InsideTracker takes a truly personalized approach to health. While analyzing your blood data (in addition to relevant DNA markers and data from fitness trackers) are integral inputs of InsideTracker’s algorithm, so is an evaluation of your current health status and lifestyle habits. And that’s what the Health Profile is designed to capture.
The Health Profile is an online survey where you fill in information about your body composition, dietary patterns, current supplement use, exercise, sleep, and heart rate. This data is then incorporated into the analysis of your blood biomarkers—as the algorithm searches for associations between these aspects of your health in relation to your biomarkers—as well as makes sure the recommendations you receive post-data analysis are even more personalized and relevant to you.
Here’s what you’ll be asked to fill out in the Health Profile.
This section asks you to fill in information about your body and body composition.
Height and weight are the two data points required under this section to calculate your body mass index or BMI. While BMI is a flawed metric in clinical practice, it is a measure researchers commonly use when analyzing health and biomarker trends. Read more on the use of BMI in InsideTracker recommendations here.
But completing the additional fields of this section is especially valuable. Body fat percentage measures how much of your body is made up of fat versus muscle, bone, water, and other tissues, and waist circumference is used to measure abdominal fat and to help determine the risk of poor health outcomes. Body fat percentage and waist circumference are more accurate measures of body composition compared to BMI and can provide greater insights than height and weight alone can. For example, many recommendations that improve unoptimized biomarkers can also positively impact body composition. These connections are drawn within individual recommendations when you fill out this section of your profile.
Resting heart rate (RHR) is another piece of information you can provide in this section. RHR is an indicator of cardiovascular health and longevity, and this data is then incorporated into exercise recommendations.
Changes to your dietary pattern can make significant improvements to your health. So it’s important to provide information about your typical eating patterns, including preferences, as part of your health profile. You’ll have the option to select from choices like gluten-free, keto, paleo, and vegetarian that will inform the food-related recommendations you receive and featured recipes. Say that you follow a gluten-free eating pattern, but your biomarkers can benefit from whole grains. Your recommendations will only present foods and recipes that contain gluten-free whole grains.
In addition, you can report how frequently you consume each of those foods. This further tailors your recommendations by indicating whether you should increase, decrease, or maintain how often you eat certain foods. For example, if you have high blood sugar and low ferritin and you report eating beans multiple times a week, you may see a recommendation encouraging you to sprout the beans to maximize nutrient absorption rather than simply increasing your bean intake.
If you report that you never eat a food—whether that’s due to a preference, allergy, intolerance, etc—that food is excluded from potential recommendations.
While nutrition needs should be met primarily by food, supplements can help address nutrient deficiencies or aid in post-exercise recovery. The Supplement section of the Health Profile allows you to record the supplements and doses of your current regimen.
InsideTracker recommendations may include supplement dosage increases or decreases, or whether to start or stop taking a given supplement. Your existing regimen taken with your blood results and other health information will inform the recommendations you see in the platform.
If you’re not currently taking supplements, you can leave the section. You can also indicate whether or not you’re open to taking supplements. If you select no, supplement recommendations will be excluded from your results.
Here, you can record your regular physical activities along with the frequency and intensity of your workouts. InsideTracker uses these habits to assess your activity level and provide recommendations to help you get the most out of your exercise program—whether you’re training for a triathlon or attending a weekly yoga class.
This information taken with your blood results can yield meaningful insights, like ways to maximize recovery when biomarkers of overtraining are unoptimized.
Lifestyle habits play an important role in your health, so this section of the questionnaire asks about your sleep, daily sun exposure, and other factors like smoking status. The information is considered along with blood markers and your goals to recommend changes you can make to your routines, like increasing the hours you sleep per night, incorporating mindfulness to reduce stress, or changing up the timing of your meals.
Setting up your health profile is a valuable step to make sure you’re getting the most out of InsideTracker. You can complete the survey by logging into your account at insidetracker.com after purchasing a plan. And while the initial completion of your profile lays the foundation for creating your recommendations, keeping it updated is equally important so that your recommendations stay current and relevant to you.
If you add or subtract supplements between tests, change up your exercise routine, or incorporate new foods between tests, you should update your Health Profile to reflect those changes.
You can update it any time by logging into your account online, hovering over your name in the top right corner, and selecting Health Profile.