How our Microbiome Test can support your gut-brain connection!

Looking to improve your overall health but don’t know where to begin? You’re in the right place!

When it comes to improving your health, it can be difficult to know where to start, as there are so many factors that can influence it – stressful job? No time for lunch between meetings? Up until 1 AM, scrolling social media? Here at Chuckling Goat, we’ve made it easy for you to know where to begin your wellness journey with our Microbiome Test.

Our Microbiome Test examines how well your gut microbiome is functioning by examining 86 biomarkers in areas such as probiotics, prebiotics, and pathogens. The information gathered from the test will provide a snapshot of where your gut health is in its current state. The biodiversity of your microbiome is as individual to you as your fingerprint; it is influenced by lifestyle factors such as stress, illness, and even sleep quality. One area that plays an important role is mental wellness, mainly the gut-brain connection.

What is the Gut-Brain connection?

The gut-brain connection, sometimes called the gut-brain axis, is the relationship the gut and brain have with each other. Have you ever had a gut feeling or butterflies in your stomach when nervous? That’s the gut-brain axis in action. They communicate through complex structures, including the vagus nerve, neurotransmitters, hormones, and probiotics. These structures constantly pass information back and forth to one another, which is why your gut is sometimes called your second brain.

But what about when something disturbs this communication, like medications such as antibiotics or stress? This delicate balance can get disrupted, and the microbes responsible for maintaining that smooth connection can’t do their job properly. This altered state in the microbiome can lead to things like anxiety, depression, and low mood.

How our Microbiome Test evaluates your gut-brain connection

Our Microbiome Test looks at seven key areas. Below outlines how each key area has a role in the gut-brain connection –

1. Diversity

This section looks into the abundance of beneficial bacteria in your microbiome. This is one of the key areas we look at to get a deeper understanding of your microbiome – a happy gut is a diverse gut! Greater microbial diversity is also linked to improved emotional resilience, stress response, and overall mood stability.

2. Probiotics

These beneficial microbes, or good bacteria, live in your gut and are found in certain foods, such as kefir and other fermented foods. They play an important role in maintaining the overall health of your microbiome and are essential for digestive function, hormone production, skin health, regulating your mood, and much more! Certain strains help produce calming neurotransmitters like GABA and serotonin, supporting the gut-brain axis directly.

3. Prebiotics

Prebiotics are a type of fibre. Probiotics and prebiotics have a synbiotic relationship; prebiotics feed the probiotics to support their growth and activity! Feeding the right bacteria helps support the production of mood-influencing compounds like short-chain fatty acids.

4. Postbiotics

When your probiotics are happy and getting all the food (like prebiotic fibre) they like, they produce beneficial by-products called postbiotics. These are short-chain fatty acids that help reduce inflammation in the gut, improve overall digestion, and influence mood. Postbiotics like butyrate can calm gut-driven inflammation, which plays a role in anxiety, brain fog, and low mood.

5. Pathogens

These microorganisms, or ‘harmful bugs’, can lead to infections and related gastrointestinal symptoms, particularly in the lower digestive tract, like cramps and diarrhoea. Pathogens may increase gut inflammation and disrupt gut-brain signalling, which can contribute to mood issues and stress sensitivity.

6. Mental wellness

This section focuses on the gut-brain connection and how it affects your stress, anxiety, and happiness levels. Mood can play a vital role in the function of the gut, so it’s essential to look at ways to help restore balance and harmony between the two.

7. Systemic wellness

This summarises all sections and how they link together to create an overall picture. It examines microbiome resilience, the gut-brain connection, and anti-inflammatory potential. A balanced gut environment supports more stable communication with the brain, reducing reactivity and promoting mental clarity.

The gut-brain connection is a two-way street. When you’re feeling down emotionally, like anxiety or stress, this has a direct effect on your digestive system and, in turn, your microbiome. If you struggle with IBS symptoms like bloating, diarrhoea, or an upset stomach, you probably feel miserable and fed up. This is why maintaining harmony and balance between the gut and the brain is important.

What your results can reveal about your gut-brain connection

Your microbiome test doesn’t just tell you what’s going on in your gut; it helps explain why you might be experiencing symptoms like anxiety, poor sleep, low mood, or brain fog.

For example, your results might show:

Low diversity or reduced levels of key probiotic strains that support neurotransmitter production (like Bifidobacterium or Lactobacillus).
Low postbiotics, such as butyrate, which play a role in calming inflammation and supporting mood.
High levels of pathogens that may be disrupting your gut barrier, triggering stress signals along the gut-brain axis.

By identifying these patterns, the test gives us a roadmap to support your mental wellness from the inside out – through dietary intervention, lifestyle, supplements, or calming routines.

Restoring harmony

Daily life can be stressful, but finding ways to restore balance between our busy lives and taking time for ourselves can be easier than imagined.

Ashwagandha is a plant known for its calming effect, used for 1000s of years in traditional Asian medicine. It has grown in popularity over the last few years, due to its incredible anti-anxiety and anti-stress properties. It is also renowned for its sleep-aid properties; whether helping you fall asleep or stay asleep, it is worth having in the medicine cabinet. Our Sing Me To Sleep Tea can also help you relax on an evening, leading to a more restful, deeper sleep.

Mindfulness, meditation, and yoga are important ways of grounding and recentring your focus when life gets hectic. Just 20 minutes of meditation or quiet time can give you a well-deserved break. If you feel you might need more professional help, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), talk therapy, or exposure therapy are all great at developing the skills and tools needed to help tackle stress and anxiety.

Once your test results are ready, we provide a free 30-minute consultation with one of our Nutritional Therapists to discuss your results and provide you with evidence-based recommendations to improve your scores and help your gut and overall health thrive! Your Nutritional Therapist will help you to restore gut-brain harmony based on your unique results.

Looking to make the first step in improving your health? Try our gut health smoothie, a great way to start your day!

Any questions? Contact one of our Nutritional Therapists via live chat, weekdays from 8 am to 8 pm.