A blog to help you optimize your full-body and life performance

Sure, Ultimate is our most comprehensive and popular plan, but you don’t need to measure 42 biomarkers to get personalized recommendations and make meaningful changes towards better health and wellness. In fact, your average trip to the doctor’s office can arm you with enough information to get you going.

Most often, if you’re getting blood drawn at your annual physical, your doctor is ordering a Basic Metabolic Panel (BMP) or a Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (CMP). We've taken inspiration from these to design our DIY options and our Essentials plan – which we think make great complements. So, let’s go through what these and other common panels usually include and what you can learn from the results.

CrossFit as a sport has seemingly exploded over the past several years and along with its rise in popularity has come an exponential increase in the level of competition. Athletes are always looking for the next best thing to give them that one percent edge over the rest of the field, and are oftentimes looking for supplements to tilt the scale in their favor. We are frequently asked about supplements; which ones to take, which are safe, and whether they really work?

Here we’ll dive into my list of go-to supplements. The complete list of supplements I use, we recommend, and which ones are worth (or are a waste of) your money.

Ok, we know we talk about oatmeal around here quite a bit, but it's for good reason! Not only is oatmeal one of the best ways to start your day, aside from having someone else make breakfast for you, it's also among the easiest. Here, we'll share yet another health benefit of starting your day with a delicious bowl of oatmeal, lowering your cholesterol levels one spoonful at a time.

The 2018 Reebok CrossFit Games are fast-approaching and we couldn’t be more excited! After all, for those of you who don’t know, the CrossFit Games, known simply as "The Games" is the Super Bowl of the CrossFit competition season with the first place man and woman being crowned "The Fittest on Earth."

The competition season kicks off with early in the calendar year with "The Open," a first-round competition that's open to anyone in the world. Once complete, a handful of qualifying athletes are chosen to make their way to one of nine geographically designated events, "Regionals," where they fight for their ticket to The Games.

One of the most frequent questions we get from users and prospective customers alike is whether we test HbA1c. The short answer, as the title of this article more than hints at, is no, we don’t. However, in addition to sharing actionable insights people can take to improve their overall health, wellness, and performance, we also like to think of ourselves as educators arming our community with the knowledge they need to reach their goals.

Here, we’ll provide a brief education on the differences between HbA1c and its more commonly known counterpart, glucose, as well as the reasoning behind why we test for the latter and not the former.

Getting older is scary! With each birthday, we venture further into the ‘unknown’ that is older age -- further into the territory of “can my body still do this?” Our physical abilities change as we age; it’s natural, inevitable, and predictable. Our hormone levels shift, our bones get less dense, our dietary requirements recalibrate. But certain changes are (at least in part) avoidable. Muscle wasting is one of them; by making health-oriented choices, you can stay strong, even into your later years. Here’s how.

Here at InsideTracker, we’re always aiming for optimal. Forget normal – whether it’s about our own bodies or the happiness of our awesome users, we never settle for “good enough.” The same holds true for our company and its products. That’s why we’re thrilled to share this hit list of 12 amazing new additions to the InsideTracker platform, including upgrades to our product functions, website, and the cutting-edge science that drives it all!

From the integration of personalized genetics and the addition of new goals, to updated optimal zones and faster checkout (yay, ApplePay!), we’ve been hard at work taking InsideTracker to the next level.

Known to be one of the most grueling tests of endurance and the oldest 100-mile trail race in the world, the historical Western States 100 is set on technical trails and terrain from Squaw Valley to Auburn, California. As the countdown to race day continues, we had the opportunity to chat with a few athletes about how they’ve used InsideTracker to help get them to the start line prepared to tackle 18,000 feet of ascent and 23,000 feet of descent over 100.2 miles... all in (mostly) one day.

In the ‘80s, it was aerobics. In the ‘90s, racquetball. What exercise craze made its landing in the 2000s? HIIT. In fact, since 2004, researchers from fields ranging from kinesiology to cognitive neuroscience have been studying the power of this workout style and its incredible health benefits.^1,2 And no, HIIT isn’t just for people training for an event or trying to hit a weight loss goal. Have we piqued your interest? Keep reading.

Here at InsideTracker, we are all about goals: setting lofty ones for ourselves, our products, our platform, and most importantly, helping you reach yours. To that end, our science team recently spent countless hours pouring over the latest scientific research and data to update our Optimal Zones. After all, to help you push past your limits, we have to push ours.

While we admit this entry is a bit longer than the norm, for the science geeks in the crowd (hi friends), it’s chock-full of interesting information and insights into the background of our platform.