Blood Test for Athletic Performance: Inside Tracker Review

Blood work isn’t just for post race winners to check for doping, nope it’s for the common Joe and Jane like you and me now.

Many endurance athletes, especially nerdy one’s like myself and Ben Greenfield, routinely run their blood work as part of ongoing pre-hab!  Just as I talk frequently about adding hip exercises and stretches to your routine to prevent injury, a little blood workup might just prevent other training issues.

Intrigued? Wondering how to take advantage?

This is my 3rd round of testing with Inside Tracker, so I’ve updated the post with more insights and tips that I’ve learned over the last few years of testing.
The first option is always to get a blood panel at a yearly physical.

The upside is that this should be included for free with most insurance plans. The downside is they likely won’t run all the things you need to know as an athlete and won’t provide you with detailed food or lifestyle recommendations on how to resolve any issues or potential issues.

And isn’t a potential issue really what you want to pay attention to??

It’s like starting to foam roll and doing squats when your leg feels a little tight rather than waiting until the IT Band is so inflamed you can’t walk.

InsideTracker Blood Testing

InsideTracker, a blood test for athletic performance, reached out to me in 2015 with an opportunity to try their system. As noted, I’m a total geek for learning anything and everything I can about how my body is performing, so I jumped at the chance (and as noted have now done it a few more times).

Personally, I want to know that what I’m doing is working for my body and if there’s a test that I can do once in awhile to keep things on track and ensure I’m running til I’m 90 then sign me up.

What can blood work tell you?

• Recommendations based on athletic lifestyle
• Hormone deficits that might be from over training or nutrition
• Nutrient deficiencies that you can fix with food
• Potential immune system issues
• Are you over training (inflammation signals from certain levels will help identify this)

How does it work?

• Order the test online from InsideTracker
• Get a list of nearby labs where you can get your blood drawn
• Go to a lab where they draw your blood and they send it off
• Wait for an email saying “WOHOOO Your Results are In”
• Log in to Inside Tracker for an insanely detailed map of what’s green, yellow and red in your results
• Review the recommended foods or supplements to help address your issues
• Keep reading the great blog posts they send on sports nutrition

Based on your results you’ll get recommendations to improve: sleep, boost energy, reduce injury, prevent illness and generally enhance your performance.

Ever wondered why you ALWAYS get sick the week of race, this might help you put an end to that. Finding out that you’re deprived of B12 or Vitamin D gives you something specific to take action on and support your body.

Checkout this chart on the Vitamins Athletes Need for Optimal Performance >>

My Results

I think some of my results could help others, so I wanted to share! I opted to do the Ultimate Package, which is their most comprehensive, but there are others that cost less and still give you much of the data points. It’s all about what you want to invest in your health right now.

IRON
Since Iron is actually a problem for many athletes, who often don’t even know it, I thought I’d dive in to my own low results and what it means.

First they don’t just measure iron, they do the whole spectrum of Ferritin, hemoglobin, Iron, TIBC, and TS. It’s important to realize they all work together and not in isolation.

Oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood is essential for endurance exercise as well as for normal function of the nervous, behavioral, and immune systems. Low iron is a common nutritional issue…Iron-deficient athletes have lower levels of red blood cells and hemoglobin, which may reduce oxygen delivery to the muscles and impact performance.

When one nutrient area is out of whack it can actually trigger a host of other issues and then cause more areas to be low or high. Again one of the main reasons for doing this kid of testing!

As noted below my levels were “very low”, which at first I blamed on not eating red meat…but then I thought about the mounts of spinach I eat and wondered how this could be.

Even meat eaters often have LOW iron during heavy training! Read this post on tips for fixing iron deficiency.Luckily, InsideTracker provided a great article all about athletes and iron, along with articles that help to back up their recommendations. Here is a good breakdown on iron from Breaking Muscle:

Optimal levels of hemoglobin improve strength, increase endurance, and enhance overall aerobic performance. The amount of hemoglobin in your blood depends partly on the amount of iron stored by another biomarker, ferritin.

If ferritin is low, you have less hemoglobin and fewer red blood cells to carry oxygen. When your iron is low, you feel fatigued, workouts that were good standbys become demanding, and performance falters.

2018: I’m happy to say my Iron was up since I put in place some of these tips! My Ferritin wasn’t out of the normal range, but still isn’t optimized, so I’ll be looking in to that.

NOTE: I think that is a KEY difference in these reports. Many times the range of “normal” is HUGE, but optimal is a whole different thing and that’s what you’re finding out here.

VITAMIN D
I was also low in Vitamin D, which is amusing for someone who is outside non-stop, but not all that uncommon.

Because vitamin D can be such a big deal for mood (and muscle strength), I started taking a supplement when I first did this test in 2015…then per usual I stopped. I got blood work in 2017 that showed I was still low and have since then been consistently taking something, so WOHOO this time my numbers were good.

CORTISOL
I knew this one would be high, it’s been high for years now. In part this is due to my non-existant estrogen levels, but it’s also due to training and my personality.

I am a thinker. I am a planner. I am a doer.

No idea why it matters if your cortisol is high? Well here are a few:

• Increases fat storage around abdomen (ugh)
• Accelerates aging
• Slows metabolism
• Weakens immune system
• One two punch on your mood

I appreciate that their recommendations focus on lifestyle {i.e. sleep, yoga, reduced training, creative outlets} and foods that can help. They also point out all the ways it’s going to impact performance, so if you can’t make a change for your health maybe you’ll do it to run faster!

2018: Good news, all the lifestyle things I’ve put in to place finally has this number working for me. The biggest factor is sticking to LHR training. That for me keeps my cortisol down my hormones happy.

A few other areas were not optimized that didn’t surprise me (again since the shift in hormones), but I won’t bore you with those.

Time to Optimize

In my 2018 test, I found a few other areas that weren’t outside of the standard normal range, but weren’t optimized for me to be running my best. Which is great because it’s an opportunity to improve.

• My CReactive Protein is slightly above optimal, which means inflammation or potential doing the test after a few days of hard workouts
• My DHEA is way below optimal, which is likely due to the estrogen, but means it could increase fatigue
• My B12 is below optimal because of being dairy free, which can also contribute to fatigue

The above items help to also point to why I might not be producing enough platelets. So I’m changing up my diet by adding in a few things from the recommendations:

• daily probiotic
• pumpkin seeds and raisins for iron
• a little red meat every few weeks for iron and B12

And I’d like to point out that my Calcium is spot on even though I’m mostly dairy free!! (Read for calcium tips!))

There is so much more information here, but now you have an overview of just what you can learn from giving up a little bit of blood and cash to maximize your sweat.

Find out more about InsideTracker and I highly recommend reading their blog.

Would you ever do a blood test for athletic reasons?

Have you ever made changes based on blood work and felt better?

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This time I truly bled for my work. I received a test for free in exchange for an honest review, which you have received!