Hello, Theranos? Always did you hear about it? Back then founder and current hacker Elizabeth Holmes may have overstated her claims that she could take dozens of affordable health tests with a single drop of blood, but the company was trying to address a real problem.
Most people get a panel of blood tests as part of their regular health check-up, and they’re not fun at all. Blood tests are not easy to arrange. You have to fast at least eight hours before most of them, and it’s hell if you’re afraid of needles.
This year, fitness tracking companies like Oura and Whoop started offering blood panels as part of their subscription services, albeit for an additional fee. Ultrahuman also offers a blood panel called Blood Vision, which we have not tested because the Ultrahuman ring is no longer sold in the United States. It is also worth noting that both of these tests are only available in the United States as of the time of this writing and do not include Arizona, Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, which have strict laws that limit direct access tests without a doctor’s order.
I booked in with different apps, starved myself (OK, I didn’t eat or drink caffeine for eight hours) on multiple test days, and had my blood taken in 11 complete vials at the same Quest Diagnostics, where the experts probably decided I had something weird. It’s dusk a whore. (Disclosure: Both Oura and Whoop have out-of-pocket costs for me, and both the equipment and tests are HSA- and FSA-eligible.) I compared these labs to others I had done with my doctor. Here is what I found.
Print it
The first thing you’ll notice when you take a consumer blood panel instead of using your doctor is that you have to book the test through that company’s app. Both Oura and Whoop bill this as an easy-to-use feature, but if you already have a primary care physician, it’s not. (I realize that having a primary care doctor in this country is already a big hurdle.) My doctor orders labs for my annual exam; I just went down the hall and pretended to be part of my annual exam.
I booked my Health Panels test through Oura, but after not eating breakfast and waiting 15 minutes in a small, ugly room in the back of Safeway, the lab technician told me he couldn’t get my order through the lab. I suggest you download your lab order from the company as a PDF, print it, and bring that hard copy to your appointment.
At my annual check-up, given my general health status, my primary care physician ordered a basic blood panel with three tests including 20 biomarkers—that is, complete blood count, A1C to test for diabetes, and a lipid profile, which includes your cholesterol levels and indicates your future risk of heart disease.
Oura’s test costs $99, and the comprehensive panel measures 50 biomarkers—more than double what my doctor ordered. In addition to lipid panels, blood count, and A1C, it includes other panels such as 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 the doctor’s translated report.
Although most of my results were positive, there was one scary one: My lipoprotein (a) blood test came back at 214 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L). (A typical range is
Add It Up
Whoop tests, by comparison, start at $349 twice a year, and unlike Oura, you can upload tests done through your doctor’s office to the Whoop app for free. Whoop’s Advanced Labs is more expensive because it offers 65 biomarkers instead of 50, and some of these tests are more expensive, such as vitamin D tests and various hormone tests.
Also, most of my results, even the hormones, came back normal. Whoop caught a few things that Oura missed, such as iron deficiency and very low vitamin D. That’s an easy, fix that can be done with a daily multivitamin, and I’m glad Whoop found it.
