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

Drumroll, please… it’s a brand new year, and we’re excited to reveal a brand new tool to help take your wellness mission to the next level – with DNA! GoalGetter is the freshest addition to the InsideTracker family of products, and true to its name, it uses the power of your genes to help you get closer to your health and performance goals. Whether you’re excited about working towards a “new you” in 2018, or just looking to improve the already awesome “old you”, GoalGetter can help you get there. Nearly two years in the making with our scientific experts hard at work, GoalGetter marks our foray into the personalized genetics revolution.

GoalGetter is the first and only product of its kind to use your DNA to tell you which goal best fits your genes. At InsideTracker, we’re longtime veterans of the personalized wellness world: give us your blood test results, and we’ll give you a one-of-a-kind action plan based on your body and your goals. With GoalGetter, we’re taking that a step further by using your DNA. 

We're often asked if hormonal contraceptives can affect female biomarkers. The answer? Yes. It makes sense then, that women begin to wonder how they are affected, and to what extent.

Like any other medication, hormonal contraceptives (pills, patches, rings, IUDs, implants, and injections) interfere with the normal functioning of the body. Naturally, there can be some unintended residual effects. Therefore, some out-of-range biomarkers may be attributed to your contraceptive use, while others may be a combination of factors. It's important to note that throughout this blog post, we will refer to all hormonal contraceptives (pills, patches, rings, IUDs, implants, and injections), as OC – aka oral contraceptives. This may seem a misnomer, but in the current scientific literature, "OC" is used to characterize all hormonal contraceptives, unless indicated otherwise. We hope this post will help you better understand how your OC could be affecting some of your biomarker levels.

How do you feel when you’re waiting for your latest set of InsideTracker results? We like to think of it as a big, shiny gift waiting to be unwrapped. If it’s your first InsideTracker analysis, you’re probably thinking about the here and now: “Where do I stand? Are any of my biomarkers too high, too low?” If it’s your second, or third, or seventh InsideTracker test, you’re probably hoping that your present results have improved since the last one. Of course, everyone who uses InsideTracker is hoping to make changes in the present that will improve their future.

Did you know March is National Nutrition Month? We take nutrition pretty seriously around here, so we figured it's a perfect time to pay homage to foods that best fuel our blood. Forget the Oscars — we're joining the action with the inaugural InsideTracker Food Awards! Actors get a nod for their great performances; why shouldn't the modest mushroom, or the stellar steak?

We’ve grouped the body's biomarkers into eight categories and awarded each category a "winning food," based on its nutritional content and ability to pack a performance and health punch.  Plus, we’ve created a recipe around each food (free to download) so you can whip up a healthy storm in the kitchen!

Many of you may know me as the Sales Manager here at InsideTracker. What you may not know, is that when I'm not at my desk, I can frequently be found hitting the pavement alongside many of our users. I run to and from work most days, actively participate in November Project workouts (more on that later), and have run 3 marathons with another on the horizon.

Having recently spent a week in Los Angeles leading up to the Olympic Marathon Trials, I wanted to share the top five lessons I learned from the best marathoners in America, many of whom are InsideTracker users!

February 14th is around the corner and whether it means a box of chocolates or just another Sunday, science has long proven that love is good for your body. While a romantic dinner on Valentine’s Day may add a temporary spark to a relationship, it turns out that living every day with the right partner can both extend your lifespan and improve your health.

How is your health affected by the quality of your relationship? Does that feel-good feeling you get when a partner embraces you also boost your biomarkers? As usual, science has the answers.

How old are you?

Yes, that title is accurate. 

No, it’s not part of a cheap marketing gimmick or get-young-and-skinny scheme. I won’t be asking you to fork over cash for a bottle of dubious pills or useless bags of tea.

But it did make you stop and look, right? 

We get a lot of questions about the uses of whey protein. As a result, we did some nitty-gritty research on how this protein can potentially impact levels of the 30 blood biomarkers that InsideTracker monitors. In this first blog post of a three-part series, we will explain research examining how the consumption of whey protein may be a valuable intervention in reducing chronic stress by regulating levels of cortisol and serotonin.

Before we do that, we will define what chronic stress actually is and then look at the chemical structures and physiological functions of whey protein, cortisol, and serotonin. Continue reading below to see the research and learn how InsideTracker can both monitor your biomarkers and provide you with well-researched interventions to get them to optimal levels.

Sex Hormone Binding Globulin, also known as SHBG, is an awesome little glycoprotein that most of us have never heard of. Since SHBH is related to testosterone and other sex hormones, many women remain in the dark about their SHBG status. But SHBG is an important biomarker for women to pay attention to! Read more to find out why.