My Viome Test Adventure: Exploring Personalized Health After a Biohacking Conference

Adventure is the willingness to step into something unfamiliar and let it change you a little.

I love that definition because it reminds me that adventure does not always have to mean getting on a plane or traveling somewhere new. Sometimes adventure is walking into a conference full of people who are thinking differently. Sometimes it is opening your mind to what might be possible.

And sometimes it is mailing off your blood, saliva, and stool samples and waiting to see what your body has to say.

Scott and I recently went to Dave Asprey’s biohacking conference in Austin, and it definitely felt like an adventure. We were surrounded by people who are experimenting, questioning, learning, and looking at health in a much more personalized way.

I would not say I am a level 10 biohacker. Maybe more like a level 1 or 2. But I loved being in that energy. I loved learning about new ways to understand our bodies and feeling empowered that there are tools out there that may help us take better care of ourselves.

One of the things we learned about at the conference was Viome, a test that offers a more personalized picture of your health by looking at blood, saliva, and stool. What caught my attention is that Viome isn't looking at your body in a generic way. It uses your samples to assess things like your gut microbiome, oral health, cellular health, inflammation, and how your body may be responding to certain foods, then gives personalized food recommendations based on your biology.

For so long, health has been treated like one big set of rules for everyone. Eat this, do this workout, follow this plan. What I'm curious about with this kind of testing is the idea that our bodies may have more specific information for us. Something that's "healthy" for one person may not be the best choice for someone else, and maybe your gut, inflammation, energy, and cravings are all giving you clues worth paying attention to.

So this week, that became our adventure. Not exactly glamorous, but definitely curious.

I love the idea of personalized medicine and this feels like a step in that direction. There's something interesting about sending all of that off and wondering what we might learn: what's working well, what needs support, what our bodies might be trying to tell us.

And that's where I think adventure and health really connect. Taking care of yourself often requires stepping into the unfamiliar, trying something new, asking better questions, being willing to learn instead of just doing what you've always done. This particular adventure wasn't about hiking a mountain or exploring a new city. It was about exploring our own bodies, and that may be one of the most important adventures we can take.