Health Experiment

What is ZOE?

ZOE journey began more than 20 years ago when Tim Spector set up the largest adult twins registry in the UK (tens of thousands of twins) in order to study why twins can have significantly different health quality despite being genetically identical. Tim Spector is not just the scientist, he is currently rated as being the in the top 100 most cited scientists in the world. As a PhD student myself I can tell you it is easy to be a scientist and get published, but it takes a good quality work to get recognised in the scientific field and get the rating as high as Tim has.

The findings of his research team were stunning showing that diet has a substantial effect on human health, bigger than the genetics alone. That lead Tim Spector and a bunch of world’s most well-recognised researchers, nutrition scientists and doctors to the development of a personalised nutrition program called ZOE.

ZOE program consists of four parts:

1. Testing
2. Learning your results
3. Following personalised nutrition
4. Retesting

What I like the most about ZOE tests compared to any other tests on the market is that they take a holistic approach. Rather than testing one biomarker, they look at your metabolism as a whole. Their test consists of three parts:

1. Testing your blood sugar responses
2. Testing your blood fat response
3. Testing your gut microbiome

They then compare your results to the results indicating good health according to their research outcomes and to the results of thousands of other participants. Via their research they have identified 15 good and 15 bad bugs that live in our gut and have a huge impact on our food metabolism. You have probably heard about yoghurt or sauerkraut being good for you because they contain beneficial microbes such as Lactobacillie and Bifidobacteria. Well what ZOE did is take it a (big) step further and using artificial intelligence algorithm and their data from real people they were able to identify a lot more good and bad bugs that live inside us. Thanks to the increasing amount of data they got access to (with more and more people using ZOE), they have recently announced they have identified even more good and bad bugs (50 each) and we will find out more about these very soon.

The following sections are my experience with ZOE, the testing stage for now but stay tuned and the results will come in the next post!

What is inside the box?

My ZOE tests arrived in a beautiful yellow box. Honestly I was a big fan of that box and the small boxes inside, very easy to open, everything inside beautifully assembled. Although the box was looking great I do have some negative feedback on this – I live with my flatmates and do not really want them to know what kind of tests I do. So having a neutral box without a big label saying “ZOE” on it would be nice.

Anyhow, inside the box there are three smaller boxes and two packs of muffins, one for breakfast and one for lunch. Somehow I did not take a picture when everything was in place, sorry!

One other thing that was important for these tests – you need to do them fasting, but fasting only for 12 hours, which is doable if you have an early dinner the day before. You can still drink water or coffee (no milk no sugar) during that time.

Muffin eating, microbiome test and blood fat test are all done at different times. If you are working Mon-Fri then it might be a good idea to take a day off to do these tests properly and not let them interrupt your work.

Muffins

There are two sets of muffins, one for breakfast and one for lunch. These muffins were designed to make sure all people on the experiment have the same meal. This way these researchers can compare your response to this food to the responds of thousands of other individuals

Muffins actually smelled and tasted amazingly, but I have seen other people on social media who totally hated them, so be prepared for anything! If you are curious, these are the ingredients of the breakfast muffins:

And these are of the lunch ones:

Blood fat test

One of the smaller boxes was dedicated to a finger prick test. This one is then used to analyse your blood fat. The test is taken 6 hours after the first muffins (breakfast), 2 hours after the second (lunch). Everything came with very clear instructions both on paper and on the app (did I not mention the app before now?) so was really easy to follow.

Blood glucose test

For the blood glucose ZOE actually send you a continuous blood glucose monitor which can be easily attached to your arm, pain free. This sensor is supposed to be wearable for 14 days during which you can track your blood sugar response to different food. The sensor has to be applied a day before you eat the muffins because it needs some time to get fully covered with your bodily fluids.

You can instantly see your blood glucose levels on the app (separate app from ZOE). I was a bit shocked with my glucose response to the muffins to be completely honest. But on the other hand I am glad I did this test because I could see that my body is not handling sugar/carbs very well. It was also interesting to track my glucose levels during those 14 days before the ZOE test results were ready. Unfortunately my blood sugar test started giving me really weird results on the last 3-4 days of this experiment. I suspect that is because I really like long showers and have probably damaged the sensor this way.

Anyhow, this is how my glucose level skyrocketed after the first three muffins:

After reaching 12 mmol it started going down slowly. The app for glucose monitoring is different from the ZOE app but it is connected to ZOE system so that they can track your levels too.

Gut microbiome test

Alright, the most exciting part!

I have done gut microbiome tests before (stay tuned for another post on that) so I have something to compare with. The ZOE microbiome test was great because it came with clear instructions, easy-to-use test equipment and a stool catcher that actually sticks to your toilet seat

£££

Okay, the hurting part of this experiment – costs…

The cost I paid for ZOE test kit was 299£, plus 49£ every month for four months for the “membership”. The way I understand it is that 299£ goes to cover the tests and lab work and 49£ covers the app and the analysis of the results. But it is all just crazy crazy expensive if you ask me…. There is an option to split costs over several months interest-free. I was also silly and did not use the 10% discount they offer to their podcast listeners or referrals. You can get a discount with this link.

I will give a review of gut microbiome tests in my later post so stay tuned. There are tests out there that also offer an insight into your microbiome but are not as expensive (nowhere near as comprehensive though). The cheapest I have seen was 80£, the most expensive one was around 400£. But the level of detail in these tests comes at a price, so be warned…

When it comes to blood fat tests I actually have not seen anything on the internet available to buy so cannot comment on the costs. The continuous glucose monitors however are gaining popularity and you can buy them separately from different companies giving different insights. The cost would probably be between 70-150£ per sensor. But again, they do not look at your body as a whole like ZOE does. If you are trying to understand your metabolism then ZOE is a good start. Yes, it is expensive, but you might end up paying the same trying various blood tests and searching for answers.

That is it for today, stay tuned for my ZOE results in the next post!

If you have any questions leave your comments below