I got my results back from Viome.com today!
I’m so excited. 😊🔥
If you didn’t read my post about my first steps with self-experimentation, you can read that for the back story.
And if you aren’t familiar with Viome, here is their pitch in a nutshell:
YOU, DECODED. Health insights, personalized food recommendations, and precision supplements, formulated just for you.
I decided to invest $199 in their at-home test for two reasons: one, I knew that my gut health had a lot to do with how I converted food into energy and I didn’t know how else to test that, and, two, I knew that my mitochondria were the basic power plants of my body and I didn’t know how else to test their health.
Viome offers both tests and I was willing to pay the price of admission just to see what they are even tracking for gut and mitochondrial health. This entire experience is an education for me in how the body generates energy.
One doubt I have to share – the skeptic in me wonders if these tests are simply a front for Viome to sell expensive supplements. It is obvious that Viome makes their money off of their supplements, not their testing. Could they be fiddling with my results in order to sell more supplements? I suppose it is possible. Am I still going to try their supplements? Yep, and here’s why. First, their test confirmed my concerns. My gut health is average, but my mitochondrial health is poor. They are at least tracking in the general direction of what I suspected. This doesn’t mean their tests are necessarily accurate, but my curiosity is piqued. Second, their science seems robust. Viome just published this article in Nature about how their tests can detect early signs of cancer. They have tested over 300,000 individuals, they have FDA approval for their testing, and the reviews online seem mostly positive (some shipping/processing issues). Third, I would try this just to learn what biomarkers they are tracking, what supplements they are recommending, and what food they believe influences my gut and mitochondrial health. That alone seems worth $200 for me.
So, to the results! Viome currently breaks your results down into six categories (but they seem to be adding more health checks yearly):
- Gut Microbiome Health – Our gut bacteria are as vast and mysterious as the Milky Way. About 100 trillion bacteria, both good and bad, live inside our digestive systems. Optimizing our microbial functions can help us achieve a healthy weight, boost energy, reduce stress, improve sleep, and strengthen our immunity.
- Cellular Health – Your Cellular Health score offers a complete picture of what is happening in the human body on the cellular level and takes into account the aging of your cells, cellular stress, cellular inflammation, along with the health of your mitochondria. If your Cellular Health score is not optimal or low, this can mean that your cellular functions are not performing efficiently, your energy production is low, or your cells are undergoing stress due to oxidative stress, inflammation, or environmental toxins.
- Mitochondrial Health – Your Mitochondrial Health score is an integrative score that assesses the efficiency of the functions of your mitochondria that are required to meet your body’s energy and metabolic demands. If your Mitochondrial Health score is not optimal, it could mean that your cells are not receiving enough energy to function efficiently, resulting in accelerated aging, and poor metabolism, cardiovascular, and brain health.
- Immune System Health – Your Immune System Health score assesses your immune response based on the inflammatory activities throughout your body as well as inside of your gut. If this score is not optimal, it means that your immunity is low and your immune system’s preparedness to invading bacteria or viruses needs support.
- Stress Response Health – Your Stress Response Health score combines insights from your microbiome-induced stress factors as well as your cellular functions that get activated in response to various triggers of cellular stress. If your Stress Response score is low or not optimal, it could mean that your microbiome is under stress due to either excess salt or protein, or toxins produced by the microbiome as a result of an unbalanced diet. It could also mean that your cellular stress is high which can be triggered by things like environmental toxins, free radicals, or lifestyle related stress.
- Biological Age – Your Biological Age assesses the efficiency of your cellular activities and your gut microbial activities in order to determine how well you are aging in comparison with your chronological age. If your Biological Age is substantially higher than your chronological age, this means that at a cellular level, your body is aging faster compared with other people your age.
Here were my scores:
- Gut Microbiome Health – 46 (average)
- Cellular Health – 30 (poor)
- Mitochondrial Health – 35 (poor)
- Immune System Health – 56 (average)
- Stress Response Health – 65 (average)
- Biological Age – 18 (good)
Strangely, I’m thrilled that this test identified my cellular health and mitochondrial health as poor. That means we might have identified my issue and Viome might have recommendations that can help me. It would also be nice to raise my average scores up to good, but I will be focused on fixing my energy production in my cells and mitochondria.
The only surprise for me was their estimation of my biological age. I always felt like an 18 year old on the inside, but apparently my organs agree. I guess that’s good news but I’m not sure what to do with it.
After Viome gives you your scores, they offer two types of recommendations: food and supplements.
For food, they break their recommendations down into four categories:
- Superfoods
- Enjoy
- Minimize
- Avoid
For each recommendation, they list a reason why this particular food is either good or bad for you. For example, with anchovies (weird) for me, Viome says, “
Anchovies contain essential fatty acids which are a class of unsaturated fatty acids. After an analysis of your gene expression and taking your questionnaire data into account, it has been determined that anchovies in your diet will be optimal for you. Essential fatty acids are critical for a stable microbiome. They increase microbial diversity and beneficial butyrate-producing bacteria. Butyrate is anti-inflammatory and promotes a strong gut lining by tightening the junctions between cells. Studies indicate that essential fatty acids nourish your brain, enhance gut health and decrease inflammation.
Then Viome very kindly lists a few research articles I can peruse to learn more about essential fatty acids:
For the foods I should avoid, like bell peppers and paprika, they said that viruses from those plants were found in my samples and that I should avoid them for now. If I retest in six months, that might change. However, for other foods I should avoid like shrimp and watermelon, Viome simply states that they contain compounds that can potentially change into a more harmful form and that avoiding them may improve my score. Again, they link to articles I can read. I will investigate these more.
Viome’s final recommendation is a subscription to their personalized supplements. These supplements run anywhere between $50 a month to $150 a month depending on whether you just get the pre-biotics or the cellular health or the whole kit and caboodle. I am interested in the Cellular health supplements in particular because I’ve been researching some of the ones they recommended already like COQ10.
For my recommended supplements, the list is long, so I won’t put them all down here. But at the bottom of the page, they tally up the total and say that if I were to purchase all those supplements separately (and at the random doses that come in the bottle) that my total cost per month would be $342.
Perhaps this is a good deal. They also offer 20% off the cost for the first three months and that seems like a reasonable trial period. I think I will test these supplements out and report back on how they go.
So those are my results from Viome! For my next steps, I’m looking forward to trying out the dietary recommendations and tracking my energy levels. I am also looking forward to getting my supplements and tracking those for a few months. I will keep you posted and upload pictures as I go.
Thanks for following along!
1 Comment