You have a dashboard for everything except your mouth.
HRV, sleep, glucose, VO2 max, a lipid panel twice a year — all charted. The oral microbiome sits on no wearable and no standard blood panel, so it goes unmeasured by default rather than by decision. It is measurable: sixteen organisms and four scores, from one saliva sample at home.
$199 · one-time · ships free
Not yet available in AK, CA, CT, HI, MD, MA, NJ, NY, RI.
Measurable, repeatable, and missing from your stack.
The reason to add a marker isn't novelty — it's whether it behaves like a measurement. This one is quantitative enough to trend, filtered enough to trust, and modifiable enough that retesting tells you something. Here is what it actually is before you decide it's worth a slot.
A log2 scale, not a rating
Each organism reports a Detection Level where every step up is roughly twice as much bacterial DNA as the step below. A one-step move is a doubling, not a nudge — which is what makes a change between two tests legible instead of arguable.
Noise is filtered, not reported
Very low background detections are treated as noise rather than signal, and every score is built so the direction is consistent. Once you know whether high or low is the goal, the rest reads at a glance.
Designed to be run twice
A single result is a snapshot. The methodology's useful output is the pair: retest at 60 to 90 days around an intervention and the comparison renders trajectory and organism-by-organism change.
Read the raw report before you buy the test.
The full five-page sample report is on the site, walked through page by page — the scores, the per-organism table, the method, and the limits. Judge the instrument on its output rather than its marketing.
- Oral Balance Score, 0–100 The headline index, weighted toward nitric-oxide capacity because that capacity is the harder one to rebuild.
- Three subscores underneath it Protective Capacity, Disruptive Pressure and the Nitric Oxide System — each reported on its own so the headline never hides which side moved.
- Per-organism detection levels All sixteen listed individually with a category and a numeric Detection Level. No organism is collapsed into a summary you can't inspect.
- A paired comparison view Across timepoints: trajectory, change per organism, and how the clinical flags evolved between tests.
One step of the nitric oxide pathway happens in your mouth.
Certain bacteria in your mouth do something most people never learn about: they help turn the nitrate in leafy greens and beets into nitric oxide, a molecule your body uses for healthy blood flow and circulation. The conversion starts in the mouth. Without the right bacteria, the pathway stalls before your body can finish it.
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Dietary nitrate
Leafy greens, beets and similar foods are eaten.
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Concentrated in saliva
Nitrate is absorbed and concentrated back into saliva.
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Oral conversion
Your bacteria convert nitrate to nitrite. This is the step that depends on which organisms you have — and the one we measure.
The step we measure -
Becomes nitric oxide
Nitrite is swallowed and converted further into nitric oxide.
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Blood flow
Nitric oxide is associated in research with healthy blood flow.
What most products assume
That the oral step is working
Nitrate supplements, beet powders, and NO boosters all depend on this conversion happening in your mouth. None of them check whether it does. If your oral bacteria can't perform the step, more nitrate doesn't help.
What we measure
The gene that does the work
We don't just check whether nitrate-reducing species are present — we target the narG gene that performs the conversion. Detecting that gene tells us the capability is actually there, not just that a related organism happens to be present. That's why we can describe this as functional capacity rather than a simple count.
The systemic links here are associations reported in research, not conclusions about any individual. What your score reflects is the oral step of the pathway. The Oral Balance Test measures your oral microbiome; it does not diagnose gum disease, cavities, or any medical condition.
Low friction to add, low friction to repeat.
The repeat is the part that matters, so the collection is built to be trivial.
Kit ships free
Ordered online, delivered to your door. No phlebotomy, no lab visit, no requisition.
Two-minute collection
Saliva into a tube to the fill line. No fasting and no prep window, so it doesn't have to be scheduled around anything.
Prepaid return
Straight to IMMYLabs in Norman, Oklahoma — OraPath's own high-complexity lab, not a subcontractor.
Results in ~2 business days
From lab receipt; about a week door to door. Your report lands in your private OraPath account.
Method, limits, and what it won't do
Is this actually quantitative, or is it a wellness score?
Semi-quantitative, and we'd rather name that than dress it up. Detection is by real-time qPCR against organism-specific cutpoints, reported on a log2 Detection Level scale — each step is roughly twice the bacterial DNA of the step below. It is not an absolute cell count, and the composite scores are algorithmic. As our own references page puts it: the results are semi-quantitative and pattern-based, and the category and trend matter more than any single number. Treat it as a trendable index, not an analyte concentration.
How do I know a change between tests is real?
Two things work in your favour. Very low background detections are treated as noise rather than reported as signal, so you aren't chasing trace readings. And because the scale is logarithmic, a one-step move is a doubling or a halving — a magnitude that isn't easily produced by measurement wobble. The continuous 0–100 scores are the more sensitive readout between visits; the categorical bands move only when something substantial has.
Can I attribute a change to a specific intervention?
Only with the same discipline you'd apply to anything else you track: baseline, change one variable, retest at 60 to 90 days. A single result cannot separate a rinse from a diet change from a season. We're not going to pretend the test does causal inference — it gives you a repeatable measurement, and the experimental design is yours.
Does it sync with Oura, Whoop or Apple Health?
No. There's no integration and no API. Results live in your private OraPath account, and the report exports as a PDF you can keep or hand to a clinician. If everything in your stack has to land in one dashboard automatically, this won't — you'd be entering the numbers yourself.
What's the reference range?
There isn't a single one, and that's deliberate. Each organism is read against calibrated clinical-relevance cutpoints rather than a population distribution, and the periodontal risk score is a pattern call — certain combinations read higher than the same organisms would individually, because the combination is what the research flags. Your report names the pattern it matched, so the number always arrives with its reasoning.
Is it FDA cleared?
No. It's a Laboratory-Developed Test, validated under CLIA by IMMYLabs (CLIA 37D2236199, COLA 32679) under a doctorate-level laboratory director. That's the standard regulatory path for tests of this class rather than a gap we're glossing over — but it does mean the test is for adjunctive use, doesn't diagnose any condition, and is meant to be read alongside a clinical exam rather than instead of one.
Which states do you ship to?
We ship the at-home Balance Test to most US states, but not yet to AK, CA, CT, HI, MD, MA, NJ, NY, RI. Those states apply extra requirements to at-home lab testing, and we've held them back from this first launch rather than cut corners. We're working through them.
If you're in one of those states and want the test, ask your dental practice — they can order OraPath panels for you directly.
One variable to test
Ora-Protek daily oral probiotic
A daily dissolvable lozenge with 16 clinically studied strains, including BLIS K12 and M18 — a single, well-defined intervention to run between a baseline and a retest. These statements have not been evaluated by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Multi-bottle pricing from $25.00 per bottle.
Fill in the gap in the dashboard.
One saliva sample, collected at home in about two minutes, gives you sixteen organisms, four scores, and a baseline you can run an actual experiment against.
Results in your private OraPath account · not a diagnosis — it measures your oral microbiome and is meant to be reviewed with a dentist alongside an exam.