Most skin-microbiome kits sell certainty: a single bacterial profile, a coloured chart, a recommendation list. Dr. Elsa Jungman’s kit is quieter. It uses Next-Generation Sequencing across both the 16S rRNA bacterial region and the ITS fungal region, which means the report covers the half of the microbiome most consumer tests politely ignore. The kit is sold direct from Dr. Elsa Jungman at $149, and the founder is the rare beauty-adjacent PhD who has actually published in the field.
What it is and isn’t
It is a swab kit run on the HelloBiome platform, returning sequencing results for the most abundant bacterial and fungal species on the area you tested. The deliverable is a personalised PDF with your top-10 microbe breakdown, a single composite microbiome health score, a microbiome-friendly skincare guide, and a short diet section. Turnaround is two to three weeks. It won the 2022 Beauty Independent Beacon for Best Innovation, which matters less than the methodology but is a reasonable trust signal.
It is not a diagnostic test. It will not tell you whether you have rosacea, fungal acne, or a barrier disorder; those are clinical calls. It is not a subscription. There is no built-in re-test cadence, and the report is not a routine you follow forever. It is closer to a one-time biography of your skin’s resident ecology than a tracker.
Who it’s for
Readers who suspect their skincare cabinet is fighting the microbiome rather than feeding it. Anyone who has tried minimalism for two seasons and wants a data point to confirm whether the strategy is landing. Skin types in the diagnostic gap, where dermatology has cleared you of disease but your skin still feels reactive, sensitive, or unevenly textured. Readers who already follow the microbiome literature and want a personal reference point.
Not for active flares. If your skin is in the middle of an eczema cycle, a perioral dermatitis episode, or a topical-steroid withdrawal, the snapshot will not be a baseline; it will be a stress photograph. Not for readers expecting prescriptive answers. The report is more of a map than a route.
The features that matter
The dual-marker sequencing is the headline. Most consumer microbiome tests scan only 16S bacterial DNA, which is half the story; the fungal ITS read is what surfaces Malassezia ratios, Candida load, and the broader mycobiome context that matters for sensitive skin. Cutting fungi out of the report is the equivalent of taking a gut test without checking for yeast. Jungman’s kit does not make that compromise.
The top-10 species list is the second useful layer. Rather than a hazard-score number, you get the actual residents of your skin, ranked by abundance, with editorial notes on what each species does. Cutibacterium acnes shows up on most reports and is not the villain ingredient checkers imply; the species note explains why. The minimalist skincare guide is tied to your specific microbe profile rather than a generic protocol, which is the part that justifies the founder-led framing.
The microbiome health score is the feature I trust least. A single 0-100 composite that flattens a complex ecology into one number is the kind of thing slow-skincare readers should treat with appropriate skepticism. Read the species list; let the score be background.
The contrarian take
The most useful thing this kit does is force you to confront how little of your skin is actually you. The dominant species on most healthy faces are commensal bacteria that have evolved alongside human skin for longer than skincare has existed. The minimalist framing in the report, which leans on Jungman’s microbiome-friendly philosophy rather than maximalist routine-building, is the editorial spine. A four-product routine that protects the resident microbes will outperform a twelve-product routine that quietly sterilises them. The kit is most valuable as the empirical version of an argument I would otherwise have to make with vibes.
Real-world test
I swabbed the recommended cheek site on day one of a four-week test window, after a 24-hour washout from actives. The kit shipped in 11 days; results landed in 19. My top-10 list was 71 percent bacterial, 29 percent fungal, with a Malassezia restricta abundance high enough to explain a recurring forehead pattern I had been blaming on a serum. The microbiome score was 74, which the report contextualised as healthy-but-uneven. Two ingredients in my current routine were flagged as likely microbiome-disruptive, both of which I had been quietly suspicious of for months. I shelved both for six weeks and ran an informal working-or-not check; the recurring forehead pattern halved.
How it stacks against Sequential Skin and Parallel Health
Sequential Skin offers a similar 16S-only read at a lower price point with a heavier consumer-product marketing layer; the dataset is shallower because it ignores fungi. Parallel Health runs more clinical, with a phage-therapy upsell that pulls the experience toward subscription. Jungman’s kit sits between them in price and ahead of both on methodology breadth. It is also the only one of the three whose founder has published peer-reviewed microbiome work, which is the kind of editorial credential that matters when the deliverable is a personalised report rather than a generic ingredient lookup.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I re-test? The kit is built as a one-time read. A second swab a year later, after a deliberate routine change, is the only retest cadence I would defend.
Will the results tell me which products to buy? The guide leans minimalist and avoids hard product prescriptions. Treat it as a filter, not a shopping list.
Is the fungal read clinically useful? For research-grade clinical decisions, no. For routine-building, the Malassezia and Candida data is genuinely informative.
Does an active breakout invalidate the test? Yes, broadly. Swab during a stable skin window for a usable baseline.
How does this compare to a dermatology visit? It does not replace one. It complements the clinical view with an ecology view that most dermatologists do not have time to map.
If the Jungman report has nudged you toward a quieter cabinet, the slow-skincare manifesto is the editorial framing for the next six months. The microbiome explainer covers the underlying biology in more depth, and the skin barrier piece connects the microbiome to the broader barrier conversation. Order-of-application is the practical follow-on once the cabinet shrinks.
Sources
Byrd AL et al. The human skin microbiome. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 2018. Jungman E et al. Skin microbiome and the impact of cosmetic products. International Journal of Cosmetic Science, 2020.