Viome is a company that provides health insights through gut and blood samples. I took the Gut Intelligence Test on February 2nd, 2021 and I finally got my results back on April 7th. It was too long of a wait, in my opinion. For the price of the tests and the fact that they are health-orientated, there should have been no hiccups in delivering the results in the time that they promised, which was typically 2 weeks when I bought the test, but, now on their site, it says 3-4 weeks. Still, I waited almost 8 weeks as they started processing on February 11th.
This article is going to give insight into my Viome results. If you are interested, you can read about why I got a Viome Gut Intelligence test and my experience waiting for the results in this article.
The Viome App And Website
I’m finding that the Viome app and website aren’t super perfect. There are problems with both.
For instance, this page is my dashboard.
It looks like I should be able to click into the ‘You are on day 5 of the recommendations’, right? But I can’t. It’s not linked to anything, so I don’t know why that arrow is there.
In the beginning, I had some problems seeing my whole list of foods, especially the enjoy foods, on the app. But that seems to have resolved itself, so I’m not sure if there was an app update. In any case, on both the website and on the app, I can see my foods to avoid, foods to enjoy, superfoods, and foods to minimize.
My Avoid List According To Viome
This was interesting to me. In the following screenshot is the entire avoid list, from Barley to Sprouted Wheat Bread.
Most of these things I don’t really eat. I like Brussel sprouts and cabbage, but don’t eat them often. I like pistachios but only have them on family get-togethers. And I have some cauliflower wings occasionally, but other than that I don’t eat a lot of cauliflower. I don’t like broccoli, don’t eat mustard greens or barley, and haven’t eaten prunes in years. I don’t eat a lot of sprouted wheat bread, but I would have ordered that over white bread in a restaurant, so it’s good to know.
The two things I have daily are Coffee and Cashews. In fact, cashews are in some of the staple foods that I was eating every day. It makes sense that it may be causing a problem in my gut. Then again, I eat tomatoes every day and that is on my enjoy list. I’ve seen a lot of people have tomatoes on their avoid list, so I was worried about that.
My husband loves peanut butter, and peanuts were on his avoid list. He eats peanut butter like I eat cashews, so it seems to make sense. I would think that when you eat too much of something it’s more likely to cause problems. But then again, tomatoes…
His avoid list was much shorter than mine. It’s interesting that almonds are on his list because he is allergic to them.
The Enjoy List
Almonds being on his avoid list seems like something relevant towards allergies, but it doesn’t mean anything because he is also allergic to apples, and they are on his ‘Enjoy’ list. So is apricot, which he is allergic to. In other words, the results aren’t totally accurate for everything to do with health.
As a vegan, I try to include a lot of beans in my diet. There are no beans in my enjoy or my superfood list, which is really disappointing. My husband has various beans both in his enjoy and superfood list.
The Superfood List
The superfood list contains foods that are supposed to help you improve your health, according to your health goals and the analysis that they took.
We went out the other day and bought some of the superfoods that Viome recommends, such as alfalfa sprouts, avocado, and arugula, and we’ve been making sandwiches with them.
We both have grapefruit on our superfoods list, which is something I haven’t had in years. We bought that too. Here’s what an explanation of a food recommendation looks like on Viome.
I’ve noticed that since getting my Viome results, I’ve been easily gravitating towards my superfoods. I crave them!
The Minimize List
This is where all my beans are. Black beans, pinto beans, adzuki beans, lima beans, lentils, chickpeas, and navy beans are all on the list. Kidney beans, which are my favorite, are on this minimize list too. However, it doesn’t say why I should minimize them. It just says how much to have. I’m assuming it’s per day.
I don’t know how accurate the serving size recommendations are. One woman in the Viome Facebook group was recommended to take 2 tablespoons of spirulina, and so she did. That resulted in being extremely sick. She contacted the herb place where she bought the spirulina and they told her no more than 2 teaspoons at a time.
I have a recommendation for 1 cup per day of onion. I love onions and eat them every day, but I don’t think I eat a cup worth of it. It seems like a lot.
The Gut Health Score
This is my gut health score.
My husband’s score was 40. It’s hard to believe because I have constant problems with my gut whereas my husband doesn’t. Or maybe I just complain more? But it doesn’t make sense that his gut health would be so similar to mine. Anyway, in this Viome review, I’m just going to talk about my scores.
