The science we use to back up our recommendations for food, exercise, supplementation, and lifestyle changes is held to the highest standard possible. In order for a study to make its way into our system, it needs to come from a non-industry funded, peer-reviewed journal and use human subjects. And even when those standards are met, we still carefully sift, read, and critique hundreds of journal articles to ensure a study's findings are strong enough. It's this high threshold that is often the answer to a common question we hear: "Why don't you test for 'X' biomarker?" So, here's a breakdown of some of the key biomarkers that have and haven't made it into our tests, and how we keep up with the ever-evolving science.
We test multiple biomarkers with similar implications
InsideTracker's plans measure biomarkers across 10 health categories like metabolism, endurance, fitness, heart health, cognition, inflammation, and more.We create these categories because, often times, a single biomarker is most useful when considered in the context of others like it. Though individual biomarkers within a category are very similar, their nuances help to widen what we can see about your health—and, therefore, what you can do to improve it. Here are a few of the carefully-researched biomarker categories we include in our tests and how their constituents add up:
Metabolism
The metabolism health category includes multiple groups of markers, including "sugar" biomarkers and "lipid" biomarkers.
Sugar biomarkers
We test fasting blood glucose, fasting insulin, and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) to provide a rigorous view of your blood sugar levels. Blood glucose provides a short-term measure, while HbA1c paints a picture of your average blood glucose over a longer period of time. Fasting insulin helps to understand your insulin resistance or insulin sensitivity, which are crucial factors in assessing your body's ability to regulate blood sugar levels effectively. The combination of all three is often used to obtain a more comprehensive view of your blood sugar.
Sugar biomarkers
We measure total cholesterol, as well as its subtypes, LDL ("bad") cholesterol and HDL ("good") cholesterol. When combined with triglycerides—the main type of fat circulating in your bloodstream—we can see a more complete picture of your heart health. Read about how these three adults improved their health health using InsideTracker here.
Inflammation
InsideTracker measures high-sensitivity c-reactive protein (hsCRP) and a variety of white blood cells (WBC) to determine levels of inflammation in the body. hsCRP is a protein that rises and falls in response to increases and decreases in inflammation — giving a reliable depiction of full-body inflammation. White blood cells act as infection fighters in the immune system making them better indicators of acute inflammation. By measuring both, we can get a more targeted and specific view of the inflammation in your body.
Why we don't test certain biomarkers you might hear about
It’s important to remember that the premise of InsideTracker is to help individuals monitor, improve, and ultimately optimize their well-being. Our platform offers personalized recommendations to improve health via food, supplements, exercise, and lifestyle. And if a particular biomarker isn't scientifically proven to be affected through those four channels, regardless of whether they're popular in the news or the literature, we won't test them.Food sensitivity tests
Food sensitivities are receiving a lot of air time right now, but truthfully, current commercially-available tests are unsatisfactory. These tests do not fully represent the physiologic impact of a food on your body and their accuracy has yet to be validated by scientific research.
In general, these biomarkers are not included in our product because a result outside of the normal range would prompt either a diagnosis or a consultation with a medical professional, which we cannot provide.
We've evolved with the science—and are committed to continuously doing so
If you’re reading this blog, you likely care about nutrition and try to be informed on the latest science. So, you should know about the challenges and criticism nutrition science often faces. Diets and fads come and go, social media perpetuates misleading information, reputable news sources report conflicting recommendations, scientific studies have a hard time attributing outcomes to a single dietary intervention alone...the list can be extensive and overwhelming. For nutrition scientists, this is just part of the job. But for someone with a different background, this can be incredibly confusing—and nearly impossible to distill.That’s why we do the hard work for you. We know that this field is richer than ever before, and with that, new information and ways to access it are becoming available. So, we are constantly investigating new biomarkers to add to our products and keep InsideTracker on the cutting edge of personalized nutrition.
