Robert Whitfield MD explains why stool testing and evaluation of food sensitivities remain important for gut health, and argues that standard blood panels often miss cellular-level dysfunction. He highlights emerging tools — metabolomics and expanded genetic testing — as ways to reveal biochemical markers (glutathione, palmitic acid, spermidine, GABA, etc.) that inform inflammation and individual metabolic status.
That combined with. We look at stool testing because a lot of gut health issues are intimately associated with this food sensitivities. I look at all those tests, plus we have some new things coming that look at metabolomics. Metabolomics is probably the thing that will help us get beyond the testing that so many people come to me and say, oh, Dr. Whitfield, all my blood work's normal. Right? I've heard. I hear this all the time. And they just come with reams of paper or blood work. Those tests, Alex, haven't changed since I've been alive and I'll be 55 next week. So it's not one of those things where as especially we're actually helping. So when we look at metabolomics and these new things that are coming, like more genetic testing now, you can start to pull back, you know, the curtain, if you will, to understand what's going on at a cellular level. Looking at how glutathione levels are in the body, palmitic acid, spermidine, gaba, all these things will become important in establishing your inflammation.
