IBD Clinical Remission | What My Gut Microbiome Test Results Show | An Ulcerative Colitis Case Study

My name is Kenny Honnas and I’ve been in clinical remission from a severe case of Ulcerative Colitis since the end of 2016. Shortly after my diagnosis in 2014, I experienced a flare that was so bad I began filling toilet bowls with pure blood. After weeks of constant bloody diarrhea throughout the day and night, I was eventually hospitalized. I lost 30lbs in two weeks, had four blood transfusions, and was just barely able to avoid having my colon surgically removed. After being released from the hospital, I eventually began studying nutrition. In 2016, after reading several articles and studies on pubmed, I learned that there seems to be a relationship between the pathogenesis of IBD and a dysbiotic gut microbiome. So I wondered what would happen if I optimized my gut microbiome and reversed the dysbiosis. I designed and began following my own gut microbiome optimizing diet which allowed me to finally achieve the level of health I was looking for- which is to be able to consume a full range of foods without bleeding, mucus, urgency or diarrhea; to have well-formed, solid bowel movements; and to be on no medication. 

Quick disclaimer

Just want to be explicitly clear that I am not a doctor, or a dietician, and that the information on this blog and in my videos is based on my personal opinion and should not be taken as medical advice. If you have, or suspect you have, a health condition, you should contact your doctor, or other healthcare practitioner. You should consult with your doctor before making any dietary changes with the intent to treat an illness. I recommend that you follow your doctor’s advice and take medication as prescribed.

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And finally, after years of talking about the gut microbiome and the role I think it played in allowing me to get healthy, I had my gut microbiome tested and we’re going to go over the results and see what the gut microbiome looks like for a person in clinical remission from IBD. Gut microbiome testing is so cool because it can show you what’s happening inside your gut microbiome and determine whether you’re in eubiosis or dysbiosis. It can show you the levels of probiotic microorganisms, the level of pathogenic microorganisms, and thus give you a quantifiable target to aim for as you work to improve the composition of your gut microbiome. And if you do repeat testing, it allows you to see over time if you’re improving or not. Which brings me to the sponsor of this video, Thryve. Thryve is an awesome company that sends you a very simple at-home gut microbiome testing kit that analyzes the state of your gut health and identifies potential problems. The test will ship straight to your door with specific collection instructions. All you have to do is activate your kit, complete the test, and return it. Thryve uses the results of your gut microbiome test to create a personalized food plan to help move your gut microbiome towards eubiosis. The food plan provides recommendations of the types of foods you should be consuming more of and less of to improve the composition of your specific gut microbiome. And something that separates Thryve from its competitors is that Thryve also gives you an option to have a custom probiotic developed for you based on the results of your test. The probiotic is designed to provide specific strains of probiotic microorganisms that your specific gut microbiome needs in order to move towards eubiosis. If you click this link in the description, Thryve will give you a whopping 50% off of your gut microbiome test! https://trythryve.com/Honnas. 
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My Thryve Results → Gut Wellness & Diversity Scores

Okay, let’s get to my Thryve gut microbiome test results. I sent in my test sample on March 31st of 2021, so this is what my gut microbiome looked like about two weeks after my colonoscopy that was performed on March 15th. So once my results were in, I logged onto the Thryve dashboard and the first thing I checked was my overall gut wellness score and my gut diversity score. These two results give a broad view of what’s taking place in the gut microbiome. So my overall gut wellness score was 81% compared to the healthy average population from the American Gut Project which is 62%. My gut microbiome diversity score was 90% compared to 83% of the healthy average population. So according to Thryve, my gut is close to an ideal state. I think this was probably a pretty accurate snapshot of my gut microbiome at the time. This was roughly two weeks after my colonoscopy which showed almost completely healthy mucosa besides two small areas in the cecum and the ascending colon. The two weeks after the colonoscopy leading up to the Thryve gut microbiome test sample, I was back on my protocol trying to improve those two specific areas after a year of eating generally healthy, but NOT following my gut microbiome optimizing protocol, as mentioned in my 2021 colonoscopy video. So again, I think it was probably a pretty accurate snapshot at the time, close to ideal, but not ideal. If my hypothesis about the gut microbiome and its role in the pathogenesis of IBD is correct, my overall gut microbiome score was high enough to keep me in clinical remission, but not quite high enough for complete endoscopic and histologic remission. 

Now, the exact number for the overall gut wellness and gut diversity scores may be somewhat arbitrary. For instance, I did not have my gut microbiome tested either before or soon after my 2018 colonoscopy when I was in clinical, endoscopic, and histologic remission. My scores in both categories at that time may have been a few points higher or lower than my most recent scores. Since Thryve’s numbers are based on the healthy average population from the American Gut Project, it’s possible that the needs of my gut microbiome that are required for me to be in endoscopic and histologic remission differ from the needs and scores of the healthy average population from the American Gut Project. So the point is to not get too hung up on the exact numbers, just to use them as references for the general direction that you need to aim.

