I have always been a generally healthy person, with no concerning family medical history or any major illness or disease. And yet the more I try to keep up with the latest health and wellness trends, the more behind I feel.

“The more I try to keep up with the latest health and wellness trends, the more behind I feel.”

Cardio? Try Pilates. No, weight training. But lift heavy. The Mediterranean diet was good, but then there’s the Blue Zone diet, then intuitive eating. Sleep hygiene, nervous system regulation, and light therapy for mental health. And don’t forget creatine, nootropics, and all the different types of magnesium. Oh, and remember to check for third party testing, PFAS, and bioavailability before you buy. Yes, they’re expensive — but if you invest in anything, shouldn’t it be your health??

After I turned 40 last year, I started seeing advertisements for functional medicine subscriptions and at-home lab testing that promised to unlock all the secrets that my body had been keeping from me. Did I want to improve my longevity and my healthspan? Was I interested in curing my chronic stress and fatigue? Everything I wanted to know was hidden in mysterious biomarkers that traditional testing overlooked. If I wanted to get serious about my health, I needed more labwork.

I decided to check in with my doctor first. My physician is a DO — a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine — who brings a holistic and measured approach to his practice, with an open-minded philosophy that marries treatment with overall quality of life. I’ve been seeing him for over a decade, and I trust him. I arrived to my annual physical, armed with a notebook of increasingly urgent questions: Did we need to test my hormones? Was I supposed to know my A1C? Why hadn’t my doctor been pushing me to lift heavy weights for the last decade — were my bones already ruined?!

I am not a medical professional. I am just a middle-aged woman who cornered her doctor during a yearly medical exam, demanding he demystify the entirety of the wellness industry on the fly. While our conversation was more generalized, it is still essential to note that there is no one size fits all when it comes to our health — our distinct bodies, family histories, lifestyles, budgets, and so much more are key variables that make up the unique formula of our individual needs. It is crucial to find a medical provider you can trust to help define that formula for you.

“I am not a medical professional. I am just a middle-aged woman who cornered her doctor during a yearly medical exam.”

I am sharing what I learned for anyone who doesn’t yet have that team, or who might also be feeling overwhelmed by the pressure to keep up with an ever-changing landscape of recommendations for optimal health and wellness. This isn’t medical advice, or even an argument against any particular approach — it’s just this recovering perfectionist’s attempt to cut through some of the noise out there and find some sort of bottom line: In an age of information overload, how much of our own health metrics should we actually be thinking about?

Is traditional biomarker testing enough?

My annual physicals have always included bloodwork. Every year, I go to the lab next to my doctor’s office and try not to faint while they take my blood for a Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (CMP). After I get a copy of this report, my doctor tells me things look great. One year, he told me my labs were “essentially perfect.” Another year, he told me to maybe to eat a banana.

“Every year, I go to the lab next to my doctor’s office and try not to faint while they take my blood for a Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (CMP).”

If you have a primary care provider (PCP), you likely have a similar experience. If you’re anything like me, you probably get the traditional blood panel and, as long as everything comes back declared “normal,” don’t think about it again for the rest of the year.

Unless you start to see all those social media ads telling you about various at-home testing services for functional bloodwork panels. Then, maybe, you start to worry that you haven’t been getting the full picture of the state of your body’s health.

Traditional labs like complete blood count (CBC), cholesterol panel, or the CMP measure dozens of biological markers, aka biomarkers — which are measurable indicators capturing the state of a cell or organism at the moment of testing. (Fun fact: the term “biomarker” is a portmanteau of “biological marker.”) These annual panels are sufficient for most people, my doctor assured me. The biomarker data collected in these blood panels — like glucose, sodium, and hemoglobin — are often the ones covered by insurance, screening for the most common health issues. So while they are one way to get a baseline measure of overall health, they have their limitations.

“These standard panels are built to spot disease after values cross into abnormal ranges, rather than predicting future risks.”

According to the Cleveland Clinic, a CMP measures 14 substances that reflect your “liver and kidney health, blood sugar levels, and fluid and electrolyte balance.” But these standard panels are built to spot disease after values cross into abnormal ranges, rather than predicting future risks.

Those functional lab tests trending online, on the other hand, measure hundreds of biomarkers, sometimes for indicators of specific diseases, or for a more detailed look at overall wellness, like nutrient levels and gut microbiome diversity. Some tests might measure more niche or under-researched biomarkers, providing more information — but this alone isn’t necessarily more helpful.

Because here’s the thing: Biomarkers are simply data, not diagnoses, and not actionable next steps.

This was one of the first points my doctor wanted to stress to me about biomarker testing: More information without context isn’t necessarily going to make anyone healthier.

This felt contrary to the general tide of the wellness conversations out there, where wearable trackers and biodata is king. My watch can measure my sleep, heart rate, and blood oxygen levels — shouldn’t my doctor be measuring a little bit, well, more?

Why seek out further biomarker testing?

When I asked about getting some of the functional lab tests I’d seen online, my doctor shrugged. He could order them, but he wanted to understand why I was interested. “Just to know?” I said. “Knowledge is power, right?” But my doctor cautioned me against ordering tons of expensive labs without a clear and specific goal or reason to do so.

“My doctor cautioned me against ordering tons of expensive labs without a clear and specific goal or reason to do so.”

What kind of reason? If I had persistent, unexplained symptoms, for example, or a particular health concern that wasn’t addressed in our regular panel. If I was living with a chronic illness or long COVID, had a strong family history of certain diseases, or even wanted to screen for indicators due to a lack of family history.

