Well, it’s just another reason to make sure your little one is eating a healthy and balanced diet. That way, their gut bacteria can do their job and help your baby’s brain reach its full potential.

There are many tools and strategies to help improve your gut health. These include eating the best foods and taking supplements for gut health, or working with a gut health coach. Yet there is no one-size-fits-all approach to gut health. For example, taking a probiotic for the gut may be beneficial for some individuals. In others, it could do more harm than good. Imagine there’s already high levels of a beneficial microbe in your gut. Taking a probiotic could boost those levels to a point where they are too high, resulting in low diversity in the gut microbiome.

For some children with eczema, food may trigger symptoms. That’s why it’s important to know that a gut microbiome test won’t reveal any food allergy, sensitivity, or intolerance. Are there any metrics/parts of the report I should pay special attention to? When reviewing your child’s results, a few metrics warrant special attention: Levels of Bifidobacterium – Bifidobacterium are beneficial bacteria that produce short-chain fatty acids, influence the immune system, and keep disruptive microbes at bay. They should dominate the baby’s gut during the first months of life, especially those good at digesting breastmilk sugars, or HMOs. The absence of these key bacteria may leave space for unfriendlies to grow unchecked, disrupt the gut barrier, or promote inflammation.

Conventional medical providers usually are not trained in microbiome testing and probiotics, since these things aren’t currently standard of care in those settings. In addition, many conventionally trained physicians also have limited nutritional training, and diet is one of the most powerful ways you can optimize microbiome health. While conventional medicine can have lots of insight into sick care, it isn’t always the best at wellness and prevention. Plus it can take 10-15 years for the medical field to put new academic research into practice! Read additional details on tinyhealth.com.