Your blood holds a lot of secrets. Some you find out too late. Dr. Mark Hyman co-founded Function Health, a personalized health testing platform, to protect against that outcome. “Health care is missing the boat on a lot of really important things,” says the preventive medicine guru, who founded the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. “There are things you can manage yourself that will help you feel better and live longer.”
For $499 per year, Function Health customers get two rounds of testing: an initial assessment with more than 100 blood tests, and then three to six months later, a follow-up including 60-plus retests to see how your numbers are changing. The biomarkers that are tested offer a status update on heart, thyroid, metabolic, kidney, and liver health, along with essential nutrients, heavy metal exposures, and more, far exceeding the basic panels most primary care doctors stick to. While no treatment guidance is provided based on results, Function members receive personalized insights that flag what to follow up on, in addition to suggested dietary tweaks and supplements to consider.
Some doctors believe handing over that much data to patients is a slippery slope: Subtle changes or irregularities in the biomarkers Function tests don’t always mean anything, but could lead members down a rabbit hole of additional (costly) testing or into full-blown health anxiety. The Function team argues it’s necessary to create a holistic view of well-being.
“The average doctor doesn’t think about how to create health,” Hyman says. “They think about how to treat diseases. Unless you’re empowered with your own health data, and the knowledge and information about what to do with it, you’re in a health care system that’s waiting around.” Function Health, he says, offers a better approach: “You become the CEO of your own health.”