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Why Stool Testing is an Important Part of Optimizing Health and Longevity
47 Plays1 month ago
Do you need help with your health? Would you like to increase your longevity while addressing existing health issues?
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During this 45-minute consultation we’ll take a deep dive into critical areas of your metabolism and understand what is out of balance.
From gut health and hormone function to adrenal health and blood sugar regulation, even a small imbalance in any of these (or other) areas can lead to poor health in the future and diminished longevity…but the sad fact is that a large majority of people over 40 have multiple imbalances in multiple areas of their metabolism…
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Check out the first volume in the How to Actually Live Longer series on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4dDXjxc
How to Actually Live Longer is your go-to podcast for cutting through the noise and discovering practical, science-backed strategies to not just add years to your life, but to add life to your years. Hosted by longevity author and functional health practitioner Christian Yordanov, this podcast dives deep into the truths (and myths) behind longevity, health optimization, and addressing chronic health problems.
Each episode offers actionable insights drawn from the host's own research, clinical practice, and personal journey, helping you make informed decisions to restore and enhance your health. Whether you're interested in reducing stress, boosting your energy and mental performance, improving your gut health, or simply looking to optimize your diet and lifestyle, this podcast delivers the tools you need to live a healthier, longer life.
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Transcript
Introduction and Agenda
00:00:01
chrisyzen
Hey, it's Christian Jourdanoff. Let's talk about stew testing today. It's going to be a shorter one. um
Who Should Consider Stool Testing?
00:00:09
chrisyzen
What's my kind of take on who should run a stew test, when should they run a stew test, and and why? So actually, what I would probably say, knowing what I know now, is that everybody, I believe,
00:00:27
chrisyzen
should run a stool test at least once in their life just in case right now if you have an overt health problem um that's absolutely the case right ah if you have ever had food poisoning absolutely if you've been to Africa or Asia somewhere away from your normal environment that may have
00:00:56
chrisyzen
predispose you to to potential parasitic organisms that it's probably a good idea. The
Why Everyone Needs a Stool Test
00:01:07
chrisyzen
reason I say
00:01:10
chrisyzen
everyone though should run a suit test once at least once in their lifetime is because there are subtle imbalances in the body that are extremely if not impossible they're either extremely difficult or straight-up impossible to detect by feelings or by how you feel or even by an observation or even a a health assessment, like the health assessment that we do with my clients, it's designed that it takes you very little time to do, like you could do it in 30 minutes or so, but it covers the all the metabolic systems in the body ah that are of major importance to us. So we can quickly pinpoint does a person have more of a blood sugar problem, a thyroid problem, could it be something related to the gut,
00:01:58
chrisyzen
or usually it's it's a number of different things but what we can't detect is lipid peroxidation or subtle deficiencies or or subtle toxicities stuff like that what we also cannot detect necessarily is if there's a subtle quote-unquote inflammatory shift in the microbiome then by that I very simply mean if there is an overgrowth of potentially harmful, potentially inflammatory bacteria, right?
Understanding Endotoxins
00:02:34
chrisyzen
And the the well the reason it's important to catch things like that early, as early as possible, is because let's say, just just as a hypothetical example,
00:02:46
chrisyzen
Let's say a person has a few species of these so-called inflammatory bacteria. Some of them could be endotoxin producers. And if you've listened to me before, you've or you've read the book, How to Actually Live Longer, Volume 1, you probably know about endotoxin. So there's a lot of bacterial species in the gut that in their outer the outer portion of their cell wall there's this endotoxin particle with millions of it really ah it's also called lipopolysaccharide and lps and what that does as the bacteria completes its life cycle when the cell ruptures after it dies as that gets into the bloodstream we have certain receptors toll-like receptors in in certain cells
00:03:37
chrisyzen
that can recognize that and the response by those cells is a lot of inflammatory sort of ah stuff, an inflammatory response, that inflammation can cause collateral damage to our own tissues when it's chronically activated. So
Cost vs. Benefits of Stool Testing
00:03:56
chrisyzen
if you have an overgrowth of some of these gram negative species or or so some of them are kind of more known as opportunistic or overgrowth microbes, so if you have an overgrowth of these it's
00:04:12
chrisyzen
For many people, it's very difficult to ascertain that unless you actually do a stool test. Now, ah some more allopathic symptom-treating practitioners will say, yeah, but the person doesn't have symptoms. Therefore, ah you know you're just wasting their money. And to that, I would say a stool test costs $400 nowadays.
