What the GI-MAP Measures

The GI-MAP covers several distinct areas, each giving a different window into what is happening in your gut:

Who Should Consider the GI-MAP?

The gut is involved in almost every aspect of health — immunity, hormones, mood, energy, skin, weight, and more. Which means the GI-MAP is relevant across a wide range of situations, not just digestive ones. We find it particularly valuable if you have:

• IBS, IBD, Crohn’s disease, or ulcerative colitis
• Chronic bloating, gas, constipation, or diarrhoea
• Food intolerances that seem to be multiplying over time
• Skin conditions including acne, eczema, psoriasis, and rosacea — the gut-skin connection is well established
• Mood disorders, anxiety, depression, or brain fog — around 95% of your serotonin is made in the gut, not the brain
• Chronic fatigue or post-viral illness including long COVID — gut imbalance is a consistent finding in people who don’t recover well after viral illness
• Autoimmune conditions — a leaky gut and disrupted microbiome are now well recognised as contributing factors
• Hormonal imbalances including oestrogen dominance, PMS, PCOS, and perimenopausal symptoms
• Weight gain or difficulty losing weight — your gut microbiome directly influences how your body stores fat
• Thyroid conditions — gut health affects thyroid hormone conversion and how well you absorb thyroid medication
• A history of repeated courses of antibiotics
• You’ve been told your gut tests are normal but you know something isn’t right

One of the most common situations we see is people who have been through the gastroenterology system — colonoscopy, standard stool tests, told everything is normal — and they still feel terrible. The GI-MAP consistently finds things in these cases that conventional testing missed, because it’s asking different questions. A colonoscopy looks at structure. The GI-MAP looks at what’s living in your gut and how it’s functioning. Both have their place — but for chronic gut symptoms with no clear cause, this is the test that tends to provide the answers.

The Gut Is Not Just a Digestive Organ

Most people think of the gut as a digestive system. In reality it is far more than that — it is one of the central control systems of the body, with a direct hand in immunity, mood, hormones, skin, weight, and energy. When the gut is out of balance, everything else tends to follow.

Around 70% of the immune system lives in and around the gut. When the gut microbiome is disrupted — by poor diet, antibiotics, stress, or infection — the immune system loses its footing. This is why chronic gut problems so often appear alongside autoimmune conditions, frequent illness, and allergies that seem to come from nowhere.

The gut and brain are in constant two-way communication. Gut bacteria produce mood-regulating chemicals including serotonin, dopamine, and GABA — and around 95% of the body’s serotonin is made in the gut, not the brain. This is why anxiety, depression, and brain fog so frequently improve when gut health is properly addressed. Treating mood without looking at the gut is often treating the symptom, not the cause.

Hormonal health is equally gut-dependent. When a particular gut enzyme called beta-glucuronidase is elevated — something the GI-MAP can identify — the body struggles to clear oestrogen properly. Instead of being eliminated, it gets recirculated, driving oestrogen dominance, PMS, heavy periods, endometriosis, and over time, increased cancer risk. For many women, the gut is the missing piece of the hormonal puzzle.

Keystone Species — What the GI-MAP Detects

Some gut bacteria act like the pillars of a house — remove them and the whole structure is compromised. These essential species regulate the broader microbial ecosystem, and their absence is consistently linked to chronic illness. They are known as keystone species, and the GI-MAP measures them directly.

Three of the most clinically significant keystone species detected by the GI-MAP:

Akkermansia Muciniphila

Akkermansia colonises the mucus layer of the gut lining, maintains gut barrier integrity, regulates immune function, and plays a central role in metabolic health. Two of its most significant effects are on weight and digestive symptoms. Research consistently shows that people with higher Akkermansia levels have better weight regulation, improved insulin sensitivity, and a reduced tendency toward fat accumulation. On the digestive side, when Akkermansia is low, you often see persistent bloating, irregular bowel habits, and food sensitivities that don’t resolve despite dietary changes. We find it absent or severely depleted in many people with metabolic syndrome, obesity, type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, autoimmune conditions, and post-viral illness including long COVID.

Faecalibacterium Prausnitzii

1. Prausnitzii is one of the most abundant bacteria in a healthy gut and one of the most important anti-inflammatory organisms we look for. It produces butyrate — the primary fuel source for the cells lining your colon, essential for gut repair and keeping inflammation in check. We see it significantly depleted in people with IBD, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and chronic gut inflammation. Its absence is one of the most actionable findings on the GI-MAP.

Bifidobacterium

Bifidobacterium is one of the first bacteria to colonise your gut at birth and remains essential throughout life — for immune function, gut lining integrity, and keeping harmful organisms in check. It declines significantly with age, antibiotics, chronic stress, and poor diet, and its depletion is one of the most common findings we see in people with longstanding digestive and immune issues. Restoring it is often one of the first priorities in a gut restoration plan.

All three can be restored through targeted naturopathic treatment — the right foods, specific prebiotic fibres, butyrate support, and in some cases direct supplementation. Identifying exactly where the gaps are through the GI-MAP means we can target the intervention precisely rather than guessing.

What Happens After the Test?

Once your sample is received and testing is complete, we dedicate 30 to 60 minutes to researching your case — including a direct consultation with the Diagnostic Solutions laboratory about your individual results. This isn’t a generic report review. It’s a case-specific discussion that draws on your full health history and clinical context, with additional research done before we see you again, so that when you come in for your follow-up, a personalised treatment plan is already prepared.

That research time is included in the cost of the test. The difference it makes is significant — you’re not just receiving a report with reference ranges. You’re getting results interpreted by someone who knows your history and has already spent time working out what they mean for you specifically.

We sit down with you at your follow-up and go through every relevant finding — what it means, why it matters, and exactly what we’re going to do about it. Your treatment plan is built around your specific results and typically includes targeted herbal antimicrobials where pathogens or bacterial imbalances are present, probiotics and prebiotics matched to your individual profile, dietary changes to support your microbiome and reduce inflammation, digestive support where enzyme output or fat absorption is low, and gut lining repair where leaky gut is identified — using nutrients like glutamine and zinc that help rebuild the gut wall.

Food intolerances are part of this picture too. In many cases they are not permanent — they are a symptom of a damaged gut lining and a disrupted microbiome. When we restore the gut, tolerance to foods that were previously a problem often returns. That’s a much better outcome than avoiding trigger foods indefinitely.

For more complex cases, we repeat the GI-MAP at three to six months to track progress objectively and adjust the plan as needed.

We order the GI-MAP for clients from Malvern East, Malvern, Toorak, and Glen Iris, and regularly see people coming from Hawthorn, Camberwell, Kew, Carnegie, and Caulfield for functional gut testing.