• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Vibrant America / Vibrant Wellness - legit?

Messages
80
I'm curious as to whether they're legit. I keep hearing their name pop up on message boards, wondering if anyone's looked into this.

On the one hand, they seem to have an impressive clinical, lab, and research team. https://www.vibrant-america.com/about-us/. And they're supposedly published in Nature for their Lyme serochip test. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75036-2

Based on perusing that research paper, they did develop a slightly better Lyme test than the standard 2-tier protocol.

On the other hand, their blog articles are very shallow and pseudosciency. And they have tests which are also bordering on pseudoscience (like urine mycotoxin tests). From another site: "according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), low levels of mycotoxins are found in many foods. For that reason, they are routinely present in the urine of healthy people. You should also be aware that mycotoxin levels that predict disease have not been established.".

Anyone looked into them before?
 

5vforest

Senior Member
Messages
273
I think they are perfectly "legit", in that I've heard of many doctors using them, and a doctor who I see and trust uses them as well. (Not sure which tests my doc sends to Vibrant, for me most recently it was a Neural Zoomer.)

The company name ("Vibrant") and test names ("Zoomers") throw me off as well.

As for urine mycotoxin tests specifically, I don't really trust that they have any validation for clinical use. Lisa Petrison has a good post here: https://paradigmchange.me/wp/urine/

I didn't look at the blog, I assume anything written there is for SEO purposes and probably doesn't have any scientific review.

I am also curious as to where they came from, and how they are able to offer many tests for so much cheaper than their competitors.
 

5vforest

Senior Member
Messages
273
RE: pricing, I might be able to help, since I just paid for the Neural Zoomer. They billed me $144 directly.

This store seems to offer some of the tests directly: https://store.thedr.com/lab-tests-a-z/

For example, they charge $414 for the same test. Which suggests that you could find a price on that website, and multiple the price by 0.35 to get a rough estimate.

Silly that it comes to this, though.
 
Messages
80
RE: pricing, I might be able to help, since I just paid for the Neural Zoomer. They billed me $144 directly.

This store seems to offer some of the tests directly: https://store.thedr.com/lab-tests-a-z/

For example, they charge $414 for the same test. Which suggests that you could find a price on that website, and multiple the price by 0.35 to get a rough estimate.

Silly that it comes to this, though.

Did that test yield any actionable insights?