At-Home Health Tests: A Tool for Performance Improvement or Waste of Money?

Unless you’re paying top dollar for health insurance, chances are getting an annual check-up at your doctor is a gauntlet. It starts with navigating the complicated maze of approved providers, finding one that is actually accepting new patients, scheduling the appointment, and hoping all tests and procedures are covered by your insurance. Then there are side quests: discovering your doctor doesn’t know much about the unique needs of endurance athletes, for one, or assuring the nurse that no, your heart rate is always that low.

It’s no surprise, then, that home health testing is on the rise. Today, folks can take matters into their own hands, ordering the bloodwork they would get at an annual checkup without the doctor’s office visit. Home health tests from Function, Thorne, and Athlete Blood Test go one step further, allowing customization of testing to analyze variables specific to athletic performance.

Mind you, home health tests shouldn’t replace a real, true, in-person checkup for important screenings like mammograms or colonoscopies. If deficiencies or imbalances are noted, test results should be discussed with a health professional – but as Dr. Jeffrey Sankoff explains in this article, that professional doesn’t always need to be your primary care physician. In fact, experts like sports dietitians may be much better suited to discuss what tests to order and what changes to make to diet or training in response to your bloodwork results.

It’s important to note that the market for home health testing is expanding much more rapidly than the science evaluating its usefulness. For example, some home health tests offer early cancer detection screenings to the tune of hundreds of dollars, though there’s no good evidence they actually benefit people who take them. Some researchers have also cautioned against overtesting in the name of wellness – a warning data-obsessed triathletes could heed in more ways than one.

But for those looking to track a certain marker of health and performance – ferritin levels in an athlete with iron-deficiency anemia, for example, or confirming cholesterol levels are trending in the right direction – these self-ordered laboratory tests could streamline the process and allow athletes to take more ownership of their health.

For the past four months, we’ve been punctured, swabbed, and wiped (yes, wiped) to determine the best home health tests for athletes. These four came out on top.

The most comprehensive on-demand health test: Function Health

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Chances are you’ve seen social media ads for Function, founded by Mark Hyman of Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine. The membership-only program charges a flat annual fee of $500 for what they describe as “100+ tests not typically included in an annual physical exam” that “would cost more than $15,000” if ordered traditionally through a doctor’s office.

Framed like that, the tests seem like quite a steal, and it’s clear Function capitalizes on that sentiment while filling out the intensive intake form, where the patient is asked, repeatedly, if they want to add on even more tests: a Galleri cancer screening for $900, extended heart and metabolic profiles for $400, hormone health for $200, genetic heart risks for $550, brain injury & regeneration markers for $250, even sexually transmitted infection testing for $50. If you have any degree of health anxiety, Function’s intake and upsell program is designed to exploit that under the guise of being thorough.

However, the foundational (100+) tests are indeed thorough – 20 vials of blood collected over two days can yield a lot of insights on heart health, liver function, nutrient levels, thyroid function, and more. Scheduling your two blood collection appointments is easy and can be done through the app, and detailed instructions are provided for what to do/not to do for the most accurate results.

Three weeks after the second blood collection appointment, all results are available in a dashboard, and each result is described in detail through clinician notes that actually do feel personalized – more so than some doctor’s appointments, which can feel rushed and incomplete.

However, some of the action items Function outlines in response to test results feel vague – the platform simply gives an alphabetized list of foods to eat and foods to limit based on “your vital biomarkers” but the list is lengthy and does not provide detail. (It can also be summed up across the board as “eat more plants,” even if you’re already following a plant-based diet, which feels a bit weak for $500 worth of testing.) Athletes looking to improve their health and performance would do well to work with a sports dietitian to create a detailed fueling and nutrition plan using their test results as a guide.

