OATs organic acid test markers?

hi Brandi

i did the great plains labs one

had raised markers for:
-oxidative stress
-inflammation
-quinolinic acid - ( a marker of brain inflammation )
-bacterial overgrowth

had abnormally low markers for:
-vitamin C - despite supplementing
-glutathione - another key anti-oxidant

basically inflammation was raised and signs of increased oxidative stress with anti-oxidant depletion

have you had your results back or just considering having the test ?

i don't think the genetic element is a large part for most of us

my partner and i had very similar patterns across 90 markers - not all the same but the majority were moved away from the norm in the same directions

i think its a useful test but of all of the tests i have done it required the most work to interpret and get anything useful out of

i did it alongside a comprehensive stool test with parasitology and a sibo breath test to give overall insight into what was going on in my gut - i found using combinations in this way made it more useful

Don't OAT tests show markers relating to Yeast, Mold colonization, etc.? They're supposed to give you clues that those issues are going on?

Did your test show anything for yeast or mold?

I would say all of the markers are of interest when you have chronic illness. I don't know if there are specific patterns for lyme in the OAT, since everyone is so different. For mold illness, there would be potentially low glutathione and more of those mold and yeast metabolites, but even then you could test normal and have the mold test come back positive (which I don't really understand how). My understanding of this test was that my doctor wanted to see what else was going on, and what we could tackle first/see how much improves before getting into antibiotics.

Garzie, I just got my OAT test back with low vitamin c and my functional doctor said she has had maybe one patient ever test within the normal reference range. So she thinks the reference range the lab has decided on is strange and maybe inaccurate, and not to worry about it too much.

Mine C was actually almost 0 too, made me wonder

Yeah my vitamin c was at .63, reference range 10-200. I'm still supplementing but my doctor was not worried.

My glutathione was in normal range. However, it's actually if it's higher that can signal depletion apparently, according to my doctor and the OAT clinical significance booklet: "Elevated values are most commonly caused
by glutathione deficiency due to toxic exposure, such as acetaminophen toxicity. Elevated pyroglutamic acid may also result from a genetic disorder, metabolic effects of certain antibiotics, or intake of certain infant formulas."

My glutathione was at 27 with reference range of 10-33, so thankfully normal but my doctor said it is on the higher side and not entirely ideal, so supplementing won't hurt.

Glutathione is actually in a cascade of antioxidants in the body with glutathione at the top of a pyramid and the others in layers beneath.

Each one is recycled using more of the one from the layer below.

Vitamin C is near the bottom so its depletion is a sign that something is using up the layers above even if those still look somewhat normal.

Then in order to interpret the results we also need to consider what the test considers “normal range”.

For OAT Tests Normal range is usually 2 standard deviations from the mean of a population of supposedly healthy individuals (what criteria used? Sometimes they just use 1000random peoples tests).

So if you are near the limits then 95% of so called “healthy” people have higher levels.

Given the general health status of the population - (some of those people in the test population will have chronic health conditions) so thats not such a good place to be.
Ie 19 out of 20 people had a better result snd some of them were actually ill with something….