Blood Feud: Aura Health Boards vs. Advanced Whoop Labs

Wait, Theranos? never I heard from him? Former founder and current criminal Elizabeth Holmes may have greatly exaggerated her claims by saying you can perform a range of affordable health tests with a single drop of blood, but the company was trying to address a real problem.
Many people get a battery of blood tests as part of their routine health checkup, and it’s not fun at all. Blood tests are not convenient to schedule. You have to fast for at least eight hours before many of them, and it’s going to be hell if you’re afraid of needles.

this year, Fitness tracking companies Companies like Oura and Whoop have begun offering blood panels as part of their subscription services, albeit at an additional cost. Ultrahuman also offers a blood panel called Blood Vision, which we haven’t tested yet because the Ultrahuman ring is no longer sold in the US. It should also be noted that both tests are only available in the United States as of the time of this writing and exclude Arizona, Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, which have more stringent laws restricting direct access testing without a doctor’s order.

I booked through the respective apps, starved myself (well, didn’t eat or drink caffeine for eight hours) for multiple test appointments, and had my blood drawn for 11 total vials at the same company, Quest Diagnostics, where the technicians probably decided I had some weird stuff going on. twilight fetish. (Disclosure: Both Oura and Whoop covered my costs, and both the devices and tests are HSA and FSA eligible.) I compared these labs to ones I had with my doctor. Here’s what I discovered.

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The first thing you’ll notice when you take a consumer blood panel instead of your doctor is that you have to book the tests through that company’s app. Both Oura and Whoop consider this a more convenient feature, but if you already have a primary care doctor, it’s not. (I realize that having a primary care doctor in this country is already a pretty big hurdle.) My doctor orders labs for my annual checkup; I just walk down the hall and get it done as part of my annual checkup.

I booked my Health Panels test through Oura, but after not eating all morning and waiting 15 minutes in a small, dim room in the back of Safeway, the lab technician told me she couldn’t find my lab order. I suggest downloading your lab order from the company as a PDF file, printing it out, and bringing that printout to your appointment.

For my annual checkup, given my overall health, my primary care doctor ordered a basic blood panel with three tests that include 20 vital signs — a complete blood count, an A1C to check for diabetes, and a lipid profile, which includes your cholesterol levels and indicates your likelihood of developing heart disease in the future.

The Oura test costs $99, and the comprehensive panel measures 50 biomarkers, more than double what my doctor ordered. In addition to lipid panels, blood counts, 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 back 24 hours later, but it took about two weeks to get the full results and a doctor-interpreted report.

While most of my results were perfect, there was one troubling finding: my blood test for lipoprotein(a) showed it down to 214 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L). (The normal range is <30 nmol/L.) This indicates a very high genetic risk of cardiovascular disease, such as heart attack or stroke, that is largely unaffected by diet, exercise or lifestyle.

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In contrast, the Whoop test starts at $349 for two people per year, and unlike Oura, you can upload tests done through your doctor’s office to the Whoop app for free. Whoop’s Advanced Labs costs more because they offer 65 biomarkers instead of 50, and some of these tests are very expensive, like the vitamin D test and various hormone tests.

Again, most of my results, even the hormones, were perfect. Whoop has discovered some elements that Oura missed, such as being very low in iron and vitamin D. This is an easy, doable solution with a daily multivitamin, and I’m glad Whoop discovered it.