Viome scam or not?

[ahhell]

It's got to be BS right?

The claim as far as understand is that they somehow test your internal micro biome and then use that for diet recommendations. Seems like one of those superficially plausible ideas that we can't possibly know enough detail to mean it will work. Last ad I heard they said something about some percentage of people who shouldn't eat spinach? Seriously, how is that a thing, I don't think it is.

 

[novaphile]

Well...

If, like me, you have a tendency to form kidney stones, which, in my case, were calcium oxalate.

Then it's probably a good idea to not eat too much spinach (source of oxalic acid that forms the calcium oxalate).

That's one example of a diet being tailored to a person.

The microbiome stuff is interesting, but I believe that it usually just reflects what a person currently has in their diet.

(i.e. if you routinely eat lettuce, you'll have bacteria that can digest lettuce.)

There are rare, but very interesting, cases where weird gut flora causes astonishing side effects.

Auto-brewery syndrome/ for example:

Auto-brewery syndrome - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

There appear to be many researchers looking at gut biome and mental health:

Gut Bacteria and Neuropsychiatric Disorders - PMC

Bacteria in the gut microbiome plays an intrinsic part in immune activation, intestinal permeability, enteric reflex, and entero-endocrine signaling. Apart from physiological and structural changes brought about by gut bacteria on entero-epithelial ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[novaphile]

Note...

It is entirely possible for scammers to jump onto an emerging field of research, so please don't read the above as being any type of support for 'Viome'.

 

[ahhell]

That's why I say its superficially plausible. There are definitely things where there can be particular foods that particular people should avoid the intestinal biome can impact health in all sorts of ways. I just don't know the science is nailed down enough that this outfit can produce the results they claim.

 

[arthwollipot]

"Superficially plausible" is one of the best starting places for a scam.