- Gut Microbiome Test Kit | Analysis & Personalized Plan for Digestion

I’ve received my Viome Gut Intelligence results and recommendations and overall I am very pleased with what I am learning and the insights I can take action on to improve my health. I have been reading a lot about the microbiome the past year with many articles talking about its importance and connections to good or bad health. I started eating more yogurt and added kefir to my diet. But I truly didn’t know if that was the right thing to do. I heard from a friend about Viome and that they are able to measure the activity of all those bacteria, parasites, fungi, viruses and phases that live in my GI tract. Perhaps most importantly Viome is able to use this technology to determine a very personalized diet - food by food. I knew that most diets just didn’t work so this started to make sense. I received my kit, collected a small stool sample, answered some questions on the Viome smartphone app and sent my sample back to the lab. Pretty simple process. My results and recommendations now appear on my app in a pretty user friendly format. Viome gives me some useful indexes of various aspects of my health and of course lists of foods I should eat often or avoid. It’s pretty neat that by clicking on a food the app told me exactly what in my microbiome was triggering that recommendation. So I understood why they were making that personalized recommendation for me. I feel confident that by following these food recommendations my overall health will improve. I plan on reporting back after a month on the program so I can share my progress. The experience so far has been great and inspires confidence in the results.

It's pretty awesome knowing what organisms are living in your gut, and what they eat!! So let's make them happy, and let the bad ones starve. I made the mistake, though, of making a 'superfood' smoothie with many of my recommended superfoods. The reason it was a mistake was that I used a ton of pomegranate seeds. While they may be a superfood for me - they are way too fibrous to enjoy in a drink and so it sucked. Maybe there's a way I can get my insurance to pay for this next time.

The first gut test was fantastic, I recommended VIOME to all. I lost 50lb without effort..and felt great. The do not eat foods were the usual culprits, sugar, processed foods, white flours. Then hit a stalemate. Thought it was time for a second test. This time went for the more expensive genetic version. It took over 3 months to process. Even though they suggest a new test every 3 months, in this case they said the body doesn’t change that fast. Red flag for false advertising. The test results did not have a good effect on me. Weight gain and fatigue..and more foods added to the do not eat list…normally healthy foods like broccoli. Still I followed the plan…with increasing dissatisfaction. Finally, tried a third time, the basic gut test again. Still more foods on the do not eat list..healthy foods. Foods that had been on the previous super food list. Surely, following VIOME plan should be making my gut healthier not creating a decreasing number of food choices! Asking questions of VIOME is useless, just mechanical parrot responses…once they have your money…they couldn’t care less. What is their end game? It seems to ‘be making people sicker so they might subscribe to their ridiculously expensive supplement plan.. do not subscribe to this company ..a good thing gone bad.

I not the biggest fan of the apps inability to control/manage the subscription process. The findings and recommendations on food have been spot on. It told me I needed to give up coffee. Begrudgingly I did so, and my gut function improved at least 50%. I only wish there was more explanation associated with some of the suggestions.

I was first told about this product from a friend who has struggled with being sick with all sorts of ailments over the years. He has tried so many different diets to help boost his immune system. He told me that this kit helped me understand his gut health better than any doctor ever could. I am a very healthy eater but was wondering what the "super foods" for me and what foods i should avoid even though they are healthy foods. Sure enough two of the healthier foods i eat almost daily, bell peppers and chickpeas are foods i should avoid. The reasons i should avoid them are listed and explained in the app or on the website in my user profile. Not only do i know what foods to avoid but also foods to minimize for differing reasons. I however like to look at the foods that i can enjoy and my superfoods. It is super easy to look up foods on the app to make sure they are healthy for my gut before i make a shopping list for the grocery store. Obviously now the task at hand is to follow through with limiting the foods i should minimize and try to nix the foods i should avoid completely. Overall the process was super simple and user friendly. The app on your smartphone is completely user friendly and simple to understand. I was notified through the app when my test results were ready and if i have any questions about the findings i could ask through the app. I am excited to see how my body reacts due to my diet change. I would like to be able to see how my gut health improves overall and am interested in seeing if there is an option for that through Viome, but for now i am overly pleased and excited about the results and the easiness of the overall process.

Honestly I have been a little suspicious of a lot of these tests out there, but I keep hearing about the "microbiome" diet and I'm seeing a lot of articles are out there now about gut health and the relation to conditions people have. While I do not have a serious condition, I do feel I struggle with which diet to follow. There's a lot of different arguments for each. I've been on Keto for awhile. It was working well, but the effects seems to have worn off. So it was a friend who actually referred me to Viome which I found on Amazon. Thank you Amazon Prime! I received the kit and found it pretty easy to collect the sample. Never thought I would be scooping up poop to figure out my diet, but it was painless- anything for science right? I had a few questions for their customer service about some of the things I had read and they were very helpful and honest. I think a lot of companies on the forefront of something new face similar growing pains, but they addressed all my questions. The questionnaires are lengthy but honestly, I appreciated it. I've sent in my sample and I'm now waiting on results. My friend had some pretty great results on it including weight loss and some issues he had with pain in his stomach, so I'll update my review and let you guys know!

Viome does not provide quantitative results for the microbial species identified. Instead it provides a long list of "active" microbes and a set of scores across gut functional activities and pathways. Score calculation is proprietary and is explained only at a high level. Results are available only after answering a very lengthy and unnecessarily personal questionnaire and it hard to say whether scores and recommendations are based on on objective results or also subjective answers to the survey. One has to rely solely on Viome's assessment and recommendations without having an access to any quantitative measures of species prevalence/activity and relations of active species to the pathways.

Love how this test is not just for the sake of knowing the numbers or about all these crazy-science-named things of the gut, but that it translates those numbers into "SO don't eat this for 3 months, don't eat that for 6 months, take these vitamins and eat these super foods to heal your gut and be able to eat those other things again in the future without harming your body" - what doctor ever did that after your $700 gut test? The doc only cares about "yup, all looks normal enough to keep going" and not about getting into proper balance to protect against illnesses in the future - or truly making food your medicine. LOVE IT - great results, got to a healthy weight, no more tummy pain with eating, no more bloating, and I just overall feel so much better since testing and following the recommendations annually for the past 3 years. Can't recommend it enough!

I cannot recommend this product, it turns out that you really have to buy the Health Intelligent Test (not offered on Amazon CA) instead of this test, very poorly communicated on the web site This test is an additional $300, the test I bought only will give some vague information about food that you cannot eat that you probably already were avoiding and some very general scores Not worth the money you spend.