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

We've been taught what a general, baseline healthy diet is: lots of plants, sweet treats rarely, healthy fats and fiber, and a few other buzzwords. But the question remains: where do animal products fit into the puzzle? Does meat and cheese belong in what we consider a "healthy" diet, or is vegan truly the only way to go when it comes to physical health? We compared blood results from our vegan and non-vegan users to see who's really healthier. Here are a few areas that show distinct differences between the two groups.

As we’ve talked about before, birth control can have some drastic effects on blood biomarkers. If you’ve received your blood test results and been concerned about some elevated (or low) sex hormone markers, it’s important to consider how lifestyle factors, like whether you're taking hormonal contraceptives, may play a role. Here's how birth control can affect blood levels of various hormones – and the implications those imbalances have on your health.

The world of sports performance is becoming increasingly scientific. Wearable technology, sleep tracking, and cutting-edge recovery techniques have made training programs more data-driven than ever. And while it's easy to blindly apply these new resources to the masses, a marker of a great strength and conditioning coach is the ability to personalize and individualize their approach to each of their athletes. Of course, doing so can be challenging – it's hard to know exactly what each athlete needs. But with the help of blood biomarker tracking and personalized recommendations, these answers can be reached more easily than ever.

Female infertility can be confusing, discouraging, and all-around difficult to talk about. But if you're experiencing it, know that you're not alone. The truth is, female infertility is a common problem in the United States – roughly 10% of all women aged 15-44 experience difficulty getting pregnant or staying pregnant.¹ Some contributing factors, like age and conditions affecting the female reproductive system, are out of anyone's control. But there are steps you can take to improve your fertility status, as certain lifestyle changes can improve critical blood biomarkers.²

The liver is the main “chemist” in our body. It is the primary location for the conversion of one compound to another. Because of this, the liver can be thought of as the body’s detoxifier. If you have a liver, there is no need to “detox” through juice cleanses or lengthy fasts. Your liver does that for you every day.

We all know how the commercials go: 1) a pair of bathtubs face the sunset (which we have so many questions about), 2) a deep voice-over warns us about erectile dysfunction’s ability to ruin the perfect moment, 3) you pray that you won’t end up a slave to the blue pill. But you don’t have to be a silver fox like the ones on TV to suffer from erectile dysfunction (ED). In fact, it’s more common in younger men than you’d expect.

A study from 2013 found that 1-in-4 men seeking treatment for ED were under the age of 40.¹ We're guessing you don’t want to be on the wrong side of that statistic, so keep reading – we’ve gathered some valuable information about how to avoid and/or counteract its onset.

Have you ever wished you could sleep all day without judgement from others, or even worse, yourself? We’ll admit – it’s certainly crossed our minds once or twice. With the fast-paced, dog-eat-dog world out there, restful nights can be few and far between. 

So to help combat the imbalance between hours spent awake and those spent sleeping, we’ve created our “Sleep Better” goal. No, we didn’t quite figure out how to add hours to the day or turn ourselves into cats. But we did put together a comprehensive list of research-tested remedies. So all you self-diagnosed insomniacs, light sleepers, and chronic nappers, read on.

Craving that mid-afternoon coffee? Hitting your coworker’s candy bowl come 3:00PM? Too tired for that evening gym session? You’re not alone!

Even the InsideTracker office struggles with the dreaded afternoon slump sometimes. So, as usual, we took matters into our own hands and did some digging into easy ways to boost energy – besides coffee, of course. 

Want to banish fatigue, keep your afternoon productive, and maybe even save a few bucks? InsideTracker customers will find these recommendations and more in our "Boost Energy" goal.

It's that time of year. The days are getting shorter, the nights longer, and the temperatures are steadily dropping. Before you know it, fall will be here and the North American triathlon season will be coming to an end. Whether you've already accomplished your main race, or preparing for the end of season, recovery time is just around the corner! 

This past weekend, our very own, Ross and Ashley competed and crushed their goals of racing Ironman® Maine 70.3 (more on that to come). We selfishly want them back to the top of their game as quickly as possible, we've put together a few ways to help them recover post-race. So here you go, colleagues: a few quick, strain-free triathlon recovery nutrition tips...

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.