00:04:36
chrisyzen
right it's not like its you're paying a thousand two thousand dollars for this test some people spend that much money in like night a night out dinner and drinks, you know, they might spend that much on on ah on a bottle of whiskey. You know, I know people that would spend that kind of money just on some nice bottle of whiskey. Right. And then they'll do that like once or twice per month. So it's it's about where we spend our money. It's not about it being expensive. It's actually very affordable in the grand scheme of things, given that an an iPhone nowadays costs a thousand dollars and people have no problem dishing that out.
00:05:10
chrisyzen
when it was a marginal improvement over the previous, phone when here we're talking about finding something that could potentially, in the decades that follow, cause us issues, right? Because the thing about endotoxin is they have implicated, the researchers have implicated endotoxin in a ton of different health conditions that includes ah ah through the They've actually found these lipopolysaccharides in and the in atherosclerotic plaques. It's implicated in neurodegenerative diseases, even cancer. right So basically, yeah even ah liver disease, even insulin resistance, there's a lot of things in which a lot of conditions
00:06:06
chrisyzen
in which endotoxin is implicated. So if
Bacteria Detection and Health Links
00:06:11
chrisyzen
you have an overgrowth of these bacteria, you might not necessarily know it. But what can happen then is because some of these bacteria that produce endotoxin excuse me and other potentially inflammatory molecules
00:06:29
chrisyzen
because they can feed on fiber, if we eat fiber or or more fiber, as we're told by the mainstream, eat lots of fiber, it's good for you, then we may be throwing fuel on that fire. And again, it's chronic low-grade inflammation that eventually does us in it's not like when we do this this two tests I like to run with clients my favorite one it's not like we find there's a test for a lot of different pathogens like salmonella campylobacter you know GR the cryptosporidium it's not like we catch those very often very rarely is an overt pathogen detected on this test
00:07:15
chrisyzen
Usually it's some kind of, let's say, overgrowth in some of the regular microbiota, or there could be some species missing that sometimes does happen. ah It's oftentimes the biggest culprit is some kind of overgrowth in these opportunistic slash overgrowth microbes, some of which are known to be associated, for example, with autoimmune conditions, ah rheumatoid arthritis, or other inflammatory conditions.
00:07:44
chrisyzen
um
00:07:47
chrisyzen
These can include things like Citrobacter, Klebsiella, Enterobacter, Prevotella. There's quite a lot of them that are associated with inflammatory slash autoimmune conditions, right? We can also catch things like there's intestinal health markers, that so we can catch, for example, there's an antibody to gliadin, which is a part of the gluten ah protein. So we can catch early if your immune system is responding negatively to to gluten, right? For example, we can see, is there inflammatory activity in the gut? Because
Chronic Inflammation and Health Impact
00:08:26
chrisyzen
you could live a very long time. I'm 100% certain that many people that, like, die in their 70s, 80s, even 90s, many of those people have lived a life with some kind of low-grade chronic inflammation, with some kind of dysbiosis in the gut.
00:08:45
chrisyzen
without even knowing it. So in some in some people you can live you can live a very long time, but the the key to me, at least though this is my sort of strategy to to health longevity and health optimization is why leave things to chance? Why don't we catch imbalances early and then address them and then allow the body to function that it's more optimal at least than before.
00:09:12
chrisyzen
We might not ever reach the absolute pinnacle of optimumness, but you will be closer to optimum. And this is again, something that really pisses me off. It's like these doctors that they only will help a client or treat a client or whatever.
00:09:29
chrisyzen
if they have like symptoms, right? Or if they can use a technology or a lab testing validation method that they understand and if if the things, if the tools they're using, let's say they check the blood and whatever, if that doesn't show any imbalances, then they're like, oh, everything is fine. You know, your kidney markers, are the they your urine markers.
00:09:50
chrisyzen
everything looks dandy, at least from what I know. i And then if they can't find anything, they're like, well, jog on. you know There's nothing wrong with you. It must be in your head. Maybe you need an antidepressant. So to me, waiting for symptoms is not a viable strategy for optimal health. right So it's it's kind of good for a doctor that you go to him when he you have symptoms. He helps to resolve the symptoms. And then What if what if he just did enough to help you resolve the symptom for now? What if what if there was something deeper that needed investigation that needed to be addressed that will cause symptoms in two or five years down the line?