The best home gut health test: Thorne Gut Health Test

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Though Thorne offers multiple home health tests, including a comprehensive health panel ($830) that is somewhat similar to Function’s, we were most impressed with the gut health test ($200), which uses the most low-key collection method possible – one small wipe is used after defecation and dropped into a collection container, then mailed to the lab in a pre-addressed envelope. It’s quick, discreet, and does not require storing one’s poop in a refrigerator, as some gut health tests do. Thorne also does a great job of providing detailed how-to videos on the collection process, with closed captions, a transcript, and screen-reader accessibility.

As more evidence shows the role of gut health in athletic performance, it’s natural athletes would be curious about their microbiome. Thorne does an excellent job of analyzing gut health through this lens, offering details on bacteria present (or not present) and how it might be affecting athletic performance markers as well as cardiovascular or metabolic health, immunity, or energy levels.

But what’s truly impressive is that Thorne goes one step further, taking a holistic approach to health by discussing how test results might explain things like sleep, mood, and mental health. Triathletes tend to compartmentalize different aspects of performance and can miss the link between two seemingly unrelated variables (overtraining and mood, for example) so a research-based approach to connecting the dots, like Thorne provides in its results, could be helpful in training a big-picture approach to health and performance.

However, Thorne is not immune from the upsell. Like Function, Thorne’s testing platform is a gateway to selling supplements. Their results and recommendations are light on real-world fixes (despite several imbalances, Thorne’s recommendation was to “make no significant changes in your current diet” and instead purchase four supplements totaling $158 per month; a consultation with a sports dietitian revealed a few small changes to diet could actually address several of the imbalances found without supplementation).

The best at-home blood test: Siphox Health Core Health

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Could you collect your own blood sample? Believe it or not, it can be done – and it’s not nearly as painful or squeamish as you might think. Siphox has entered the home-health testing game by creating a true home blood collection kit for laboratory analysis. The collection device, which sticks to the arm and collects blood through a tiny incision on the surface of the skin, requires only one small vial of blood for a fairly comprehensive panel of heart, metabolic, hormone, and nutritional biomarkers.

The process of collecting your own blood sample looks complicated upon opening the box, but the instructions are clear and detailed, and Siphox offers a free “collection success call,” where a member of the team guides you through the process from start to finish. The device has a light touch – so light, you actually don’t feel anything other than a gentle suction on the skin.

The theme of self-reliance continues after collection, when a pre-scheduled FedEx pickup driver stops by your designated place (home, office, etc.) to take your packaged sample and overnight it to the Siphox lab for analysis.

Like other blood tests in this roundup, results are analyzed by a clinician and general advice given for next steps. Siphox does an exceptional job of providing its recommendations in detailed, actionable ways that don’t necessarily involve expensive supplements: “Consume more Omega-3s from cold-water fish and walnuts to improve ApoB levels.” However, all recommendations are done through a broader health lens, not an athlete-specific one.

The best athlete-specific home health test: Athlete Blood Test Gold Panel

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If your goal is to assess your biomarkers specifically for the purposes of improving performance, Athlete Blood Test specializes in just that. It’s a refreshing change of pace from broader health testing or even visiting a general practitioner, where knowledge of the endurance athlete’s physiology and concerns are limited. Athlete Blood Test’s “gold panel” evaluates your blood sample and discusses findings in the context of training tolerance, recoverability, and competition readiness.

Women can also pay an additional $30 to conduct this analysis through an even more specific view of sex hormones using the ABT.she panel, which makes training and fueling recommendations based on hormone fluctuations throughout the menstrual cycle.

Of the home health tests reviewed, Athlete Blood Testing was the one that had the clunkiest appointment process – while other testing platforms provided in-app scheduling, this one required visiting an outside website for the lab. It also required printing out a physical copy of the order and bringing it to the lab appointment, where others simply sent the order electronically when scheduling.

However, once in the lab, the testing was simple (only three vials of blood collected, compared to 10 or more in other tests) and results came the quickest of all tested (within 5 days). The clinician who analyzes the results and makes recommendations provides great detail for the athlete and actionable steps without upselling, since there is no in-house supplement: “Consider 300 to 400 mg of magnesium glycinate or magnesium chloride 5 days per week at your current training level.”