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Is A Stool Test Good To Detect Irritable Bowel Syndrome?

566 views · Published 27 June 2018 · 3:33 · Indexed 4 November 2026

Channel: CanXida · 2018 · Education

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Hi there. Eric Bakker, Naturopath. I got another question in. I've always got questions. Is a comprehensive stool analysis good to detect Irritable Bowel Syndrome? This is a really good test to detect IBS. So, Irritable Bowel Syndrome is IBS. Inflammatory Bowel Disease is IBD. A stool test will actually differentiate between IBS and IBD. Many people who do a stool test will do so to determine what type of a gut problem they have. 

Now, a bulk of these people will not be Inflammatory Bowel Disease, they will be Irritable Bowel Syndrome, however. 

If you wanna get the best possible spread of all the information about stool testing, I recommend you do a SIBO Breath Testing and do a comprehensive stool analysis at the same time, so, do both those tests on the same days, very close to each other. 

It's going to give you a very, very good understanding of the bacteria in the whole gut. The SIBO test, obviously being a breath test, you'll be able to detect if the body is producing bacteria, which in turn produce either hydrogen or methane. If you have large amounts of hydrogen producing bacteria, we can safely assume you've got SIBO, more common than the methane producing, which often is associated with constipation in SIBO. 

Irritable Bowel Syndrome is quite common. It affects a large chunk of the population. About half of people with IBS have got that problem through stress, roughly half. The other 50%, we can break into food allergies, bacteria, candida parasites, all sorts of other things. Generally, when I spend about 20 or 30 minutes with a client talking with them, I can quickly work out if it's IBS or IBD, just by looking at the case history. 

The tests will confirm the diagnosis. 

The difference between IBS and IBD, in IBD, we find inflammatory markers, inflammation markers we find in the stool test, which we don't find in Irritable Bowel Syndrome. In Irritable Bowel Syndrome, we're much more likely to find candida and lots of different types of bacteria in large amount. Invariably, 50% of Irritable Bowel Syndrome cases I see have got a lack of beneficial bacteria, 50% of these. 

A stool test is a very good way to determine if the bowel is irritated or inflamed, so those two things will soon come to light with the stool test. As long as you're doing the time three, so three stool samples on three separate days, and as long as you're including a parasitology screen with that, and be sure it has a yeast culture as well. 

That test is going to throw off a huge amount of information, which will really make you understand the way your gut is at that point in time. So, is it good to detect IBS? It's fantastic to detect IBS. But as I mentioned, if you want to get all of the data, do the SIBO Breath Test and do the stool test. 

Then, you've got massive amounts of data that can really help, for yourself and also your healthcare professional, can help you both as a team to pinpoint what's going on, and accurately also treat the condition, which are going to give you the best possible outcome. Thanks for the question.

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