The Importance of Early Lab Testing
00:10:28
chrisyzen
This is what really annoys me even in functional medicine circles a lot of these doctors that they basically just they just switch the
00:10:39
chrisyzen
the drug for a herb and then wait for the symptom to subside and then the the their client or patient is like it' fine according to them. Go go ahead. But i really ah with with the with the lab testing that we have available to us that gets shipped direct to the client, it's super convenient. It's very affordable nowadays. I think it's a great disservice to not help people find as many cracks in the dam as it were before those cracks become something that actually causes a more serious issue. And this is the thing about endotoxin. The more you dig into this,
00:11:18
chrisyzen
the more health conditions you will see it's kind of ah ah at least a contributing factor in right and then the more you kind of dig into it the more you see that as the old saying goes by Hippocrates all disease begins in the gut so ah you know a person may have no symptoms in the gut or no symptoms at all, but they there there could be the genesis of a health problem already going on. and then But
Real-life Examples of Gut Imbalance
00:11:51
chrisyzen
then they might start getting headaches or they might have brain fog and they might not have any gut related issues specifically like constipation, diarrhea or or whatever. But if you actually do a little bit of investigation, you may see a lot of
00:12:08
chrisyzen
dysbiosis or at least some some issues, right some kind of immune response, some kind of inflammatory response, some kind of potential ah low-grade infection, right the the body may be maybe keeping under wraps, so there's no like serious condition going on, but it's the the the it's clear that the body is not able to maintain homeostasis because there's other symptoms starting to develop. right So this inflammation that originates in the gut, it can cause us only mood-related symptoms, for some people at least.
00:12:46
chrisyzen
right So how would how would you ever correlate like brain fog or or depression or kind of anxiety and stuff like that? How would you ever correlate that to the gut? You can't necessarily. That's why I believe even a healthy person at least once in their lifetime should see what's up, what's up in the gut. Just as an example, ah I'm just looking at a few lab tests in front of me here of two tests um that we've run over in in the last couple of years ah on clients. And for example, I'm seeing one where it was a young individual and decent health fit, ah lean, high performing, but there was a pretty severe
00:13:33
chrisyzen
overgrowth of commensal bacteria, so kind of part of the regular microbiome, but that particular phyla of bacteria or the bacteroidities, they are gram negative. They produce this endotoxin.
00:13:47
chrisyzen
so then
00:13:49
chrisyzen
While right now he's high performing, he's eating well and has a lot of, you know, takes a lot of supplements or whatever. If we hadn't caught that and I hadn't told him about ah the the dietary changes that I recommend, like taking a bunch of the fibers things out and the vegetables and whatever certain vegetables and and kind of removing some of that fiber, that person would have kept giving plenty of fiber to these bacteria.
00:14:17
chrisyzen
which would have continued to feed them and over time they would have you know just kept spewing out this endotoxin in the gut and it might not be a problem for a long time but if something happens like stress just stress in general that opens up the gut barrier that causes intestinal permeability cortisol does have that effect so that alone could then begin this inflamatory inflammatory process where some of these endotoxin particles get into the bloodstream, they activate the immune system, and this inflammation cascade, once it starts, it it's like ah it's like a fire. Once you start a fire, it's fairly easy to keep the fire going. You just throw throw more fuel on the fire, right? So it's it can be a you have a little, small little fire,
00:15:13
chrisyzen
But then if there's another stressor, if there's multiple stressors which do happen to people, then that small fire can become a big fire. And then maybe you can recover from those stressors and then you're back to a small fire. Instead of having extinguished it,
00:15:30
chrisyzen
you're now working with a small low-grade chronic low-grade inflammation and this this in the 40s in the 50s even in the early 30s onwards these kinds of imbalances this is actually what leads to then having a diagnosed condition when you're 50 60 70 and so on all the not all but most of these conditions that people get um diagnosed with in their 60s or whatever plus they didn't start last week or last month or even last year these things develop over decades in many cases or at least years so this is why it's worth at least once in your life to make that investment because you're gonna spend that cash on something anyway
00:16:23
chrisyzen
You know? Why not invested in the most important vehicle? The most important vehicle that you will ever have, your body.
