Mood is shaped by circumstance, history and relationships, which no test can read. But the capacity you bring to them is also physical: sleep, inflammation, recovery, fuel handling and gut signalling to the brain.
Low mood won’t tell you which of these is under strain. A vivaINSIGHT test reads your gut microbiome, metabolites and lifestyle from one at-home collection to show where your biology has drifted furthest from optimal. It is not a mental health assessment.
Your first result is a baseline snapshot of your Biological Drift. Make a change, such as more movement or a steadier sleep pattern, then test again to see whether your markers are moving the right way.
No test diagnoses depression, and none replaces a conversation with your GP. Testing has a narrower job: measuring the biology around the symptom (inflammation, neurotransmitter metabolism, sleep, fuel handling and the gut), so that what is modifiable can be addressed.
If you are having thoughts of suicide or self-harm, please contact someone now. These services are free, confidential and available 24 hours a day. If low mood has lasted most of the day, most days, for two weeks or more, or is affecting your work, relationships or ability to function, speak to your GP. Nothing on this page should delay that conversation.
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Low mood is treated in most settings as a purely psychological event. Read through a multi-omics lens it is also a systemic one: six systems carry the cost of sustained demand, and when they are worn the subjective result is flatness, low motivation and a shortened fuse.
Cortisol normally rises on waking and falls across the day. A systematic review found flatter daily cortisol slopes associated with poorer outcomes across a range of health domains. vivaINSIGHT does not measure cortisol; it reads the lifestyle stress, sleep and energy context around it.[1]
Anyone who has had the flu knows what inflammation does to motivation. A meta-analysis found CRP, IL-1 and IL-6 each associated with depression in clinical and community samples, with small effect sizes. Inflammation may also shift tryptophan handling through the kynurenine pathway.[2][3]
Resilience is not the absence of a stress response; it is how fast you recover from one. Heart rate variability tracks that recovery, and a meta-analysis of 21 studies found lower resting variability in unmedicated adults with major depression. vivaINSIGHT does not measure it.[4]
Neural tissue is metabolically expensive. Iron, B12, folate and B6 help mitochondria make energy and also build serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline. A review of fatigue in chronic illness points to mitochondrial and immune mechanisms. When supply runs short, motivation is often rationed first.[5]
A flexible metabolism switches between fuel sources smoothly. When glucose handling is less steady, energy can arrive in surges and shortfalls. In adults with insulin resistance, glucose fluctuations have been associated with poorer cognitive performance. vivaINSIGHT reads your energy metabolism.[6][7]
Short-chain fatty acids, made when gut bacteria ferment fibre, are among the best-characterised signals between the gut and the brain. Butyrate also supports the gut barrier that keeps inflammatory signalling low, and a weaker barrier is one plausible source of the inflammation described above.[8][9]
Biological Drift is the gradual, usually invisible shift in your biology away from your own baseline over time.
Most people notice the loss of reserve before they notice low mood: the same week that used to be manageable now costs more. A standard panel reads a person against a population bell curve on one day.
Biological Drift is the other question: what your own physiology is doing over years of real-world load, and it happens inside the normal reference range, which is why the panel says fine while the margin narrows.
DRIFT TIMELINE
Biological Age50
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WHAT YOU'D NOTICE
The margin narrows. The week that used to be manageable now costs more, patience is shorter by the afternoon, and sleep stops repaying the debt.
Illustrative model of typical direction of change across a midlife cohort. Not patient data, and not a measure of mental health.
These markers are not a test for depression. They quantify load and recovery capacity: what the stress axis is doing, how much inflammatory signalling is running, whether fuel handling is flexible, and whether the raw materials for neurotransmitter synthesis are there.
vivaINSIGHT is tri-layer: two lab-tested molecular layers (microbiome and metabolites) plus a structured lifestyle assessment, all collected from home.
Markers are scored against ideal ranges rather than the broad "not yet abnormal" reference band, then cross-referenced across layers. Seeing the load in numbers changes what people do with it: a raised inflammation marker or shifted neurotransmitter metabolism is a biological signal, not a personal failing.
All three layers captured on the same day, so the picture is internally consistent.
Our algorithms weight the markers furthest from optimal and read them across layers.
