Startup Week: EverlyWell at-home food sensitivity test kits deliver fast, affordable results

Identifying food sensitivity is one of the most overlooked health issues of today, and now there is a startup dedicated to delivering fast results right to your door.

Personally, as someone who was diagnosed at the age of 26 with Celiac Disease, which is an auto-immune disease that can only be counteracted by a gluten-free diet, I wish EverlyWell had been around before I had to endure years of stomach pains, brain fog, and insomnia to find out what was wrong. Oh yeah! And then being billed $925 for blood work at the local lab just to find out my years of trouble were completely diet-based.

EverlyWell provides at-home health tests that you can order directly through their website. The company ships the kit to your home and after sending your sample to an EverlyWell lab, you receive your clear results online within a few days.

But it’s not just food sensitivity tests that online lab provides. Other highlighted kits include testing for:

• Cardiovascular issues
• Metabolism
• Inflammation
• Fertility

Whereas traditional blood work for food sensitivity ranges up to $1K, EverlyWell’s physician-authorized and CLIA certified at-home test is $199, which would have saved me some $725. Women’s fertility and health kits are at $399, and its element panel is again at $199.

Food sensitivity is different than an immediately life-threatening food allergy. Reactivity to foods is an immune response by the IgG antibody, the largest circulating antibody in our immune system. EverlyWell’s Food Sensitivity kit tests for 96 common foods and ingredients in the American diet, including gluten & grains, dairy and nuts.

“We’ve worked with some of the most advanced labs in the country to design our initial test menu which includes tests like Food Sensitivity, Cardiovascular, Inflammation, Metabolism, Women’s Fertility, and Heavy Metals,” said co-Founder and CEO, Julia Cheek, adding, “ultimately, EverlyWell is about access for individuals to health data to change lives.”

I can relate a lot to Cheek (featured photo), as her story was almost identical to mine.

“After multiple specialist visits and blood draws, I ended up with a 15-page, black-and-white packet with little information. I spent days on WebMD and Google looking at every marker to try and understand what my results meant,” she said.

I, myself, also ended up with a 15-page booklet that left me scrambling for every search engine site about what everything meant. Search results to inquiries like “is there gluten in Guinness?” left me utterly devastated. Even my doctor didn’t know the full extent of dietary restrictions, neurological imbalances, nor future health problems down the road that came with having Celiac Disease.

Everything that I’ve learned in the past 6 years since then has been through rigorous Googling, and gut-retching trial and error, which would have been made more easily available and affordable had EverlyWell been around.