The InsideGuide

The 10 New Blood Tests That Focus on Your Health Goals

Written by InsideTracker | Jan 27, 2025

If you’re an InsideTracker member—or you’ve been reading about the platform—you’re probably familiar with Healthspan Categories.

These are the 10 categories that tell the full story of your health:



When you get an Ultimate blood test, you receive reporting on all your categories. This includes 10 Healthspan Category Scores, individual biomarker analysis, and personalized recommendations. 

But category tests are also powerful on their own. You don’t always have to test all 10 to see a benefit. Sometimes, testing just one or two may even be more powerful.

That’s why we’re excited to offer Healthspan Category Testing. These are hyper-focused blood tests available exclusively for InsideTracker members. 

Let’s explore how category testing works.

 

Get to know your Healthspan Categories

InsideTracker does more than just test your blood. Our platform is designed to turn your data into action, so you can make measurable health gains.

Healthspan Categories help make that possible by putting confusing health markers into context. 

Each category consists of 6 to 14 blood biomarkers and as many as 4 fitness-tracker physiomarkers. We analyze this data within our platform to give you a single score that represents your overall health in that category. 

Your Healthspan Category Scores allow you to set meaningful goals. After all, biomarkers and physiomarkers are not health goals. They’re merely proxies for the things you care about. 

If you’re tracking your triglycerides, LDL cholesterol, and apolipoprotein B (ApoB), it’s probably because you want a strong heart. With our heart health category, you can easily track your progress toward this goal and discover targeted strategies for improvement. 

Similarly, if you’re tracking the stress hormone cortisol, it’s probably because you want to see improvements in categories like sleep, cognition, or gut health. 

And this logic cuts both ways. For instance, you might want to improve your endurance, but you don’t know which markers to focus on. Our endurance category puts ferritin, hematocrit, hemoglobin, and a dozen other markers at the center of your health plan.

That’s why category testing is so powerful. It lets you focus your blood-testing routine so that it aligns with your goals.


How to use Healthspan Category Testing

If you’re an InsideTracker member, you can test any category at any time. You can even combine categories to create your own customized panel. 

This is a new and highly personalized way to manage your health. And the benefits are huge. They include:

  • Frequent testing: InsideTracker members who test more often see faster results. Category testing makes it easier to test your blood several times a year.
  • Focused testing: You can direct more energy to the areas of your health that need it the most.
  • Trend analysis: By adding more biomarker and category data to your InsideTracker dashboard, you’ll get clarity on how your health is progressing.
  • Updated recommendations: With every test, you’ll get a new Action Plan to help you boost your score even higher.
  • Low cost: Most category tests cost $99. Those that contain biomarkers that are harder to process (recovery, sleep, and hormone balance) cost $149.

It’s up to you what and how often to test. But generally speaking, we recommend alternating Ultimate tests (which look at all 10 categories) with category tests. That way you can continue to monitor your overall health while putting extra attention on the areas that need it most. 

Here’s what the typical testing cadence looks like: 

Purchasing a Healthspan Category Test

You won’t find category tests in the usual InsideTracker store. Instead, you’ll buy them directly from your health dashboard, which you can only access if you have an active membership.

How to book a category test

    1. Log in to your account.
    2. Navigate to “Results” in the app, or “My Results” on desktop.
    3. Look for a button that says “Test your progress” underneath any of your Healthspan Category Scores.


If you’re a member, you can also use this link. But you’ll be required to log in before you can make a purchase. 

If you’re not yet an InsideTracker member, please join to start your testing journey. You can do that right here:


» Learn more about InsideTracker Membership

Why Healthspan Category Testing matters

Traditional healthcare is built to fix things—not prevent them from breaking. That’s why most people live without the full access to their body’s energy, creativity, and overall vitality. 

You may have a nutritional deficiency, hormone imbalance, or other problem that’s easy to identify with a blood test. But unless you look, you won’t know. You could be living with sub-par health and leaving good years of life on the table. 

Lifespan research reveals that modern medicine is good at keeping people alive, but it’s not particularly good at keeping them healthy.1 According to research from the Mayo Clinic, the average person in the U.S. spends more than 12 years of their life in poor health.2

Meanwhile, heart disease is the leading cause of death—but as many as 90% percent of heart-disease deaths are preventable.3, 4

We believe your health deserves a more proactive approach. You deserve access to your body’s data and validated tools for building long-term health.

Our platform combines insights from blood, DNA, and fitness tracker data. But that first one—blood—is vitally important. That provides the most in-depth and current update on how your body’s operating. 

With Healthspan Category Testing, we’re giving you total control over your blood-test journey. You can test more often and with more focus. You can drill deep into your problem areas or set your sights on specific performance goals. 

By combining category tests with Ultimate tests—the one that looks at all 10 categories—you have a testing menu that lets you zoom in and out as needed. 

Your body does not belong to the healthcare system. It’s yours to care for. And with category testing, you get to decide exactly which aspect of your health to focus on

Who Healthspan Category Testing is for

Category tests are for anybody taking a proactive approach to their health. And there are countless ways to use them.

For example, you might use:

  • An endurance test while training for a marathon or bike-packing trip
  • A metabolism or heart-health test to overcome a genetic risk of diabetes or heart disease
  • A sleep test to troubleshoot your inability to fall asleep
  • A gut test to help understand why you’re having stomach discomfort


There’s one use case in particular we imagine will factor prominently into our members’ health journey. And that’s follow-up testing. 

Let’s say you just took an Ultimate blood test. When your results come in, you discover that your health is decent overall, but your inflammation category is just 48—which qualifies as “needs work.” 

Digging into the biomarkers, you see that your low score is due to low vitamin D and high levels of white blood cells and C-reactive protein (CRP). 

So you vow to get these biomarkers optimized. You follow your Action Plan by taking a couple new supplements, changing your workout, and prioritizing an earlier bedtime.  

A couple of months later, you’re ready to retest. But you don’t want to buy a full Ultimate test. You just want to look at your inflammation category.

An inflammation test costs just $99, so you book it, test again, and learn that your inflammation score has jumped to 68. 

You now know that your Action Plan is working. You’re making progress. And since you’ve retested, you receive a new set of recommendations to build on your plan and help push your score even higher. 

Every health journey is different. Once you start testing your blood, you’ll discover opportunities for improvement that apply only to you.

When you do, you’ll know exactly which category you need to focus on to push your health to its peak.




References

  1. https://www.healthdata.org/research-analysis/library/global-regional-and-national-disability-adjusted-life-years-dalys-359
  2. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2827753
  3. https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2021/09/29/90-percent-of-heart-disease-is-preventable-through-healthier-diet-regular-exercise-and-not-smoking;
  4. https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/vitalsigns/million-hearts/index.html