Why Your Blood Is Liquid Gold

Dr. Gil Blander, PhD, Founder & CSO of InsideTracker

You’re a winner. Whatever you set out to do, you do it to the best of your abilities, always striving to reach your max potential. That’s why you’ve signed up for The Decathlon; not just to push yourself, but to push others to strive for something bigger than themselves. To be the best, to sweat your way to the top, you have to prime your mind and your body – neither is an easy task, but as always, science and technology are helping to lead the way with innovative new applications and analyses that offer a new world of possibilities.

That’s where InsideTracker comes in. We’ve harnessed the brightest scientific minds, big data, and the most cutting edge research and technology to help people optimize overall health, human performance and well-being… in a way that is highly personalized, and incredibly effective.

Here at InsideTracker, we are passionate about giving people the tools they need to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to their own health and performance. After all, the two are inextricably linked. If you could look under the “hood” and see what is really going on inside of your body, you might be surprised by what you find. Many people – even elite professional and Olympic athletes – who seem to be in top shape, may actually have some biochemical issues that are affecting their well-being and performance.

We see this a lot at InsideTracker. We use a simple blood test to measure up to 42 blood biomarkers that are scientifically proven to increase vitality, improve performance, and extend life. As you may know, blood testing offers a powerful window into the workings of your body — and one that is not available through most traditional measures of health, such as stress testing or annual physicals.

Your blood is a constantly changing, highly complex biosystem (we lovingly call it “liquid gold”), and InsideTracker taps into this rich source of information so that you can understand what is happening and make safe, sustainable changes over time.

InsideTracker combines blood analysis with a powerful algorithm to show the status of your unique blood biochemistry and suggest simple interventions to optimize it. What makes InsideTracker different from other plans is its integration of an “optimal zone” into the blood analysis – a number that is specific to each person, taking into account his or her own unique demographic information such as age, gender, ethnicity, activity level, as well as lifestyle and performance goals.

We determine your optimal zones for each marker based on the latest peer-reviewed scientific research and then recommend a path toward improving each one, through diet (we have a database of 8,000 food items you can find in your local grocery store), supplements, or tweaks in exercise, lifestyle and training.

For example, the generic normal range for a woman’s level of ferritin, a blood marker for iron, is between 12 and 150 units. InsideTracker, however, recommends that an active woman in her 20’s should have blood levels of ferritin above 40 units for optimum performance. If you are not in your optimal zone, our algorithm suggests strategies that will help you get there. If you have low stores of iron, the system might provide a three-pronged recommendation: add more iron-rich foods to your diet, take an iron supplement, and change your training routine to include some lower-impact workouts.

We have analyzed the blood of thousands of people, and in the process have pinpointed the biomarkers that are out of range most often among our clients. We’ve listed them below, and included some information on what they mean for your health and performance, as well as how to restore the imbalances.

Here are a few highlights:

Vitamin D and Calcium

Low levels of each of these can increase the risk of low bone mineral density and stress fractures. Vitamin D is essential for bone health because your body needs it to absorb calcium. It also regulates the development and maintenance of the nervous system and of skeletal muscle. Calcium plays an integral role in the growth, maintenance, and repair of bone tissue, maintenance of blood calcium levels, regulation of muscle contraction, nerve conduction, and normal blood clotting.

Dairy products like milk, yogurt, and cheese are famous for being good sources of calcium, but you can also eat more leafy green vegetables (think kelp and spinach), dried beans, and legumes to boost your levels. To improve your vitamin D levels, eat more fatty fish (such as sardines, mackerel, and salmon), egg yolks, butter, beef liver, cheese, and fish oil. Some foods, such as milk, yogurt, cereal, and orange juice, are also now fortified with vitamin D, so be sure to check the labels of your favorite foods!

Hemoglobin and Ferritin

Hemoglobin is a protein that is partially composed of iron and found mainly in red blood cells. Ferritin is a protein that stores iron, and therefore it is a good marker for the amount of iron in the body. Hemoglobin transfers oxygen to the muscles, brain and other organs, and helps the body to convert carbohydrates and fat into forms of energy. If you don’t have enough hemoglobin, your muscles will not get optimal amounts of oxygen and your body won’t use energy as efficiently when you are active.

Why might you be low in iron? During intense workouts, you lose iron through sweat, and runners also lose iron through gastrointestinal bleeding. Pre-menopausal female athletes are at an especially increased risk for low iron and hemoglobin levels because of blood losses during menstruation. And many people simply don’t eat enough iron-rich foods, such as red meat, rice, wheat, oats, nuts, dark leafy greens, and beans.

Vitamin B12

A quarter of InsideTracker customers found they had too much vitamin B12 in their blood. The body uses vitamin B12 to create new blood cells and to maintain its nervous system, but too much can cause symptoms like rashes, headache, nausea, and chest discomfort. You can find plenty of vitamin B12 in animal products such as meat, eggs, cheese, shellfish, and also in some fortified breakfast cereals, so if you’re eating these foods, you probably have enough. It’s likely that some InsideTracker customers and athletes have high B12 from taking unnecessary multivitamins and vitamin B12 supplements, or consuming energy drinks that are extremely rich in vitamin B12.

Long story short: you can’t know what you never measure. Tracking and improving your body from the inside means getting results on the outside, as well. Whether you’re participating in D10 or just want to feel better, look younger, jump higher and live longer, InsideTracker can help get you there.

While we can’t detail every single biomarker we test for in one short blog post, our website is chock full of information on everything you need to know about biomarkers. We encourage you to head over here for more. And, to make things even easier, we’ve created an e-book that’s totally FREE to download, outlining the many biomarkers we test for and explaining how they each affect various areas of your health, performance and well-being. Grab your free e-book right here!