The holiday season is approaching, and like many things, it looks a bit different this year. And while many of us aren't able to see our loved ones in person for the holidays, we still have the power to give the perfect, personalized gift. Gifting an InsideTracker plan is simple, considerate, and doesn’t come with the added stress of shipping restrictions, long lines, or crowded stores characteristic of the holidays.
InsideTracker offers a variety of custom-designed plans to help the people you love reach their health and performance goals—whatever they may be. Each plan is custom-tailored to each individual; they won’t need to try it on for size because it’s an automatic fit. Regardless of their goals or the plan that they use, every InsideTracker customer receives an ultra-personalized, scientifically-backed action plan to optimize their biomarkers and strive towards their health goals.
We’ll show you that InsideTracker is a system that can be effective for the people in your life, regardless of their baseline health status and what they aim to achieve. What’s more, we dove into the science of what makes the perfect gift. It turns out that giving a gift that is practical, easy to use, and can be shared makes gift-recipients feel closer to their gift-giver, even if they can’t be together physically.
The perfect gift for endurance athletes, runners, and triathletes
The “Podium Chasers” in your life are the ones who wake up early on weekends to swim, bike, and run. They may have signed up for an endurance event or two in the past. Think: a marathon, Ironman, or a challenging trail run. And you may have heard them talk about a cancelled race this year. The Podium Chasers spend a significant chunk of time each week training and planning out their meals, and are always looking for that extra edge or boost in performance.The perfect gift for the “Goal Chaser” is an InsideTracker Ultimate Plan. This comprehensive test of 43 biomarkers will provide insights into their current health status and give them action-backed recommendations to set them on the path to improvement on the race course.
Your Goal Chaser can select the goal “Build Endurance” to identify the biomarkers most closely related to endurance performance. InsideTracker’s advanced algorithm will quantify how close your Podium Chaser is to reaching their endurance goal and give them an action-backed plan to help them reach 100%.
We know that endurance athletes need to pay particular attention to their iron status due to the increased risk of iron loss associated with endurance sports. Heel strike (when the foot hits the road during activities like running) causes red blood cells that are flowing through capillaries in the bottom of the foot to rupture, leading to increased iron loss. The Ultimate plan includes an iron panel of multiple markers to accurately assess iron status, allowing Podium Chasers to keep close track of these performance-mitigating markers. Iron’s primary role in the body is oxygen transport. A component of red blood cells called hemoglobin transports oxygen from the lungs to every oxygen-requiring cell in the body. Oxygen is also required to convert the energy from food to the form of energy our cells can use, an important reason to keep hemoglobin levels optimized. Ferritin, the storage form of iron produced in the blood when iron is absorbed from food or supplements, is also included.
The perfect gift for weight lifters and gym-lovers
The “Strength-Builders” in your life are people who have recently adapted to create a home gym and are chasing down their “one-rep-max” PR. Strength-Builders are outcome-centric and frequently look for ways to level up their training. And perhaps most importantly, they put emphasis on muscle recovery to maximize muscle gains. The next challenge for this person to take is to quantify how their health is impacting their training.The perfect gift for the Strength-Builder is an InsideTracker Ultimate Plan or High Performance Plan. Strength-Builders can tailor their plan to focus on optimizing the biomarkers most closely related to strength and recovery. Their InsideTracker insights and personalized guidance can help structure the best diet and recovery practices to help them reach this goal. Their evidence-based action plan will prove that simple tweaks can lead to significant gains.
Once on the InsideTracker platform, Strength-Builders can select the goal “Build Strength and Power” for personalized actions to optimize biomarkers associated with resilient muscular strength. For example, frequent, strenuous exercise is associated with elevated high-sensitivity c-reactive protein (hsCRP) and creatine kinase (CK). hsCRP is an inflammatory biomarker that rises post-exercise as the body replenishes oxygen and repairs worked muscles. And while the presence of hsCRP indicates that the inflammatory response is working properly, it’s critical that these levels come back to the optimal zone. An InsideTracker Ultimate Plan can determine whether that's happening appropriately.
Creatine kinase follows a similar pattern. As an enzyme that provides energy to our muscles, it's released into the bloodstream when muscles are worked from things like an increase in weight and repetitions. For this reason, a rise in CK is normal post-workout. However, prolonged high levels of CK may indicate that muscle breakdown is too high, indicating that a taper period may be in order. The only way to know for sure is to discover your blood levels of hsCRP and creatine kinase.
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The perfect gift for biohackers and your longevity-obsessed loved ones
The "Healthy Agers" you know strive to defy today's aging standards. They prioritize being able to maintain good health and quality of life as long as possible, and they spend time researching how to optimize the quantity and quality of the years ahead of them. They are smart, conscious achievers who are born leaders and strive to have control over all aspects of their life. They are driven by innovation and motivated to transform and biohack their health in order to do so. Healthy Agers are interested in their “quantified self” and can be found monitoring their sleep habits with the newest fitness tracker or conducting self experiments on things like the effects of intermittent fasting, reducing oxidative stress, and new brain games to improve cognitive abilities. The best way for your Healthy Ager to quantify their success in their quest for longevity is via their biological age, or InnerAge—the best measure of their body's internal aging process.The perfect gift for the Healthy Ager is InsideTracker’s Ultimate Plan plus InnerAge. InnerAge 2.0 is an innovative tool that quantifies your biological age. With these results also comes an action plan to biohack overall health and longevity. This action plan combines peer-reviewed science with blood data to deliver ultra-personalized nutrition and lifestyle recommendations to lower your biological age. Combined with the Ultimate Plan, our most comprehensive blood test of 43 biomarkers, your Healthy Ager is sure to up their biohacker game.
The list of biomarkers included in InnerAge range from those related to cardiovascular health like LDL (‘bad’) cholesterol to sugar markers like fasting blood glucose. The common thread between the associated biomarkers is their observed relationship with aging. And a gift of the InsideTracker Ultimate Plan plus InnerAge tells the Healthy Ager that you, too, are invested in their longevity and quality of life.
The science of gift giving states that the best gifts are the practical ones
Because we believe in the power of scientifically-backed actions, we dove into the research on what makes the perfect gift. One study compared gift-recipients feelings when given a “desirable” gift vs. a “feasible” gift. They found that, when compared to getting a desirable gift, receiving a practical gift actually made the gift-recipient feel significantly psychologically closer to their gift-giver.Another review of six studies investigated the hypothesis that gift-receivers liked gifts better when they are “companionized,” or shared with their gift-giver. The study found that sharing in the experience can lead to gift recipients to enjoy their gifts more, and feel closer to gift givers.
An InsideTracker plan is both essential and practical, and its results and impacts benefit the lives of all people involved. Tell the people in your life that you want them to reach their goals, no matter where they are this holiday season.
Michelle Darian, MS, MPH, RD
Michelle is a Nutrition Specialist at InsideTracker. As a Registered Dietitian, you’ll find Michelle analyzing the research behind recent nutrition trends, bringing actionable food and supplement recommendations to the platform. When she's not myth-busting, Michelle can be found exploring new restaurants and getting creative in her kitchen.
Resources
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26448737/[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23493183/
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27445361/
[4] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18806550/
[5] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30027819/
[6] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28914162/