Sometimes patients want to improve their athletic performances for ultra marathons or Ironman races, he told me. Or sometimes people report struggling with brain fog and fatigue despite their labs looking great. Additional testing could help identify nutritient gaps in both cases, or find indicators of other lifestyle changes to support the patient’s goals. The key to this, he stressed, wasn’t running the tests in and of themselves, but to have the right guidance to help interpret the data and tailor it to the patient.

“Patient context like my family history, lifestyle, and health goals, is crucial to understanding biometric data.”

If I wanted to order one of those labs online, he advised choosing a company that provided physician consultations as part of the service. Patient context like my family history, lifestyle, and health goals, is crucial to understanding biometric data. Otherwise, extensive testing is likely to only produce information overload and anxiety, with no actionable follow-up steps.

What kind of biomarkers did I need to be tracking now, then? Was my traditional panel enough? When would I want to look for something else, and what were the tests that he would recommend?

Biomarker categories and their applications

Discussing biomarker testing with a physician is a conversation of taxonomies. “Biomarkers” are only data points, after all. Contextualizing this information with the many subcategories is critical for understanding both their definitions and applications.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health as part of their joint Biomarkers, EndpointS, and other Tools (BEST) glossary, research and professionals now classify biomarkers into seven core functional categories:

  • Susceptibility/Risk Biomarkers: Indicators of a person’s genetic predisposition or chance of developing a specific disease (i.e., BRCA1/BRCA2 genes for breast and ovarian cancer risk)
  • Diagnostic Biomarkers: Measures the presence of a disease or medical condition (i.e., PSA for prostate issues)
  • Prognostic Biomarkers: Predictors of how a disease might progress or how aggressive it could be (i.e., Ki-67 in tumors) 
  • Monitoring Biomarkers: Status tracking of a disease or ongoing exposure to a medical treatment (i.e., HbA1c for blood sugar control in diabetes)
  • Predictive Biomarkers: Used to determine how patients are more likely to respond to a specific treatment (i.e., HER2 status for targeted breast cancer therapy)
  • Parmacodynamic/Response Biomarkers: Measures biological responses to intervention or drug exposures (i.e., changes in LDL cholesterol levels from medication)
  • Safety Biomarkers: Indicates potential adverse side effects caused by a drug or treatment (i.e., creatinine clearance tests for kidney function)

In other words, biomarkers are not an end in and of themselves — the data is only as meaningful as the functional context in which it’s interpreted.

Core biomarkers healthy adults can monitor (according to my DO)

For most healthy adults, my doctor said, a traditional panel should cover the following. If we wanted to get more insight into the data, he recommends diving into deeper testing within these categories:

Metabolic Health and Blood Sugar: Measures how the body is processing nutrients and managing insulin.
Biomarkers: Hemoglobin A1C (HbA1c), Triglycerides and HDL ratio, Uric acid, and Homeostasis Model Assessment-estimated Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR)

Cardiovascular and Heart Health: Lipid profiles help physicians calculate long-term risk of stroke and heart disease.
Biomarkers: Apolipoprotein B (ApoB) and Apolipoprotein A1 (ApoA1), Lipoprotein(a) or Lp(a)

Kidney and Liver Function: Evaluate the body’s waste-processing and filtration systems.
Biomarkers: eGFR (Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate) and Creatinine, ALT and AST

Blood Composition and Immune Status: Measures how well the body fights infection, transports oxygen, regulates inflammation, and blood clot efficiency.
Biomarkers: Hemoglobin and Hematocrit, White Blood Cells and Platelets, Immunoglobulins (IgG, IgM, IgA), Antibody Titers and Serology, Inflammation Markers (CRP and ESR): C-reactive protein (CRP) and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR)

Essential Nutrients: Measures levels of essential vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and amino acids.
Biomarkers: Vitamins D (25-hydroxy), B12, Folate (B9), C, A, E; Methylmalonic acid (MMA), Total iron binding capacity (TIBC), Antioxidants (CoQ10), Iron (ferritin/TIBC), Magnesium, Zinc, Calcium, Iodine, Heavy metals

For otherwise healthy adults experiencing some of those pesky “unexplained” symptoms like weight fluctuations, severe or chronic fatigue, muscle weakness, hyperpigmentation, or temperature intolerance, he recommended monitoring the following biomarkers as well:

And again, his highest recommendation? Testing with intention. Having a clear reason for collecting biomarkers is crucial for avoiding overwhelm and creating unnecessary anxiety. Biomarkers are just one part the picture — a single twig on a much larger tree, in a much, much bigger forest.

“Having a clear reason for collecting biomarkers is crucial for avoiding overwhelm and creating unnecessary anxiety.”

Still, those of us who love data just as much as we love being proactive, at-home functional lab testing can be too much to resist. In that case, ensuring that we have the right guide is crucial to understanding our biomarkers well enough to know what to do with the information. The goal, after all, is to figure out how to support our individual health in the life we are actually living — and no single biomarker is going to tell us that.

We have to be able to step back from the twig, far enough so we can see the branch, and then the trunk, and eventually the rest of the forest it’s living in. Only then can we have enough information to know how we can help it all thrive.

Stephanie H. Fallon is a Contributing Editor at The Good Trade. She is a writer originally from Houston, Texas and holds an MFA from the Jackson Center of Creative Writing at Hollins University. She lives with her family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where she writes about motherhood, artmaking, and work culture. Since 2022, she has been reviewing sustainable home and lifestyle brands, fact-checking sustainability claims, and bringing her sharp editorial skills to every product review. Say hi on Instagram or on her website.