Supplement recommendations tied to your markers, highest-leverage change first. With a vivaBALANCE Membership, a Precision Nutrition Plan is added and reviewed after each test.
vivaBALANCE 360 tests in month 1, month 4 and month 10. Track the impact of your changes from test to test.
The systems behind this symptom change slowly and usually without obvious signs. Slow changes are often missed which is why testing and tracking over time is important.
Associations described in published literature. Testing identifies and tracks markers; it does not diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, and it is not a substitute for mental health care.
One at-home collection. Three layers. A plan built on your own numbers. With vivaBALANCE 360 you test in month 1, month 4 and month 10, so you can see whether it worked.
Written by the vivaLAB science team. Clinically reviewed by Dr Andrew O'Brien, PhD, MBA, Executive Chairman, Co-Founder, vivaLAB. Last reviewed 28 September 2026. Next review March 2027.
Thoughts of suicide or self-harm, low mood lasting most of the day for two weeks or more, an inability to function at work or at home, unintended weight loss, or new confusion should be discussed with a health practitioner promptly rather than investigated at home. If you are in immediate danger, call 000.
No. Depression is diagnosed clinically, by a qualified health practitioner, and no test replaces that assessment. What vivaINSIGHT can do is measure the biology around the symptom: your gut microbiome, neurotransmitter and energy metabolism, inflammation markers and your lifestyle sleep and stress scores. If you are struggling, please speak to your GP; in a crisis call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Allostatic load is the cumulative cost of adapting to repeated demand. The systems that carry you through a hard week are the same systems that wear when the hard week never ends: the HPA axis, the autonomic nervous system, immune signalling and metabolism. Low mood and low resilience are what that accumulated cost tends to feel like from the inside.
It is the closest single readout we have. Heart rate variability reflects how quickly the parasympathetic branch can bring you back down after a stressor. A meta-analysis of 21 studies covering 2,250 unmedicated patients with major depression and 1,982 controls found consistently lower resting heart rate variability in the depressed group across several measures.
Inflammatory signalling changes how tryptophan is used. In studies where patients were given interferon-alpha, tryptophan fell while kynurenine and the kynurenine to tryptophan ratio rose alongside depression scores. Separately, a meta-analysis found C-reactive protein, IL-1 and IL-6 each positively associated with depression, with small effect sizes: a contributor, not a cause.
Biological Drift is the gradual, usually invisible shift in your biology away from your own baseline over time. It usually happens inside normal reference ranges, which is why standard results can read as fine. One test gives you a baseline; a second shows the direction of change.
If low mood has lasted most of the day, most days, for two weeks or more, or if it is affecting your work, relationships or ability to function, speak to your GP. If you are having thoughts of suicide or self-harm, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or call 000 now. Testing is not a substitute for mental health care and should never delay it.
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Every numbered claim on this page links to a record in PubMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s index of biomedical literature.
Diurnal cortisol slopes and mental and physical health outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2017. PMID 28578301
Associations of depression with C-reactive protein, IL-1, and IL-6: a meta-analysis. Psychosomatic Medicine, 2009. PMID 19188531
The kynurenine pathway in major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia: a meta-analysis of 101 studies. 2021. PMID 33230205
A meta-analysis of heart rate variability in major depression. Psychological Medicine, 2019. PMID 31239003
Biological mechanisms of fatigue in chronic illness: a systematic review. 2018. PMID 29540066
Blood glucose and cognitive function in insulin resistance. 2024. PMID 39261457
Sleep restriction for 1 week reduces insulin sensitivity in healthy men. Diabetes, 2010. PMID 20585000
Short chain fatty acids: microbial metabolites for gut-brain axis signalling. 2022. PMID 35066114
Short-chain fatty acids as mediators of the gut-brain axis: a narrative review. 2023. PMID 37897083
Insomnia as a predictor of depression: a meta-analytic evaluation of longitudinal epidemiological studies. Journal of Affective Disorders, 2011. PMID 21300408
Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration: a prospective cohort study. Sleep, 2024. PMID 37738616
Effect of exercise for depression: systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. BMJ, 2024. PMID 38355154
Interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein as predictors of cognitive decline in late midlife. Neurology, 2014. PMID 24991031
Hypothyroidism. 2017. PMID 28336049
