Ombre Labs Review – Our Verdict

Ombre Labs Review Summary

Ombre Labs Review Contents

About The Brand

Self-care with science from your home. Ombre provide at-home microbiome health tests to identify strain-specific probiotics targeted to address your symptoms and improve your overall wellness

Ombre (formerly Thryve) are a gut health testing company in the at-home microbiome niche. The service is actually centred on a single test that screens your microbiome in order to recommend a course of supplements that might help improve any inefficiencies in your gut. 

Your microbiome is the mass of microorganisms that live in our bodies helping us function as humans. These good bacteria help with our immune systems, they are integral for digesting food and they protect us against the bad bacteria that cause sickness and disease. 

The balance of bacteria can be measured through screening our microbiome, which is where the Ombre tests come in. By testing our stool or vaginal samples, they can assess the diversification of our body bacteria and make diet suggestions that might bring about the kind of harmony required for a healthier balanced lifestyle. 

Your microbial DNA is compared with a vast microbiome research database, which has been referenced in the process of recommending diet enhancements and probiotic supplements that are aimed at improving your overall gut health and wellness.

The platform

Ombre has a very simple website, you’re either buying a test kit to start your journey with them on their health program or you’re already familiar with your dietary needs and are simply there to top on your probiotics. Either way, the shop is very simple with a small number of products, you’ll find it very difficult to get lost on this site.

What tests

Ombre are a microbiome testing company, that offers a simple gut health test and vaginal health test

Value

Microbiome screening is a relatively new niche of the diet and nutrition industry so it's a fairly uncompetitive market at this time. Ombre has one of the most competitively priced test kits, which is designed to help you make a decision on whether to enroll in one of their probiotic supplement programs, so they hope that you’ll become a loyal supplement consumer once you’ve completed their at-home tests.

Test kits

Whilst this sounds complicated in the sense that we’re DNA screening, the actual sample collection is very simple and is something we’ve all done many times before. Stool collection requires the unease of dealing with your own fecal matter, your poo! Swab your dumps and send them back to the lab in the sealed kits provided in your test box.

Vaginal swabs are similar in the sense that you're swabbing internally, to get a sample of the standard discharge and secretion that we create. Swabs are packed and sealed and sent off to the lab in pre-post envelopes that come in your kits.

Other info

The tests are simple to use and the website is very much an efficient design. The whole process was simple.

Service Quality

Simplicity is the key with Ombre, they have two very reasonably priced test kits and a small set of supplements designed to support the outputs of your test results. It's very uncomplicated as a process and highly recommended if you want to identify inefficiencies within your microbiome.

Buying a test

Buying these tests is very simple. The website is set up like a standard eCommerce store, so you should be familiar with how to purchase a kit using basic webshop and checkout functionality. The store only has 13 items listed as products with 2 of those being their test kits. If you’re still uneasy with the layout, the shop has a filter so you can identify the test kits from their supplements.

Shipping

Shipping was pretty fast and tests arrived within the 3-5 business days. The box came in a discreet package with no branding or no indication of what was inside. The test came with a prepaid return box, fully addressed back to their labs.

Taking the test

The tests are very easy to take and are pretty simple if you’re familiar with taking swab samples yourself at home. The kits are fairly standard across the board so there are no surprises in the box. As expected the equipment was well packaged and instructions were easy to follow. 

Stool and vaginal sample collection could be considered a delicate process and might make some of us a little uneasy. So do be prepared for that, it's a sensitive area and can be daunting at first, but it couldn’t be any simpler once you get over the nature of the process.

Results

The results take a little longer than other at-home tests for things like infections or things like organ functions. The sample screening can take some weeks to process, so microbiome testing does take a little longer than say an infection test with a blood sample. 

The results were detailed and actionable, giving tangible symptom-based risk factors rather than blind data. The outputs show where we can supposedly improve in areas of our lifestyle like sleep and anxiety with some diet and nutrition changes.

Service Specs
Purchase	Online Store
Shipping	Free In 3-5 Business Days
Collection Types	Stool or Vaginal Swabs
Results	Online – 3 Weeks, Once Received By Lab
Customer Service	Email

Test Accuracy

Labs

Ombra is front end service their a direct to consumer business, but they partner with testing labs that carry out the complicated science on their behalf. Their partner laboratories are ISO 9001/22000 compliant. Their probiotic manufacturing facilities are also ISO9001, SMS, and GMP certified.

Tests

The tests look at 10,000+ bacterial species but the results only show the ones that are statistically significant to your profile. Ombre uses Illumina MiSeq Machines to conduct 16s rRNA microbial sequencing on the v4 region bringing in roughly 10-15M reads per run. This can then determine the total abundance and distribution of bacteria in the stool sample, so they can recommend diet and nutrition enhancements based on the balance or imbalance of your results.

The company

Ombre partners with ISO compliant labs and are therefore detached from the testing process, meaning they’re not handling the sensitive part of the arrangement. This means you’re samples and test kits are processed by a professional and secure lab and not a direct to consumer partner like Ombre. Your results are kept private on the Ombre database and you have an option to opt-in and opt-out of sharing your results anonymously for research purposes.

People

The leadership team alone at Viome highlights the appetite and ambition for success with this enterprise. It's not wholly evident who’s actually behind Ombre. According to their website, they have partnered with expert medical associates, but it's not clear what they’re on the board to do.

How To Buy

Where to buy

To start your journey with Viome you have two options with two tests. You either buy a single test on its Ombre promotes a supplement program as part of its product offering. The tests are designed to uncover health risks that might lead you to improve your diet with some of the probiotic offerings available at Ombre. So you have a choice of either buying a test kit on its own or as part of a program. The process is simple, with each product available as an item within their online store. You select either a kit or a program and go through a standard checkout process.

Product categories

The ombre store isn’t yet big enough to warrant categories, you’re either buying a test kit or a prebiotic or probiotic supplement. The different supplements are however designed to help with different bodily functions like heart health, immunity and metabolism.

Products

Viome’s two products are very different according to what you get back in your results. The Gut Intelligence Ombre has a small online shop with only 13 products 3 of those are variants of test kits either a program purchase or just a one-off kit. The rest are gift cards and supplements. The industry however is quite big, so small companies like this don’t need a vast inventory of products, they’re quite comfortable operating within their niche and specialising in a small product base.

The process

1. Buy a test through the Ombre online shop
2. The kits are posted to you discreetly with free shipping
3. Take your test at home and send it back to the lab in the prepaid packaging
4. Receive your results online/app in 2-3 weeks
5. Receive foods and supplement recommendations

Further info

Microbiome tests screen for imbalances in your body's bacteria which might lead to health problems according to research. These tests do not however diagnose any such issues and they do not uncover any diseases or infections. These kits help you understand

Price Range

Ombre sells two kits a gut health test and a vaginal health test, both of which are microbiome tests.

Health & Gut Intellgience Test

This is a single-use test kit that you can buy one off for $99 or you can subscribe to a regular purchase and get kits sent to you periodically for $89 each.

Some Tests

Microbiome Tests