The Microbiome Explorer Comprehensive is $549 for Australian adults, and the Essential is $467 for New Zealand adults and Australian children under 6 (plus postage). You can add a written summary of your results for $99, or a full 90-minute consultation with Brad for $650.

Yes. Your kit arrives with everything you need; you collect a small sample at home and post it back to the lab in the packaging provided.

Results generally take a 4 weeks to return from the lab. If you're booking a consultation, schedule it at least four weeks after you send your sample so your results are ready to review.

The consultation is a live 90-minute review with Brad, with a personalised plan and the chance to ask questions as you go. The written summary is a detailed report you read in your own time, the same quality of interpretation, without the live session and on going support.

Yes. You can order the test on its own and take your results to any clinician. If they'd like support reading microbiome reports, Brad also trains practitioners through The Academy by Dr Brad Leech.

Brad is a PhD-qualified clinical nutritionist and the Lead Clinical Educator at Microba, the laboratory behind the Microbiome Explorer. He trains practitioners across the country to read these very reports, so your results are interpreted by someone at the source of the science.

If you've had ongoing gut symptoms, or you simply want to understand your gut health at a deeper level, testing replaces guesswork with data. It's most valuable when paired with expert interpretation, so your results become a clear plan rather than a report you're left to decode alone.

Yes. The Microbiome Explorer Essential is suitable for Australian children under 6, and Brad also works with paediatric gut health. Testing can help make sense of concerns such as eczema, allergies, digestive upset, and recurrent infection.

A microbiome test doesn't treat symptoms on its own, but it can reveal the imbalances behind them so you and your practitioner work from a clear, personalised picture rather than guesswork. It's often most useful for symptoms like bloating, irregular bowel habits, and food reactions that haven't fully settled.

A microbiome test analyses the trillions of bacteria and other microbes living in your gut, from a small stool sample you collect at home. Brad uses Microba's Microbiome Explorer, which reads your microbiome with shotgun metagenomic sequencing identifying which species are present, what they're doing, and the key markers of gut health.

It maps your gut's microbial composition and diversity at species level, the functional pathways your microbes drive, and biomarkers such as calprotectin, zonulin, secretory IgA, and faecal pH, building a detailed picture of your gut ecosystem and the drivers behind ongoing symptoms.

Standard stool tests often rely on older culture or PCR methods that detect only a limited set of organisms. Metagenomic sequencing reads the full genetic material in your sample, so it identifies far more species and what they're actually doing for a far more complete view of your gut.

The Microba Microbiome Explorer uses whole-genome metagenomic sequencing for species-level resolution, processed in an accredited Australian laboratory. Sample handling including transport and temperature is controlled to keep the functional markers reliable.