I was wondering if anyone has had testing done through genova. I ask for 2 reasons,
I’ve seen writeups online from MDs stating that genovas tests are largely quackery and want to get a second opinion.
Have you gain actionable insight from any of their tests and if so, which ones.
Thanks!
Isaac
In the sense of Genova tests being misinterpreted by quackey health practitioners to justify dubious treatments? Or that the tests themselves are flawed?
I don’t use Genova specifically. But as someone without insurance, I’ve found a ton of value in buying my own blood tests. I’ve specifically taken action after a CRP test catching inflammation, chem/CBC catching cholesterol conversion issues and slowly-rising liver enzymes, and iron/ferritin catching the likely early signs of anemia. And I’ve found general nutritional and stress markers interesting even if they haven’t been as directly actionable.
I get the arguments to avoid “overtesting” though, causing needless worry for things that aren’t actually worth the effort to treat, or might’ve resolved on their own, or been natural variations in people’s levels.
In the sense of Genova tests being misinterpreted by quackey health practitioners to justify dubious treatments? Or that the tests themselves are flawed?
Both, but I’m not sure how much of each. Addressing the later with an example, one of the measurements on genova’s tests for intestinal candida is indole withi high indole levels indicating candida infection. However, it was recently shown that indole is related to transit time with higher indole levels correlating with faster transit times. Since the symptoms of candida and fast transit time (aka diarrhea) overlap one cannot tease out the other. Also, indole and candida is not my strength area so I could be completely wrong. As far as I know from the liturature, candida infection in the small bowel occurs in less than 10% of IBS patients. Satish Rao at Regeants study this along with a Turkish doc (whom i can’t recall the name at the movement).
I get the arguments to avoid “overtesting” though, causing needless worry for things that aren’t actually worth the effort to treat, or might’ve resolved on their own, or been natural variations in people’s levels.
I’ve gotten the overtesting bit before. In my mind, its a very stupid argument (apologies for being so strong about it, but in my mind, as long as you don’t go into financial ruin and the test itself doesnt harm you, I dont see the problem). Every test has a ROC assocated with it and you must take that into account. I have had a doc once tell me with a problem I had that, “if you keep testing, you’ll eventually find something wrong.” Isnt that the point?
WRT your blood testing, where did you get the CRP test done. I would like to get that done.
That’s interesting on the indole, I’ve been wondering if any of the bloodwork providers are going to get in trouble for creating associations between their tests and specific conditions. I’ve seen ads saying things along the lines of “get breast cancer tests here” which might be legally defensible, but might be designed to imply that their blood tests will tell you whether you have breast cancer.
And I agree on your overtesting point. I’ve noticed articles arguing against more testing usually use early cancer detection as an example, with all its difficult tradeoffs and stress. But simple nutritional, gut, and stress markers are often fairly easy to treat, without any real downsides.
If you don’t have a reason to prefer RequestATest, Life Extension is currently the cheapest CRP provider I know of. Same with vitamin D, a test I forgot to mention being helpful to me.
I do price comparisons here if you ever do a lot of repeated testing.
Thanks for the links!
WRT to indole, i could be completely wrong, i just havent seen anything compelling in the literature. I’m happy to be told I’m wrong.
I have taken the GI effects profile test. I got it because I had some digestive issues (bloating, and diarrhea), and my MD recommended it. While I’m not able to prove the validity of the results, the report indicated that my gut biodiversity and population levels are significantly lower than their control population levels. I’m now taking a probiotic each day, mostly because I feel less bloated when eating large meals. I discovered diarrhea was due to taking another supplement, unrelated to taking probiotics.
Thanks for sharing. How were your other markers like calprotectin and siga?
tbh, I don’t know what these are. calprotectin was in the green. don’t see siga anywhere on my report.
were any markers in yellow or red?