Although I'd had visions of a futuristic laboratory straight out of a science fiction movie, SureSceen, located off a picturesque country lane in Derby, looked like a manor straight out of a Jane Austen novel, from the exterior at least.
The laboratory offers analysis into everything from endangered species to engineering, but I'm particularly interested in one area of the business - health and wellbeing.
Upon my arrival, I was welcomed into the gentile front parlour for a cup of tea with DNA forensic scientist Troy Whyte, who kickstarted the company's gut and nutritional health branch, neovos, after his wife became pregnant with their first child.
According to Troy, the first 1000 days of a baby's life is known as 'the window of opportunity', - the period when a child's gut goes from having no bacteria, to having more than 2,000 bacterial species.
Troy told the Mirror: "In that time, what the baby eats and drinks, what it sees, who it speaks to, whether you've got a pet, whether it has medicine and antibiotics, it really shapes the gut microbiome for the rest of its life".
Unfortunately, people living in the UK have some of the worst gut health in the world, mainly due to our diet of heavily processed food and a general disconnection from nature.
This can affect everything from your immune system to your mental health, well-being and energy levels, but it's not being spoken about enough.
An estimated 17 per cent of people in the UK suffer from IBS, but the actual number is more likely 33 per cent, given that the "taboo of poo" often prevents sufferers from seeking help.
This is a taboo Troy wants to tackle, and advises that you should be taking a look at your poo every time you go, remarking that "the shape, the size, the consistency can tell you a lot about your health and whether you're getting the right food".
The UK also doesn't fare too well when it comes to nutritional health, which Troy became more interested in when weaning his first baby.
The then-new father was left "shaken to the core" by the amount of ultra-processed food on supermarket shelves that professes to be nutritious, but is really anything but.
Admittedly, I've been guilty of picking up "convenient" ready meals after a long shift, without always looking too far down the ingredients list, and by this point, I was beginning to hear alarm bells.
Troy advised: "Generally, when you look at a label and it contains five, six, seven, eight ingredients, and it's things that you don't understand, it's probably an ultra-processed food which you need to try and avoid.
"You need to bring things back to basics and go for whole foods, minimally processed, and that's around fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts, legumes, beans, all that kind of stuff."
With a focus on improving awareness of gut and nutritional health, SureSceen offers a DNA analysis service. People wanting to get a clearer picture of their health will send in blood tests or stool samples, to be analysed by Troy and the team.
Naturally, Troy's day is carefully set up for optimum gut health. After being woken up by his three-year-old and one-year-old at 6am, Troy pours himself a glass of homemade kefir, a fermented milk drink packed with good bacteria and probiotics.
By 7:30am, Troy is already in the lab, busily pipetting and extracting samples ready for analysis. Some days, he'll be looking at blood samples for Vitamin D and Omega-3 levels, and other days he'll be "sifting through poo samples" for gut testing.
Troy joked that this was probably why he "doesn't eat breakfast until 10am". The real reason however is because he feels "far more energised" when he delays his breakfast of overnight oats, contrary to the "fiction" that you should get up and have breakfast bright and early.
During this fascinating yet at times frightening chat with Troy, it was already 10:15 am - well over four hours since I ate my big bowl of porridge with blueberries.
Thankfully, Troy reassured me that oats make for an excellent gut-friendly breakfast choice, especially when compared to the seemingly-healthy granola, which he describes as one of the "worst breakfasts you can have".
Troy revealed: "[Granola gives you] this huge glucose spike which makes you feel dreadful, and then you're starving again in an hour, and then you're looking for that next spike".
Admittedly, I've been feeling a bit sluggish recently and so was keen to know what sort of vitamins might perk me up a bit, so it was time for a test.
Wanting to save the Mirror photographer from complete mortification, I opted for the Vitamin D and Omega 3 finger-prick kits, leaving the stool sample kit firmly in its packing for now.
Although slightly lightheaded after squeezing out a few drops of blood, I felt newly energised to see whether or not a potential vitamin deficiency could be the cause of my fatigue and general low mood.
By 10:30 am, while the samples are in process, Troy is usually deep into the latest research, before having his second meal of the day and a digestion-friendly post-lunch stroll.
At 1 pm, the samples are ready to be loaded onto various analytical machines, with 40 samples left to run for 20 hours. The samples from the previous day are then taken off and popped onto the portal, where Troy reviews them from his sit-stand desk.
The team gets a range of samples from all over the country, sent in from people with a range of different body types, so Troy ends up spotting a number of common and somewhat alarming trends.
Troy revealed: "One of the things you see regularly is people feeling tired, not having motivation, feeling a bit blue, feeling a bit rubbish - and we get a big spike in that in January, February, March.
"That's no surprise to some people because your Vitamin D levels are going to be at your lowest during these months because your skin's not able to manufacture Vitamin D through the sunlight between September and March.
"So you've run out of your levels, you're no longer manufacturing, you're not getting much Vitamin D from your diet because it's very difficult to. So if you're not supplementing, your Vitamin D levels are low."
An Omega-3 imbalance is also an all too common find among people in the UK, according to Troy, who explained that "Omega fatty acids make up all the cells in our body, including our brain, so it can contribute to many, many health issues."
I set off before the next part of Troy's day - the research and development team catch-up meeting to discuss the development of new tests for Vitamin B12 - and was already considering the most gut-friendly, vitamin-packed evening meal I could rustle up.
Troy himself enjoys a daily homemade kombucha - a fermented drink made up of tea, sugar, bacteria, and yeast, before tucking into his tea at 6 pm. He then won't eat until 10 am the following day, giving him a full 16 hours without eating.
After getting home, I began to seriously consider my own evening routine. Like many people with busy lives, I often end up eating my dinner way too late and am partial to a nighttime snack in front of the telly. I was intrigued to see whether my results could point me in the right direction.
A week later, I received my Vitamin D results back. I was indeed deficient, which didn't exactly shock me given how exhausted I'd been.
I was surprised however to find out my Omega-3 levels were insufficient, having never really considered this before. According to Troy, insufficient Omega-3 can affect your mental health, and so further explained why I'd been feeling so low.
Just a few weeks on, and I've begun to feel a difference, after making a few positive changes, and have booked in to see my GP about the next steps to take.
Going forward, I will now absolutely think more carefully about the vitamins in my food, and how I can give myself a boost. The very welcome burst of May sunshine has also done wonders.
Do you have a health-related story to share? Email us at julia.banim@reachplc.com
