All sports have had to grapple with athletes seeking unfair advantages at some point in their histories. But blood testing is a largely untapped medium for achieving that edge in a fair and clean way. “Athletes are willing to inject their bodies with drugs to get an advantage, so why not withdraw information to improve performance naturally?” says the founder of InsideTracker, Gil Blander. Blander emphasizes that to optimize your body’s physical capabilities, it’s necessary to have scientific evidence about your unique blood biochemistry. The InsideTracker team spent years analyzing thousands of research papers to find the most critical biomarkers to improve physical performance and identify the nutrition, supplements, lifestyle, and exercise interventions to optimize them. Roughly 3,000 potential biomarkers were narrowed down to more than a dozen of the most essential for injury prevention and athletic performance.
What makes InsideTracker unique is its integration of an “optimal zone” in the blood analysis. This number is specific to each person and considers his or her unique demographic information, including age, gender, ethnicity, activity level, and lifestyle and performance goals.
InsideTracker’s sophisticated algorithm determines the optimal zones for each marker based on the latest peer-reviewed research. For example, the normal generic range for a woman’s ferritin level is between 12-150 ng/dL. But InsideTracker recommends that an active woman in her 20s should have blood levels of ferritin between 40-150 ng/dL for optimum performance. If you’re not in this zone, the algorithm recommends effective and simple interventions involving diet, supplements, and training modifications that are specific to your needs. The InsideTracker team created the algorithm to produce the most accurate recommendations for its users based on cutting-edge scientific research extracted from peer-reviewed scientific literature. From amateur to professional athletes, blood testing has helped thousands of athletes improve their performance.
