Testing Your Gut Microbiome with Lesley Harper

Gastrointestinal health testing analyses immunity, inflammation, and the microbiome, and it’s an important tool we use in Nutritional Therapy and Lifestyle medicine to unearth underlying issues in physical and mental health.

Lesley Harper is part of the clinical education team at Invivo Healthcare and a healthcare practitioner in her own right. She's perfectly placed to introduce us to specialised testing and how we can use it to get to the root causes of health challenges.

Lesley was 'into gut health’ at least a decade before most people had ever heard of gut health. She delved into the early research to address her own issues, first with joint problems and subsequently with Graves Disease, gradually resolving her symptoms and then finally coming off medication in both cases.

This was such a lovely conversation. Lesley is unfailingly professional, kind and compassionate, and I can't think of anyone better to take us by the hand and make a complicated subject feel clear and even encouraging!

Subjects we discuss:

• blood sugar balancing
• root cause analysis
• the link between hormones and gut health
• gut challenges like IBS, IBD, SIBO, reflux, constipation and diarrhoea
• microbial patterns and diet
• microbial patterns and disease
• the importance of ‘crowding out’
• how psychology impacts gut health
• the upsides and downsides of FODMAPS diets
• bile flow, pancreatic enzymes
• the impact of nurture and kindness
• support in thyroid and immune conditions

More on Lesley:

After a previous career as an engineer, Lesley’s own health issues led her to explore nutritional therapy as an option to support her health. Benefiting significantly, Lesley’s interest in the subject was ignited and she made the decision to retrain in order to practice and promote the development of nutritional therapy. Lesley has been providing individual consultations and workshops to various organisations, course tutor and for several years ran nutrition workshops for fitness retreats and has provided sessions for first and second-year medical students. Lesley continues to run a private practice specialising in clients with chronic gut issues. http://www.lesleyharper.co.uk/

More on Invivo Healthcare:

https://invivohealthcare.com/invivo-laboratory/

Contact Clare via her website: https://www.transformationnutrition.org/contact

Theme music is by Chris Marchand. You can find more of his work at https://chrismarchand.bandcamp.com/