Hey, Theranos? Ever heard of it? Erstwhile founder and current felon Elizabeth Holmes may have drastically overstated her claims by saying you could take a bunch of affordable health tests with one drop of blood, but the company was trying to address a real problem.
Many people get a panel of blood tests as part of their routine wellness check, and they’re not fun at all. Blood tests are inconvenient to schedule. You have to fast for at least eight hours beforehand for many of them, and it’s hell if you’re scared of needles.
This year, fitness tracker companies like Oura and Whoop began offering blood panels as part of their subscription services, albeit with an additional surcharge. Ultrahuman also offers a blood panel called Blood Vision, which we have not yet tested because the Ultrahuman ring is no longer sold in the United States. It’s also worth noting that both of these tests are available only in the United States as of the time of this writing and exclude Arizona, Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, which have stricter laws restricting direct access testing without a physician’s order.
I booked through the respective apps, starved myself (OK, didn’t eat or drink caffeine for eight hours) for multiple test dates, and had my blood drawn for 11 total vials at the same Quest Diagnostics, where the technicians probably decided I had some weird Twilight fetish. (Disclosure: Both Oura and Whoop covered the out-of-pocket cost for me, and both the devices and the tests are HSA- and FSA-eligible.) I compared these labs to others I had done with my doctor. Here’s what I discovered.
Print It Out
The first thing you’ll notice when you take a consumer blood panel instead of through your doctor is that, well, you have to book the tests through that company’s app. Both Oura and Whoop bill this as a more convenient feature, but if you already have a primary care doctor, it’s not. (I realize that having a primary care doctor in this country is already a fairly big hurdle.) My doctor orders labs for my annual exam; I just walk down the hall and get them done as part of my yearly checkup.
I booked my Health Panels test through Oura, but after not eating all morning and waiting for 15 minutes in a small, grim room in the back of a Safeway, the lab technician told me she could not find my lab order. I suggest downloading your lab order from the company as a PDF, printing it out, and bringing that hard copy to your appointment.
For my yearly checkup, given my general state of health, my primary care doctor ordered a basic blood panel with three tests comprising 20 biomarkers—that’s a complete blood count, A1C to check for diabetes, and a lipid profile, which includes your cholesterol levels and indicates your future likelihood of heart disease.
Oura’s test cost $99, and the comprehensive panel measures 50 biomarkers—more than twice what my doctor ordered. In addition to the lipid panels, blood count, and A1C, it includes other panels like blood glucose, insulin, potassium, sodium, total protein, and triglycerides. These results took longer to come back than I expected. The first set of results came in after 24 hours, but it took almost two weeks to get my full results and doctor-interpreted report.
While most of my results were optimal, there was an alarming one: My blood test for lipoprotein (a) came back at 214 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L). (The normal range is <30 nmol/L.) This indicates a seriously elevated inherited genetic risk for cardiovascular disease, like heart attacks or stroke, that is largely not affected by diet, exercise, or lifestyle.
Add It Up
Whoop’s test, in comparison, starts at $349 for two per year, and unlike with Oura, you can upload tests done through your doctor’s office to the Whoop app for free. Whoop’s Advanced Labs costs more because it offers 65 biomarkers instead of 50, and some of these tests are extremely expensive, like a vitamin D test and various hormone tests.
Again, most of my results, even the hormone ones, came back as being optimal. Whoop did catch a few items that Oura missed, like being very low in iron and vitamin D. That’s an easy, actionable fix with a daily multivitamin, and I’m glad Whoop caught it.