Unseen Bio and Embla: Gut Test – An Important Tool for Sustainable Weight Loss
“If we find a missing piece of the puzzle that no one has thought about before, it can make an enormous difference.”
— Nicholas Syhler, physician and co-founder of Embla
Weight loss and lifestyle change can be challenging. What should I do? Why isn’t anything happening? How can I maintain my weight loss? These are common questions in such a process. According to the weight-loss clinic Embla, successful weight loss is about far more than just cutting calories or taking popular weight-loss medications.
Embla takes a holistic approach to weight loss, viewing the body as a large, diverse garden filled with many different flowers and plants, one that cannot thrive with just a bit of watering and fertilizer. “The body is a complex system. It’s not just one tool we need, we need many different tools depending on what your garden looks like. That’s why our collaboration with Unseen Bio is so interesting,” says co-founder Nicholas Syhler.
Embla is a digital weight-loss clinic that combines ACT-based coaching with medical support to create lasting lifestyle changes for its members. Robin Petersen, a health coach at Embla, describes his role as a mix of habit-building, relationship-based coaching, and holistic strategies: “It’s not about being on a diet and suffering through it. It’s about finding methods that fit the individual.”
Because of Embla’s broad and holistic approach to weight loss, the team became interested in the gut microbiome, which led them to become a Health Partner with Unseen Bio. Embla faced many unknowns in the complex work of treating severe obesity and using weight-loss medications, and the microbiome emerged as a potential missing piece of the puzzle. Certain gut hormones signal satiety, and microbiome testing makes it possible to explore this by mapping each member’s gut flora.
Insights That Create Understanding
With Unseen Bio’s microbiome tests, Embla gains insight into each member’s gut microbiota. The tests are performed before treatment begins and at selected points during the program, making it possible to observe changes in the gut flora and potentially explain individual differences in treatment outcomes.
Robin Petersen sees this as a tool for understanding complex factors such as epigenetics (simply put, how your genes can be influenced by external factors) and lifestyle: “It gives us more cards to play when working with both weight loss and overall health.”
But it’s not just Embla that gains insight, members also gain a clearer understanding of how their diet and lifestyle affect their bodies on a physiological level, which often supports Embla’s coaching. Nicholas Syhler explains: “It’s about seeing the body as a system - not just a machine. With microbiome data, we get a new tool to understand that system better.”
For Embla, the collaboration with Unseen Bio has opened new perspectives on weight-loss treatment. Microbiome testing provides insight into both external factors, such as environmental influences, and internal factors, such as the diversity of the gut flora. This enables more personalized solutions for members. “If we can map the role of the microbiome, we may be able to find the underlying causes of the challenges we see, and help our members even better,” says Robin Petersen.
The partnership between Embla and Unseen Bio demonstrates the potential of combining holistic care with advanced microbiome research. For Embla, it creates new opportunities to optimize treatment, while members gain access to personalized solutions grounded in both technology and science. As Robin Petersen puts it: “It’s about creating lasting change - not just focusing on the number on the scale.”
