Why personalized
Long lists full of cheap values look complete, but say little about you. These are the six things we check before picking a single marker for you.
Your diet, sex, training load and family history decide which deficiencies are actually likely for you. A vegetarian runs a real B12 risk where a daily meat eater almost never does. So we pick the markers where your profile says there is something to find, and skip the values you are almost certainly fine on.
B12: a real risk for vegetarians, rarely one for daily meat eaters.
Mineral markers especially. Less than 1% of the magnesium in your body sits in your blood serum, so a serum magnesium value says almost nothing about your stores. Serum zinc has the same problem. They still show up in a lot of packages, because they are cheap and make a list look complete. We leave them out and tell you why.
Serum magnesium: less than 1% of your body's magnesium. Not a status marker.
B12 is the clearest case. The standard test measures your total B12, while only the fraction bound to transcobalamin is available to your cells. The active B12 test measures exactly that fraction. Which of the two is worth your money depends on your situation, your diet for example.
Active B12 (holotranscobalamin): the fraction your cells can actually take up.
Hormones most of all. Free testosterone only means something next to total testosterone, SHBG and albumin; together they show where the problem sits. Buy one loose hormone value and you buy a number without a story. That is why we build panels, not single values.
Free testosterone: calculated from testosterone, SHBG and albumin.
The omega-3 index is one of the most valuable markers you can measure, but the validated method reads the membrane of your red blood cells, and only a handful of labs can run it. Most draw locations can't. So before we pick your markers, we check what is actually possible near you and how far you're willing to travel.
Omega-3 index: only at specific labs. We check this before you book.
Homocysteine is the classic example. A valuable value, but the tube has to be centrifuged quickly after the draw, otherwise the level keeps rising inside the tube while it waits and you get a number that was never in your blood. Whether a marker fits your panel also depends on which lab runs it, and how.
Homocysteine: rises in the tube itself when processing is slow.
First a short questionnaire, then a free call. You always hear which values we pick, why, and what it costs, before anything is booked.