IS INSIDETRACKER WORTH IT?

Juan Vergara

Has anybody in the team worked with InsideTracker (EN partner)????? .... What they sell: "Optimize your body's performance. Sophisticated, science based blood analytics, tailored just for you. Get your personalized nutrition and lifestyle recommendations. Trusted by athletes & health conscious consumers worldwide" . www.insidetracker.com
IS IT WORTH IT?

Paul Hough

Beats me, but given your recent seizure maybe it would reveal a deficiency?? My guess from this review is that it wouldn't improve your physical performance unless it uncovered a problem area.

http://www.livescience.com/48868-inside-tracker-review.html

Mariah Bridges

I did it and so did Coach Patrick, He did a review and a blog if you want to check it out.

I personally have seen significant improvements in my health that relates to my performance

Blog: http://www.endurancenation.us/blog/uncategorized/insidetracker/

Cant seem to find his video or podcast right now but worth a talk. Ask for Jonathan at Inside Tracker and let him know you're an EN ambassador

rlh2000

I honestly don't get the science. If you have a true deficiency, should be able to be picked up on blood work reviewed by an MD. In terms of making recommendations based on biomarkers that may be in the normal range, really don't get how that would work, considering these are taking a snapshot. Your values vary day to day based on many variables. Way too much variability to base lifestyle changes off of. I tend to be a skeptic when it comes to things like this, but yeah, I wouldn't buy it.

Tom Glynn

I took a look at the site this weekend. I hadn't heard of it before. I must say I was impressed with the bios on management, board members, advisors. Strong science and medical backgrounds.

steve Beyer

I'm not familiar with their "sophisticated algorithms", but I will tell you as someone with a fair amount of knowledge and experience in functional medicine that there are established "functional" laboratory ranges, and these differ subtly but significantly from the ranges that labs use.

Labs derive their ranges from bell curve averages from everyone they test yearly. Because most people are NOT very health(especially a high percentage of those getting labs done), the ranges are very wide, and in no way represent the "optimal" range. Lab ranges are good for picking up outright disease processes, but cause a LOT of people to remain chronically sick because they're told "everything is normal"

Just ONE example (I use this because about 1/3 of my practice is unresolved/undiagnosed thyroid problems) is with "TSH" or thyroid stimulating hormone. The usual lab range is about 0.5 to 5.0, but the functional or optimal range is 1.8 to 3.0....hence there are an estimated 20 million people in the U.S. who suffer with a thyroid problem because they've been mistakenly told "everything is OK".

So could a otherwise "healthy" athlete have subtle metabolic issues (anemias, deficiencies, thyroid dysfunction including autoimmune or "hashimoto's) that could be missed by the MD who is GREAT at picking up big problems, but has no training in and is unfamiliar with functional lab ranges? Well I can tell you it happens ALL the time with the non-athletes......and as far as I know us athletes are made up of the same parts as our non-athlete friends

Juan Vergara

Thank you all for your comments. I used them to ask a couple questions to the InsideTracker team and this FYI (if interested) was their response:

"There’s a difference between near disease rates, and pursuing what might be an advantage to the athletes. We steer clear of any disease related markers, which is why thyroid is not included in our program. Our program relies on these highly individualized ranges (of nutrient and hormone levels related to health and performance), rather than the lab’s “normal” values. As you’ve seen from your account, we show you the normal (yellow) range, and then the smaller green “optimal” range is based on you as an athlete. It’s made up of height/weight/age/gender and most importantly activity level.

I think that comment somewhat answers itself, in that we totally agree that each person is individual and should be treated as such. Additionally, we often also hear stories of people who are always told “everything is ok.” Check out this blog from my friend Laura, who’s had that happen to her for 10 years. Finally, after getting data from InsideTracker, she learned that “everything is NOT ok” and had a roadmap to success. http://blog.insidetracker.com/chat-...ra-ingalls

Let me know if this helps. We love skeptics, so you’re always welcome to pass along comments or questions that people may have like this. Appreciate your willingness to share the feedback!

Jonathan Levitt

Sales Manager

Segterra (InsideTracker)

One Broadway, Cambridge MA

Cell: (781) 223-7082

jlevitt@InsideTracker.com

www.InsideTracker.com

rlh2000

Just want to amend my super cynical/skeptic post to say I think knowledge is always powerful, both in terms of your own blood values and interpretation, regardless of where you get that from (medical professional, InsideTracker, etc). I think where a lot of the power can come is in adherence to a program, meaning when you pay big bucks and have your blood work telling you to eat cleaner in whatever form, get more sleep, etc, you will probably adhere pretty well to that since it seems so personalized and you really invested in that. At least for me though, I don't need a test to tell me to eat better and sleep more.

Juan, curious why you are looking at this. Do you think it could be a tiny improvement to your performance, or are you experiencing a specific issue/complaint (besides that whole scary seizure business), or just something cool to do. If something is not feeling right, I'd say maximize the sleeping and nutrition, and if you still feel crappy, maybe then look into further diagnostics? And obviously budget factors in a lot too- if you have the $$ and this sounds like something cool, that is very different than me who struggles to pay copays for medically necessary tests, so you can probalby see where some of the skepticism is coming from as well!