A patient tested negative for H. pylori but came back positive six months later, showing how breath tests miss infections. Zonulin measurement in a comprehensive GI-MAP test better detects intestinal permeability and gives a fuller picture of gut health than breath tests alone.
Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you brought that up because the breath test for each— we did a GI map with him last summer, but 6 months prior to that I told him, I'm like, you have H. pylori. And he was, even though he's been watching me do this for however long, he was skeptic, went to his doctor and they did the breath H. pylori test and it was negative. But then here we are 6 months later and it's positive. So it just kind of goes back to what you're saying, like it is important to have the right test. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you brought that up because The breath test for H.
pylori is checking for the gas that is secreted from those bacteria, and if they're not actually producing that gas the moment you have the test, it's wild, you get a false negative.
But something else I want you to mention with the GI map is we do the GI map with zonulin.
So zonulin is the protein that gets elevated when you have quote unquote, leaky gut. That's what we call it in the general population. The medical term is called increased intestinal permeability. So we actually have gates or active transport mechanisms that are supposed to be the gateway of what's allowed to come through the intestinal cells into your body and what has to stay out and go into your poop. And unfortunately, a lot of things in our society nowadays break those doors, those junctions. And so it's kind of like a free-for-all. So pesticides in our food— I know it seems bougie and expensive to eat organic, but I promise you, the pesticides on all of our crops, all of our produce, the stuff that we're feeding the cows, the, the pesticide-laden cornmeal— it is destroying our gut. It is killing all those gap junctions. And so we see a lot of patients with elevated zonulin levels, and I like to see that level so I know how aggressive to be with treatment. Like, do we actively have to heal those doors? Um, and speaking of that, there's 3 barriers that are protecting us from the outside world, and those doors are just one of them. So we We act like leaky gut is the end-all be-all, but there's actually two other barriers that can get compromised that people aren't addressing or realizing, especially conventional doctors.