00:16:35
chrisyzen
You know what I mean? That's kind of my, my take on it. Now that's if you've never had a gut problem and you're feeling okay, but if you have any, any health issue, obviously if it's a gut issue, it's clear that we need to, we need to investigate the gut. But if you have any other health issue, absolutely. What I've, what I found is that so yeah I'm kind of repeating myself, but if a person has a gut issue like pain, gas, bloating, obviously there's something wrong in the gut in terms of imbalance, inflammation, digestive dysfunction, and we always we will always find something on on a lab test. But then what I've noticed is with my clients that have other health issues that have nothing seemingly to do with the gut, if as part of the lab testing that we do,
00:17:29
chrisyzen
If we run a stool test invariably, we find something significant. Not
Microbial Overgrowth Risks
00:17:36
chrisyzen
a little bit of overgrowth here and a little bit of, I'm talking, we always find something significant. Could be potential pancreatic insufficiency, potential kind of high ah immune activity indicating some type of acute thing or inflammatory ah activity, right? or Or straight up some kind of,
00:17:59
chrisyzen
one or more inflammatory bacteria that are fairly overgrown to very overgrown sometimes it's quite staggering like if you can think of something is to the power of three right so three zeros behind it it's like a thousand if that's the reference range then someone will will be overgrown to the power of seven. So that's like adding four extra zeros in terms of microbial growth, right? Or or four X that, right? So instead of one to the power of three, it's like four to the power of seven. So that's like,
00:18:42
chrisyzen
four x the one and four zeros so that's very significant not to get mathematical definitely not my strong point the mathematics so this this is why the old saying all disease begins in the gut makes so much sense because
00:19:06
chrisyzen
It's at the end of the day, oxidative stress and inflammation are what drive a lot of these quote unquote pathological processes in the body. And if your gut is perturbed in some way, shape or form, what that is likely going to do over time is create inflammation in a little bit of inflammation, but that it can kind of, that small little fire can grow into a larger fire. And then inflammation and oxidative stress go handin hand in hand, right? So the inflammation.
00:19:36
chrisyzen
cause damage, that damage results in oxidative stress, more inflammation, more oxidative stress. And this, over time, leads to collateral damage in the body, the tissues, the cells, the organs, organ systems, communication between various ah parts of organ systems. And that can include the brain, the heart, the kidneys, the liver. right And then over time, we start to, the machine our vehicle starts to not run as well.
00:20:05
chrisyzen
the brain might not function as well, muscles, fatigue, all of these things. and they these things culminating to those symptoms but those symptoms didn't just arrive out of nowhere they always have some kind of genesis way back when it could be again it could be months it could be years and in many in many cases genuinely decades because the body is so good at maintaining homeostasis it's freaking amazing it's freaking amazing I mean
00:20:39
chrisyzen
for yeah some people drink every single day of their life for like 40-50 years every single day and they don't eat optimally obviously ah they don't supplement their diet and they're able to live to their 70s plus you know even though every single day they're drinking like multiple units of alcohol so the body is able to survive a very long time but obviously those people or not as interested in in health and longevity. So if you are, if you're listening to this type of podcast, this is where I believe people
00:21:17
chrisyzen
have plenty of room to to uncover things to work on, right? Because if you just listen to podcasts and someone tells you, oh, that that's a good supplement, curcumin is good, or ashwagandha is good, people try things and they the experiment something, some things you don't feel, some things make you feel better, so you kind of, you you kind of cobbled together some kind of a health program but unless you have something to guide what you're doing what what supplements you're adding what what foods you're eating what foods you're excluding unless you have some kind of a plan
00:21:58
chrisyzen
It's really a lot of trial and error, and it's a lot of stabbing in the dark. And when you're stabbing in the dark with something as important as your health, you could be overlooking something very simple. For example, ah earlier this year, a client, we ran a stool test that had the DNA damage marker, 8-hydroxy 2-deoxyguanosine 8-OHTG. And that wasn't, it wasn't elevated, super elevated, but it was like kind of borderline and the This person was like, i mean I feel good, I feel great, but clearly something in the body was going on that was contributing to this oxidative stress, oxidative damage. So unless you catch these things like lipid peroxidation, inflammatory processes, toxicity, um potential antioxidant deficiencies, unless you catch these things early,
00:22:50
chrisyzen
and then do something about it and install a supplemental procedure whatever something to address that issue unless you do that early it's a little bit you're kind of playing game of luck let me hope that the things i'm doing are covering on my basis so this is why this is why i believe it's so valuable it's probably the best investment you can make is to work with someone like me to join my program because not only will you get my eyes on your health in terms of we'll do a health assessment, the metabolic systems and everything else, right? So
Personalized Health Recommendations
00:23:26
chrisyzen
already every single person, no matter how sophisticated of a client and how much they know about health,
00:23:31
chrisyzen
They get tremendous value just out of that alone, right? Things they're doing not so great and the things that they're doing well. How can we build on top of them? How can we remove the harmful things? That's super valuable. How can we address the glaring imbalances in whatever blood sugar balance, thyroid, whatever sleep?
00:23:48
chrisyzen
address those, but then, with that in place, we add and another another layer of assessment, and that is where with the sophisticated machinery that ah analyzes these samples, the lab samples, tells us things that we will never catch with the naked eye, for example.
00:24:08
chrisyzen
I had one client. He loved cashews. And I told him, look, dude, I don't like nuts. I'm not going to recommend nuts. He says, can I have them some of the time? and I don't know. No. ah I would say no. But of course, you're an adult. But the thing is then we we we did that too ah sorry we did that food sensitivity test where they expose the lab exposes your your blood to the various foods.
