Hi Wendy- yes I have been training heavily in microbiome and work with several of the functional microbiome orgs and testing options; but my question was geared towards avoiding duplicate testing as well- since today there is so much of that push. In certain areas, I prefer diagnostic proof- but for microbiome (vag, skin, oral, GI) - it is still relatively new as a science with limited multi-ethnicity and regional data even though now they have most of the continents-- not all of the outer regions. Plus the new epigenetic information in doubly interfering with standardizing protocols- which is my position- as I feel protocols cannot be done for treating / optimizing an individual vs a traditional allopathic 'treatment' - and western medicine / science is just barely touching the surface of the complexity of the factors from cellular through environmental and dormant genetics/triggers- A few of the orgs I am with have started to list some of the correlating symptoms in GI and/or vaginal and/or dermatological and/or mood- to suggest GI and vaginal treatment- especially with gut brain axis and metabolic factors. I was asking specifically if you are seeing any patterns yourself to look for, whether to change the approach of treatment (as in, focus more GI microbiome balance w// w/o targeted validated probiotics, vs HPA axis focus vs women's health as priority--) or if just ignoring any correlations and sticking with individual, etc- The main reason is that most of the (new) validated data I have read of women with issues meeting these, often already have been going to a dermatologist for skin, to an allergist for allergies, gastroenterologist for GI, have autoimmune/ sexual disorder/ other - and have Rx from everyone- - always feel awful, etc. It seems prudent that if general groups of symptoms are identified earlier and addressed, half of the advanced items would be prevented as it gets much more challenging to address or even explain to the women who are on cocktails from too many practitioners and feeling depressed or deflated and unwilling to look into alternative therapists/functional centers/ etc--- because they are now unwilling to do more or understand how to heal. It would be nice to have another resource of symptoms from another source (medical or other types, outside of the targeted microbiome orgs) or certain webinars to look for - as the interaction of the whole axis is much more challenging to combat at the later stages- I may send a separate private question through Eileen as this subject is also directly related to some personal associates - thank you--

Wendy said: As I said, I often do no testing at all and simply do a general gi rebalancing protocol that usually fixes the vaginitis at the same time. By that I mean: AP compound to knock down any problem bacteria, a glutamine-based product (Glutagenics by Metagenics) that includes demulcent herbs, and either a Bacillus only product like Megasporebiotic or an Akkermansia-heavy product like the ones from Pendulum. Also have her eat a LOT more polyphenol-containing foods. If someone has been going through the usual round of prescriptions for candida, then BV, then candida, then BV, I WILL do testing. I typically do a pcr test of the vagina that most often shows very low or absent lactobaccillus and perhaps NO abnormal species at all. We simply knocked everything out with our non-targeted treatment! For those folks, I still treat the gut just in case, and add in a primarily lactobaccillus probiotic. Unless, of course, she wants to put yogurt in her vagina, which actually works quite well!