Here are all my individual scores that make up my Gut Microbiome Health score.
You can go into each score and learn what it means.
Plus, you get information on all the pathways that led to that individual score.
And they give you a list of nutrients that can help you improve the individual score.
You can click on each nutrient to learn about how it benefits your gut health.
You Can Order Precision Supplements Through Viome
If you are in the US, you can get precision supplements through Viome. I’m in Canada, so it’s not available to me.
Apparently, the precision supplements are supposed to be made for you according to your results. I really like this idea and would probably try it if it was available to me. Some people say good things about them, and others said bad things about them, so this is one of those things that I would like to test out for myself.
But I can’t, so I bought the supplements myself through iHerb and Amazon.
We Bought Pretty Much All Our Recommended Supplements
Over the years, my husband and I have spent thousands on supplements. We are big believers in supplementing, so we are constantly looking to see what will help with various things that pop up. This is why it was a no-brainer for us to just go ahead and buy all the supplements recommended. If they improve our gut health, especially mine, we are willing to try.
Trying to buy everything individually was difficult, especially when it came to probiotics. There are no formulations out there that contain exactly what Viome recommends for you, so you have to buy one of these and one of those and they both contain one or two things that may not have been on your recommendation list.
We didn’t find everything on our list, but we found most of it, which we think will be a start to improving our gut health – if it does improve our gut health.
We ended up paying $335 CAD on iHerb plus another $25 CAD on Amazon. It wasn’t cheap, but we are always willing to put money towards our health.
It would have been cheaper to get the supplements made by Viome as they are $59.95/month which would probably be about $74 per month CAD. Too bad they only offer US customers them.
You Get A List Of Active Microbes
You get a list of your active microbes, including bacteria, archaea, eukaryotes, probiotics, and viruses. I was excited about this. I thought it was going to give me a lot of insight into my gut health.
On the Viome Facebook page, I saw a lot of people talking about their viruses, but I only had two show up.
Every time I searched for the Nonanavirus, Covid19 kept popping up. It wasn’t until I realized I was spelling it wrong that I got a different result, but it tells me nothing.
I have been searching and can’t tell you what the Nonanavirus is yet. I asked on the Facebook group and got this response, and upon looking it up, it still didn’t help me understand what the heck was going on.
And when I search for the Proteus phage vB_PmiS-TH, the only information I can find is that it’s related to UTIs. I don’t know how that ended up in my stool, but according to Viome it’s there!
In short, I’ve searched through my bacteria, archaea, eukaryotes, and probiotics, and to be honest, I can’t tell you much about what they mean for my health. I know that some bacteria are good, and some aren’t good, but that’s kind of what I already knew – there would be good and bad bacteria in my gut. On an individual level, they mean nothing to me so far.
The Problem With Viome’s Results
You do get a lot of information with Viome’s results, and I’m sure that some of the stuff that I don’t have any use for right now will come in handy knowing in the future.
However, when I sent off my Viome test, I started having lower abdominal pain daily. I stopped eating cashews and drinking coffee for about a month because I didn’t want to put anything but fiber and water into my mouth. I did notice that a lot of symptoms I have always had, such as the sudden urge to go to the bathroom or painful diarrhea cleared up. I had better bowels than I have ever had, so I wonder if taking those two things out was helpful.
That’s the problem with Viome results taking so long to get to you. I changed a lot of things in my diet when the pain started and persisted, so the results would have been more beneficial to me earlier… and likely more accurate. I don’t know how my gut has changed since I’ve taken the Viome test, so I don’t know how accurate the Viome results are.
I asked Viome this question through Facebook chat before my results came in. Here’s my question and their answer.
I don’t know about that. I guess I’m not a professional gut analyzer.
I do know that I’m not wasting the money on it, so we have decided to follow the guidelines and see what happens. I’ll write a follow-up post in about a month or two after following Viome’s recommendations.
Honestly, I feel like for all the time I waited for my results, my next test should have been offered at a discount. But that didn’t happen. And I know a lot of people are waiting for their results still and I haven’t heard anyone say they are being offered a discount on the next one.
After all that, if you are interested in Viome, we bought ours off the Viome website for about $250 CAD each. But I’ve noticed that they also sell their tests on Amazon and it may be cheaper there for you. Make sure to compare prices as they are different everywhere I look.
If you have any questions about my Viome results, please ask in the comments below.ย
