The Root Cause Medicine Podcast · Rupa Health

Testing Kids: Gut, Genes and Metabolomics

·58 min·3 clips

A five-year-old's gluten antibody response was greater than 500 on a GI map.

Dr. Kate Kresge opens by asking what it would look like to catch pediatric disease before it settles in. She speaks with Dr. Lauren Hernandez, Chief Medical Officer at KidsWell and a voice in pediatric functional medicine. The conversation focuses on earlier testing as a way to understand chronic illness in children. Gut health, genomics, and comprehensive blood work come up as tools for finding patterns routine care may miss, and the guest argues that those tools can help prevent disease rather than only react to it. The episode says conditions like insulin resistance, celiac disease, and thyroid dysfunction are being found in children as young as two or three. One of the clearest moments is a story about a son who went fully gluten-free; after that, he grew inches, his hair thickened, his rash disappeared, and his behavioral issues and mood improved. That story is used to show how a GI map can surface problems that would otherwise stay hidden. The conversation treats the gut as a place where microbiome imbalance, gluten issues, immune dysfunction, inflammation, blood in stool, chronic infection, and parasites may show up. The guest stresses that test results should lead to something practical: support the microbiome, investigate gluten, assess immune function, and look for inflammatory or infectious processes. The host keeps translating the technical material into parent-facing language. The result is a clear case for earlier, broader testing in pediatrics and for looking for root causes before symptoms become a lifelong label.

As heard by us

A practical case for earlier testing when children keep getting missed.

The episode argues for looking earlier and looking more closely when children keep showing stubborn symptoms. Dr. Kate Kresge and Dr. Lauren Hernandez keep the focus on practical testing, especially gut health, genomics, and comprehensive blood labs, and the discussion is…

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Why you'd press play

You want a clearer map for a child who keeps feeling off.

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