Viome Review – How To Test Your Poop At Home

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I’ve been on a healing journey the past few years and have been wanting to have comprehensive feedback on what’s going on in my body.  I started off with a full blood panel including a food sensitivity (dietary antigen) test, hormone (DUTCH) test, and also a heavy metals test.  One of the main things I had left was a stool test.  Not exactly one I was excited about, but I knew it was a crucial piece to the puzzle of determining overall health, especially when it comes to the gut.

I had done most of my previous tests in my functional doctor’s office so I decided to check out at-home testing options and came across Viome.  I ordered it with a healthy dose of skepticism but was curious to see the results.

Related: Brew Your Own Kombucha at Home

From Viome’s website:

Mi·cro·bi·ome

/,mīkrō’bīōm/

A person’s microbiome is the entire collection of microbes living in and on the body. The microbiome forms a living layer over your skin and parts of the inside of your body, including the lungs and the digestive tract, from the mouth all the way down to the colon.

When the microbes in your gut are out of balance, your body can’t absorb nutrients the way it should. The result of this is inflammation, the root of almost every chronic disease.

The Process

Once I mailed in my stool sample, it took a few weeks to get my results back.  Once they were ready, I was able to view them in the Viome app.  My results were broken down into 4 main categories:

1. Foods To Avoid
2. Microbiome Profile
3. Personalized Supplement Recommendations
4. Superfoods To Consume 

Foods To Avoid

The tomato virus was not something I had ever heard of before, but I eat a TON of tomatoes and tomato-based products, so this one was disappointing to see.  I’m going to try to reduce and maybe eliminate tomatoes for a while to see how it makes me feel.

 

 

Microbiome Profile

Viome said that my intestinal barrier health was good, which contradicts my other blood tests that indicated I had severe leaky gut issues, so I’m not sure I believe that one.

 

 

 

Personalized Supplement Recommendations

Honestly, I’m not familiar with most of the supplement ingredients below, so I’ll be doing more research to learn what they are and where I can find them.  Not sure how many of them I will try, but it’s good to have the list.

 

 

Superfoods To Consume

Thankfully most of these are foods that I love to eat already, so it won’t be a stretch to up my intake!

So, is Viome worth the price?  My answer is, it depends.  If you’re ONLY testing with Viome and nothing else, I don’t think it gives you the full picture that you need.  Like I mentioned above, Viome indicated that my intestinal barrier health was good but I know that I still have major issues with leaky gut, so I don’t completely trust their science.  It did have some overlap with my blood food allergy test, but definitely missed some of the foods I am highly reactive to according to my blood tests.

Viome gave me some insight into possible sources of inflammation in my body (the tomato virus) that I hadn’t found in other tests, so that was helpful information.   It can be a useful tool when combined with other types of tests, but I would not recommend relying solely on its results to determine your gut and microbiome health.

If you’re interested in ordering a Viome testing kit, you can use code PLANKING10 for $10 off your kit.

Have you used Viome or other at home tests like this?  Let me know your thoughts, if so.

Thanks for reading.

Emily