- Take the baseline panel page to your GP, or order it privately; ask for one fasting morning draw with everything on one form.
- Book it between 8 and 10 in the morning, and at the same time on every repeat.
- Fast 10 to 12 hours, water only; eat an ordinary dinner the night before.
- No hard training and no alcohol for 48 hours.
- Not within two weeks of being unwell or of a vaccination.
- Sleep your usual night.
- Keep taking your supplements and medicines, record them in VT, and pause high-dose biotin for three days.
- Use the same laboratory every time.
- Upload the report when it arrives.
Two routes
Through your own GP, who writes the request on a community-laboratory form: tests are funded when the GP considers them clinically indicated, which in practice covers most of the core tier for a member with a reason (weight, blood pressure, family history, symptoms, a check-up) and rarely covers apolipoprotein B, lipoprotein(a), fasting insulin, vitamin D or cystatin C, which become self-pay additions on the same draw. Or privately, through a self-pay request service or a private GP, where everything is paid for and nothing needs justifying. Either way the aim is one draw: every index VT computes follows the same-draw rule, and a panel assembled across three visits computes nothing. Funding and prices vary by region and change, so this page names no laboratory, service or price; ask your GP or the laboratory before the draw.
Why the units matter
New Zealand laboratories report in SI by default (mmol/L for lipids and glucose, mmol/mol for HbA1c, nmol/L for vitamin D, µmol/L for creatinine, mmol/L for urate, mg/L for CRP, g/L for albumin and hemoglobin), and VT stores every result in the unit the laboratory printed and converts for display. Two asks: lipoprotein(a) in nmol/L, because the mg/dL form does not convert and VT keeps the two as separate series; and a note of the insulin unit, because laboratories print pmol/L or mU/L and the factor between them depends on the assay.
Why the morning, and why fasting
The optimal ranges VT shows assume a fasting morning sample, and so do most laboratory reference ranges for glucose, insulin and triglycerides. Cortisol, testosterone, iron and TSH all run on a daily rhythm, so the hour of the draw is part of the measurement; the same hour on every repeat makes two draws comparable. Fasting is needed for glucose and insulin and for the triglyceride range the laboratory prints; the European consensus found that most lipids barely move after a meal (Nordestgaard 2016), but the same draw carries the tests that do. Water is fine; black coffee is not, because caffeine moves glucose and cortisol. The dinner before should be ordinary, not a feast and not a fast day, because both move the next morning's glucose, triglycerides and urate.
Why no training and no alcohol for two days
Muscle work leaks enzymes into the blood: in fifteen healthy men an hour of weightlifting raised AST, ALT, creatine kinase and myoglobin for at least seven days (Pettersson 2007), creatinine rises with the same work, and white cells and platelets climb for hours after a hard session. A draw the morning after a hard session reads as a liver, kidney and inflammation finding that is a training finding. Alcohol raises triglycerides and GGT for a day or two and lowers overnight glucose.
Why not when unwell
CRP, ferritin, white cells and platelets are acute-phase: an infection or a vaccination moves them for two weeks or more, ferritin reads high while the stores may be low, and the indices built on the count (the Systemic Immune-Inflammation Index, the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, PhenoAge) move by a lot. Wait two weeks, and mark the sick days in VT so the engines leave them out.
Why the sleep matters
A short night lowers insulin sensitivity the next day, raises morning cortisol and shifts TSH; the panel is meant to measure you, not your worst night.
Why you keep your supplements, and record them
The report is read against what you take: VT shows the creatine note beside creatinine, the metformin note beside B12, the vitamin D dose beside the vitamin D result. Two exceptions. Creatine raises serum creatinine without changing kidney function (in a randomized trial, creatinine held steady in men taking creatine while it fell in the placebo group training beside them, with no change in cystatin C, the creatinine-free marker; Gualano 2008), so the creatinine-based eGFR reads lower and PhenoAge reads older than they are: keep taking it, record it, and add cystatin C to the draw. And high-dose biotin, in hair-skin-and-nails products and some B-complexes, interferes with many immunoassays: in six healthy adults taking 10 mg a day for a week, 9 of 23 biotin-based assays read wrongly, among them TSH, free thyroxine, vitamin D and ferritin (Li 2017). Pause it for 72 hours. A high-dose B12 or iron tablet taken in the 24 hours before the draw measures the tablet.
Why the same laboratory
Results from different laboratories are different assays, and for insulin, vitamin D, lipoprotein(a), ferritin and the liver enzymes the difference between two laboratories can be larger than the change you are trying to see. Pick one and stay with it; New Zealand community-laboratory reports print your previous results in dated columns, which VT keeps as separate dated results, so an upload after the second draw is already a trend.
Afterwards
Upload the PDF or photograph the printed report. Eir extracts each result with its unit and the laboratory's own range and flag, you confirm the table, and the results file under their panels; record whether you fasted if the report does not say. VT then sets the re-test reminder for each marker from the table below, shows the laboratory's flag where a result sits outside its range, and, if there are any, suggests a consultation in the How it works page's words: take your pre-visit report to your own GP, or book a video consultation with a doctor who works with Vitality Tracker. The range VT treats as optimal sits beneath each result in smaller type, marked working until the clinical advisor has reviewed it, and never changes the laboratory's flag.
When to re-test
The cadence follows two things: how fast a marker can move, and how long the Vitality Score keeps a result before it ages it out. A Playbook that targets a marker moves it to the first column for the life of the plan, and Eir's re-test suggestions use the same table.
| Marker | While you are changing something | Otherwise | Note | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | HbA1c | Every 3 months | Every 6 to 12 months | Red cells turn over in about 3 months; sooner measures the same blood | | Fasting glucose, fasting insulin | Every 3 months, with HbA1c | Yearly | A sensor month answers the day-to-day question better than either | | Lipids and ApoB | 10 to 12 weeks after a diet or treatment change | Yearly | ApoB responds over weeks; before week 8 is early | | Full blood count, liver, renal, urate | 6 months if a supplement, a medicine or heavy training is new | Yearly | Repeat liver and kidney when starting anything hepatically or renally active | | CRP, ferritin | When a symptom cluster shows, or 6 months after an iron intervention | Yearly | Both acute-phase: never within two weeks of being unwell | | TSH | 6 to 8 weeks after any thyroid treatment change | Yearly | — | | Vitamin D | End of winter and end of summer in year one | Yearly, late winter | A dose change needs 3 months to settle | | Urine ACR | 3 to 6 months if raised | Yearly | — | | Cystatin C | With the renal panel | With the renal panel | For creatine users | | Lipoprotein(a) | Never, unless a treatment that lowers it is started | — | Once in a lifetime |
Vitality Tracker describes and tracks your measures against your own history, for general wellness and for discussion with a health professional. It does not diagnose, predict or monitor any disease; what a result means for you is a conversation with your doctor.
Sources
- Nordestgaard BG, et al. Eur Heart J 2016. doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehw152
- Pettersson J, et al. Br J Clin Pharmacol 2008. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2125.2007.03001.x
- Gualano B, et al. Eur J Appl Physiol 2008. doi:10.1007/s00421-007-0669-3
- Li D, et al. JAMA 2017. doi:10.1001/jama.2017.13705
- Vitality Tracker, Recommended baseline lab panel v0.1 (routes, units, before-the-draw rules, cadence); Lab results data model (units, cumulative reports); How it works (the consultation suggestion).