Now looking at the homepage on the dashboard you can see that my test results picked up 47,256 microorganisms in my gut microbiome. This is cool data, but it’s so vast that it’s difficult to find actionable steps to take trying to comb through it all by yourself. Luckily, Thryve does most of the heavy lifting for you. If you look over here at My Bacteria Level tab, you can see that while my gut wellness and diversity scores were pretty good, my bacteria levels were only 50% optimal according to Thryve’s assessment. So I click here, and this is cool, you can see that Thryve has isolated 11 bacterial strains, 10 are probiotics and 1 is pathogenic. And Thryve gives you your level compared to the healthy average from the American Gut Project, and highlights if you’re deficient or if you’re in healthy ranges. So I come up here and click sort by status to see which specific strains I need to work on. So my Bifidobacterium looks good, my Blautia looks good, Eubacterium looks good, Faecalibacterium looks good. My levels of Pseudomonas, which is a pathogenic type of bacteria, are in healthy ranges compared to the healthy average population, so that’s good. And finally, my roseburia looks good. My results show that I’m deficient in every other probiotic bacteria on this list. So this is where I need to focus to improve my gut microbiome. Akkermansia is the first probiotic strain that I’m deficient in, and when I click here it gives a description of Akkermansia, the best foods to increase it, and some of the specific benefits of Akkermansia. And I can do that for all of the other strains as well. Alistipes needs work, Bacteroides needs work, Lactobacillus, which is very important- it’s one of the most well-known probiotic strains and plays a major role in the health of patients with IBD- needs work, and Ruminococcus needs work.

And this is where Thryve is just awesome. I come up to my personalized probiotics and you can see Thryve has a probiotic formulated that specifically is meant to help address the strains I’m deficient in. Thryve does this by either adding the deficient probiotic strain directly to the supplement or adding specific probiotic strains to the supplement that will modify the environment of the gut microbiome to encourage the growth of other specific probiotic strains. So this is very cool technology. Now you do have to pay a monthly subscription for the probiotic, so be aware of that. 

And then over here is the personalized food plan that is also meant to help address the probiotic strains you’re deficient in and move the gut microbiome towards eubiosis. The whole idea behind the personalized food list is that while consuming general prebiotic foods is a really great step, each individual person will have specific prebiotic foods that will benefit their gut microbiome more than other prebiotic foods.

So the personal food plan is a really cool feature of gut microbiome testing, however, I want to be clear here. I do not think that Thryve or any gut microbiome testing company is going to make perfect food recommendations all of the time. They’re doing their best to go through a vast amount of data and make the most appropriate recommendations for your gut microbiome. But, after looking at my food recommendations and reviewing the sources listed as evidence as to why these recommendations were made, I actually came to different conclusions on a few foods compared to the conclusions that Thryve came to. So I just want you to be aware that you need to do your due diligence and make sure you understand why a certain food was recommended to be consumed or avoided. With Thryve, you can do this by reading through the sources they have listed, and see if the reasoning for their recommendations make sense and fall in line with the main target of overall eubiosis- as determined by your results shown in the “My Bacteria Level'' tab. I think the majority of Thryve’s recommendations are going to be pretty spot on, but I like to double check. I want to make sure that I understand why the recommendations were made and modify them if I think it’s necessary. 

Okay, so that is what my 2021 post-colonoscopy gut microbiome analysis looks like. My overall gut wellness score was an 81, but my bacteria level was only 50% optimal. Now once again for context, these are my results after a year of eating generally healthy but NOT actually following my gut microbiome optimizing protocol. Anyway, if my overall hypothesis is correct, these were good enough scores to maintain clinical remission and keep my colon looking really healthy. I feel great, I have complete dietary freedom when I choose, and I have no symptoms. However, I definitely have some work to do because I want both of those scores to be way higher, especially the levels of bacteria I’m deficient in. I want to follow best practice and continually work towards improving the gut microbiome, and thus the health of my colon. 

Gut microbiome testing is a really cool way to track your progress and see if what you’re doing is actually working. If you get your gut microbiome mapped, you can integrate your personal gut microbiome data with the general gut microbiome optimizing principles from my Boot Camp series on YouTube or from my online course Biome Optima™. All of the information that has allowed me to get better is available on my YouTube channel for free. However, if you want a condensed, streamlined version of the information without having to hunt through my channel, I recommend Biome Optima™. This course condenses all of the information from my YouTube channel, plus new information, into one succinct and sequential step-by-step educational process. The course is broken down into 5 modules covering mentality, what I believe causes IBD, 7 key gut microbiome optimizing strategies, a list of approved foods and drinks, and ends with a downloadable 5 week sample daily routine and meal plan. You will also get lifetime access to the Team Honnas facebook group. And I do plan to periodically update and add to this course over time as I continue to learn more about this topic.

I am not a doctor or a dietician, and the information in this course is intended only for educational purposes and should NOT be acted upon without the approval and supervision of a licensed physician. Seriously, I want you to be as safe as possible and to err on the side of caution. Please do not act on this information without the supervision of a doctor who knows you, who understands your current level of health, and is aware of the many other health and medical factors that are unique to you.

That being said, I know what it’s like to be sick, I understand the feeling of brokenness, and the mental and emotional fatigue that comes along with it. I also know what it’s like to get better, and to regain freedom. I can’t and won’t promise that you will get better. But, I think it’s important to at least try to work towards improving your situation, whatever it may be. I want your situation to improve, and I think that improved nutrition, exercise, and mentality can go a long way towards making that happen.