Largely worthless / Could be Dangerous
I purchased the SelfDecode account because I wanted to compare my lab results with a DNA test in order to get recommendations that would hopefully be helpful for my health. I made the serious mistake of answering their lifestyle questionnaires while I was waiting for the DNA results to populate. I find that the vast majority of their recommendations are primarily based on my self reported lifestyle factors and NOT on a serious analysis of my lab work and DNA results. My number one health risk report on the Self Decode website was related to a health condition I had reported in the lifestyle questionnaire- yet my DNA risk for this condition was rated “typical”, my lifestyle risk was considered “low” and my labwork relating to this health condition was considered “optimal”!!!! So why was this health condition even on my list of health risks? As far as I can see only because I clicked a button on their darn questionnaire! Some of their recommendations could actually be dangerous. My lab work clearly showed that I had way too high levels of a particular nutrient and needed to restrict further exposure. Yet Self Decode repeatedly recommends taking that nutrient as a supplement again and again in my various health reports! If I blindly followed the recommendations provided by Self Decode, it would actually be detrimental to my health! Less important but equally frustrating is their app is extremely difficult to navigate. If you start from the main menu, you have to go down through five or six levels of nested information to understand the contents and God forbid if you want to go back to the previous screen, there’s no “back” button so you have to start again at the main menu and hope you can remember which tabs you opened etc. Over the course of trying to work with this app, I reached out to their customer service team on several different occasions. The one positive comment I will make is that I received a reply each time, even though the problems I reported were only resolved about half the time. If I had this to do over again, I would definitely give this company a pass. And in fact, I tried to cancel their subscription, but because they claim that my DNA Test kit had already been mailed, they couldn’t refund my money. Since I could easily have returned the unopened box containing the test kit with no damage to the DNA test kit, that’s clearly just company policy BS.