Jona Health Review: Microbiome Decoder for Health Conditions

Look, there's nothing better than starting your day by pooping on a little paper hammock attached to the toilet seat and then poking it a few times with a Q-tip. However, this was more of a mental hurdle than a practical one, as collection and disposal (you just flush the hammock when you're done) was fairly simple. Then you dip the stick in the solution, cap it, and send it off. Twenty days later I received an email with the results.

The website breaks down your results into several sections: Summary (with tabs Brain Health, Gastrointestinal Health, Metabolic Health, Skin Health, and Physical Performance), Action Plan (with tabs High Impact, Diet, Lifestyle, and Probiotics), and an Organisms page where shows all organisms found in your sample and their relative abundance. Mine gave me a few surprises.

On the plus side, my microbiome diversity was 4.19, which is above average (normal range is 2.80–3.99, as measured by Shannon index), which he says is a sign of a healthy microbiome, and he didn't find any pathogens or parasites. It says that I digest lactose well (thank God). It found no associations with things like depression, celiac disease, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis, leaky gut, hypertension, eczema, or a host of other things I'm grateful I don't have. Some of them were honestly a little puzzling since I've struggled with insomnia most of my life, but it didn't have any association there or with fatigue, and I'm clearly a tired person.

As for the associations he discovered, some of them were suspicious to me, while others were a complete surprise to me. In the Brain Health section, I had a moderate association with stress and a low association with ADHD, but neither shocked me. The Metabolic Health section listed a “very low” association with prediabetes, which unfortunately I thought would be higher. I had a mild connection to osteoarthritis, which made sense given my family history.

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