00:24:32
chrisyzen
and cashews were super reactive for this dude so i was like there you go that food was inflaming you every single time you're reading it a lot now you know that he already removed it because i recommended it obviously but now we have data because there's other for example i had another client where i i love honey i recommend honey a lot and she wasn't super reactive to honey But she was in the green spectrum. She was on the kind of and the more reactive spectrum. So in that case, I told her, remove the honey for four months from the diet, and then reintroduce it. That will dampen the current inflamm inflammation inflammatory response. And then the immune system, with all the other work we're doing, the immune system will be a lot less reactive to it in four months' time. So sometimes you just take the food out for a month or two.
00:25:32
chrisyzen
Sometimes you you just don't eat the damn thing. If it's like soybeans and you're super reactive, well, I would recommend never touching a freaking soybean if you can help it. And I have seen soybeans super reactive on people's results in corn and certain grains wheat so that's super so I already don't recommend those foods great which is great right so people when people listen and follow that's already great and most people do because obviously if you're investing to work with a coach you you're gonna follow the instructions because you're smart ah and you because that's why you're investing in in in the program but it's also nice when we catch things that further corroborate my
00:26:13
chrisyzen
recommendations. And usually it's like beans, nuts, and stuff like that. When we catch those, that's awesome. The the person is like, well, the I'm never touching that thing again. Super. That's awesome. But the value, the even greater value I think then is when we catch something like it could be a fruit. So generally most fruits are awesome, ah have at it and all all that good stuff. But sometimes imagine like pineapple is like super reactive for you and you really like pineapple and you eat it like three times a week. If we can catch that,
00:26:41
chrisyzen
and remove that inflammatory thing out of your diet, that'll be super epic. That'll really help you out in the long term. And again, this is why lab testing is like our second, third, fourth pair of eyes, super down ah kind of the molecular level. We can find things that we would never be able to glean with just a simple way, not not not kind of to make the assessment super oversimplified, but again, the the human eye, the observation of ah of a practitioner that is still limited because there's very subtle damaging process in the body, minor deficiencies, toxicities, antioxidant deficiencies, stuff like that, that only, ah you know,
00:27:33
chrisyzen
but tests can can catch and it's the same story with these inflammatory endotoxin producing bacteria and whatnot.
Conclusion on Stool Testing Benefits
00:27:40
chrisyzen
you know So that is why I think if you're thinking of joining the program, if you're gonna make that an investment, the stool test is not mand mandatory or anything, no no no lab testing is mandatory unless a client, if a client doesn't wanna do it at all you know and wants to save the few hundred bucks, that's totally fine and we do a lot of great work anyway.
00:28:01
chrisyzen
But if you're if you're ready to you know invest in like two, three lab tests, I'll probably say my recommendation is ah is i would I would do it at least once but least once. Even if you have not had a serious gut problem in recent years, it would still be worth it. you know Because like when I caught my parasites,
00:28:25
chrisyzen
on my stool test back in 2019, and my high candida and my inflammatory bacteria overgrowth, I didn't have overt gut symptoms. this is This is the point. But I did have health issues at the time, low libido, low motivation, and it could have been from all the low carb and the keto and the fasting nonsense. But um I didn't have those, I thought it was something completely unrelated to the gut until I did a stool test.
00:28:55
chrisyzen
And then lo and behold, I had a bunch of like parasites and whatever else, candida and inflammatory bacteria. And knowing that how indispensable that was for, for my journey back to health. That's why I, it's like now I understand why all disease begins in the gut. You know what I mean? So knowing what I now know to me, to me, I would rather.
00:29:22
chrisyzen
recommend that to a client, have them spend like $400 on this test. And I would be happy, I will sleep well at night. If we catch no imbalances, I'll be like, that's amazing. Oh my God, that's great. I would i would rather have that peace of mind than wonder, what if there's something going on and we didn't catch it? What if we needed to to do something for parasites, you know, some herbal stuff? What if Candida was rampant? What if we could have caught something that we could have addressed that down the line 20, 30 years from now would have made a serious negative dent or impact in that person's health. So I would, ah if a person is able to invest and most clients that come to me already are like in a position to invest in their health,
00:30:08
chrisyzen
and they understand the value, it's the most important investment. So I would say i would stay it's probably better to do it once and kind of see what's going on and be on the safe side than allow this low-grade chronic inflammation to fester and then only become a problem when it's been causing damage for years or decades. okay So that's my thoughts on lab testing or stool testing rather.
00:30:36
chrisyzen
Hope that that was informative for you and thanks for watching or listening.