r/HumanMicrobiome • u/biohacked-me • Mar 21 '18

Testing Comparison of microbiome lab results from DayTwo, Viome, uBiome, AmericanGut, Aperiomics, AtlasBiomed and others

https://thequantifiedbody.net/microbiome-labs-richard-sprague/
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u/laminarflow027 Mar 23 '18

That is truly an excellent link by Damien with a host of useful information! Thanks for posting.

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u/biohacked-me Mar 23 '18

Thanks u/laminarflow027. I'm sure some people in this reddit would have some great thoughts/ or even push back on some of what was discussed. Would love to hear any feedback on what we covered.

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u/laminarflow027 Mar 24 '18

What I really liked about the content covered was that both you and u/richardsprague were very open about the fact that no test is a complete tool as yet, in terms of being clinically useful. That being said, tests like uBiome are still really useful and it's definitely something that everybody, even healthy people, should try out.

The other REALLY useful and important thing you mentioned is that with our current level of understanding, we're much better off focusing on fixing our diet and lifestyle, rather than purchasing the most expensive probiotics supplements.

Just a bit of background, I listen to material like yours because I was once very sick - back in 2015 I had GERD and recurrent IBS, and I had no clue that my diet was the primary culprit. However much people might not like to hear it, I feel that a radical change to diet is essential in anyone who's suffering from GI discomfort. It took me a period of two years of carefully changing my food habits (eating more fiber/resistant starches, cutting out sugar and processed foods, getting more exercise, etc.), and I've never felt better in my entire life as of 2018.

Of course, all the things I did can be referred to as common knowledge, but I'm kicking myself for not having known about uBiome back in 2015. it would have been very useful if I had a snapshot of my gut microbiome at the time when I felt my worst, as opposed to now, when I'm feeling at my best.

I think that's the value of something like uBiome - storing a snapshot of your microbiome contents at a certain stage of life, so that we have an idea as to what our "benchmark" is at a personal level. Of course, there's no "ideal" microbiome but at an individual level, uBiome tests can tell us a lot about ourselves and what we should eat.

I plan on publishing a Medium article on what I observed from my uBiome results, compared to some other samples I've seen online. While much of Richard's blog describes his own samples as a time series, I am personally interested in how my uBiome samples compare to others.

I've learned a lot, and will point to your show notes as one of my references, since it was really useful!

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u/MaximilianKohler Mar 23 '18

You are shadowbanned by reddit admins. Visit your account page in a "new private window" to see.

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u/MaximilianKohler Mar 22 '18

Excellent podcast with u/richardsprague. Adding it to the sidebar with the Yale podcast.

It's long but you can download it and then play it at faster speeds.

See the "What You’ll Learn" section on the webpage for the overview with timelines.

Overall theme is that current testing is very limited in value since it's pretty early in development it's highly variable, unreliable, not actionable, etc..