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  4. At this point, do you ever run the Genova intestinal permeability test? Given all the limitations you mentioned, I’m wondering what IP test will be used instead of or even in addition to Cyrex Array 2. Only reason I can really think of is if someone had an issue with the blood draw.
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  4. At this point, do you ever run the Genova intestinal permeability test? Given all the limitations you mentioned, I’m wondering what IP test will be used instead of or even in addition to Cyrex Array 2. Only reason I can really think of is if someone had an issue with the blood draw.

At this point, do you ever run the Genova intestinal permeability test? Given all the limitations you mentioned, I’m wondering what IP test will be used instead of or even in addition to Cyrex Array 2. Only reason I can really think of is if someone had an issue with the blood draw.

Chris Kresser: It’s worth pointing out, which I think I did, that most of the research that we have correlating intestinal permeability with health outcomes was done using the lactulose mannitol urine test. I think there is still some validity. It is problematic and has issues, but the same can be said for SIBO breath testing. I think the bigger issue for us, as I argued, intestinal permeability is almost always caused by some other problem that I consider to be further upstream like a disrupted gut microbiome, parasites, SIBO or something like that. If you find out you have a leaky gut, great. You still need to find out why you have a leaky gut, so we always start with the why first. Then, in most cases, the patient gets better, and we don’t see the added value of continuing on and doing the intestinal permeability array. In some cases, if the patient is not getting better, then we might test for intestinal permeability and just see if there’s an issue there. We might do some specific protocols that are focused on sealing the gut barrier. We’ll talk about it a little bit, but I have to say it’s pretty rare for us to actually do that.

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