Ad description
A website for Check My Body Health’s Bioresonance “Body Intolerance Test”, www.ukcheckmybodyhealth.com, seen on 6 November 2025, featured an image of the product alongside text which stated, “This Body Intolerance Test is your starting point to explore possible food and non-food reactions to 1,500 items”. Text on the image stated, “The UK’s most advanced test”.
A section titled “Why take a test?” featured the text “Our Body Intolerance Test offers a comprehensive analysis of your potential reactivity to 1,500 common food and non-food items. By understanding these reactions, you can make informed decisions about your diet and lifestyle, guiding you towards greater awareness of what suits your body best. This test includes 5 BRAND NEW categories; […] Anti-aging - signs of aging in skin, bones, and joints. […] Stress & inflammation - examining cortisol levels and inflammatory biomarkers within the body. […] Sleep hormones - analyse the melatonin hormone responsible for the quality of sleep. […] Skin health - reactions to fragrances, household chemicals, and cosmetics. […] Nutrition - assessing the hormones leptin and ghrelin, which is responsible for regulating hunger”.
A section titled “What’s tested” featured the text “After a decade of market-leading experience and the analysis of hundreds of thousands of samples, we’re proud to present our most advanced 1,500 item body intolerance test. We test the reactivity levels for 1,500 items using a hair strand sample. Each item is then classified into one of three reactivity levels: […] High Reactivity / Outside Range. These items are most likely to cause an intolerance. Moderate Reactivity. These items might cause an intolerance. Having multiple moderate reactivity items in one meal might cause reactions due to their cumulative effect. No Reactivity / Within Range. These items are safe and fall within the optimal range.”
A video embedded on the webpage repeated those claims.
Issue
The complainant, who believed there was no scientific basis for Bioresonance hair tests, challenged whether the claim that the product could produce a “comprehensive intolerance report”, alongside the associated health claims, was misleading.
Response
Global Health Tests Ltd t/a Check My Body Health said their service was intended as a complementary wellness and informational service, not a medical diagnostic test or a substitute for professional medical advice. They said the purpose of the service was to provide informational insights that some consumers might use as a starting point when exploring dietary or lifestyle patterns alongside other approaches, such as elimination and reintroduction.
Check My Body Health acknowledged the ASA’s view that some terminology could be interpreted by consumers as implying clinically validated diagnostic capability. In particular, they referred to phrases such as “Most likely to cause an intolerance”, “Might cause an intolerance” and “Safe / within range”. They said those classifications were intended as informational indicators to support personal exploration rather than clinical determinations of intolerance, but accepted that consumers could interpret the phrasing more broadly.
Check My Body Health said they had since undertaken an immediate review of the ad and had made amendments. They said those included: removing the term “comprehensive intolerance report”; removing the claim “UK’s most advanced test”; removing causal terminology such as “most likely to cause an intolerance”; removing “safe” food classifications; revising explanations of “reactivity” to clarify the informational positioning of the service; and reviewing category descriptors to ensure complementary framing. They said those changes were intended to ensure the service could not be interpreted as measuring physiological function or providing diagnostic conclusions.
They said they would introduce signposting to clinically recognised testing pathways, including immunoglobin E (IgE) and immunoglobin G (IgG) services, to distinguish complementary wellness screening from clinical diagnostic testing. They said they did not position their services as a replacement for medical investigation and did not advise consumers to make medical or dietary decisions without appropriate professional guidance.
Check My Body Health said there was currently limited peer-reviewed research available in the sector and that they had therefore initiated a structured, multi-year evidence and governance programme, including marketing language refinement, pilot and larger-scale research studies, submission for peer review, development of a public evidence library, and consumer guidance materials.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA understood the NHS defined a food intolerance to be “difficulty digesting certain foods or ingredients in food”, and that the recommended way to identify the source of a food intolerance was to eliminate specific foods from a diet and monitor symptoms. We also understood that ‘Bioresonance’ hair testing referred to an alternative diagnostic method which used a small hair sample to analyse cell frequencies to provide information about the health of the body.
The ad made various health-related claims, including that the Body Intolerance Test was the “starting point to explore possible food and non-food reactions to 1,500 items” and “The UK’s most advanced test”. The ad also stated the test offered a “comprehensive analysis” of “reactivity” to 1,500 items using a hair strand sample, and that results would classify items as “most likely to cause an intolerance”, “might cause an intolerance”, or “safe”. It also claimed to be able to provide an analysis of specific health-related insights, including on “anti-aging”, “stress & inflammation”, “sleep hormones”, “skin health” and “nutrition”.
We acknowledged the view from Check My Body Health that their service was intended as a complementary wellness and informational service, rather than a medical diagnostic test. However, we considered consumers were likely to understand the claims in the ad to mean that the Body Intolerance Test could accurately assess their bodily reactions and intolerances to a wide range of food and non-food items, and provide a reliable report that could be used to make informed decisions about diet and lifestyle. We also considered consumers would understand the claims about analysing hormones, biomarkers, stress, inflammation, sleep and anti-aging as health-related claims about measuring or assessing bodily functions through the test. We therefore expected to see robust scientific evidence to substantiate the claims.
Although Check My Body Health said they had since amended the webpage and associated content, they did not provide evidence to substantiate the claims that the test could produce a comprehensive intolerance report, or that it could assess reactivity and the specific hormone- and biomarker-related outcomes described, using a hair strand sample. In addition, we understood the NHS did not currently recommend home tests for food intolerances. The British Association of Dermatologists (BAD) and The British Dietetic Association (BDA) also advised against Bioresonance hair tests to identify potential intolerances. Because we had not seen adequate substantiation for various health-related claims made, we considered the ad was misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleadingness), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 12.1 (Medicines, medical devices, health related products and beauty products).
Action
The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Global Health Tests Ltd t/a Check My Body Health not to state or imply that their Bioresonance hair test could comprehensively analyse body intolerances without holding adequate substantiation.
