I supplement with 5000iu per day, and check my blood levels regularly. Even with supplementation far exceeding governmental recommendations, My blood levels have never exceeded 70 ng/mL, which is well within the health range of 30 - 100 ng/mL.
Here doctors look at you funny if you want to track biomarkers. "You're young, problems don't occur until you get old". As if they've never heard of prevention.
You can't blame them, that's in general a healthier attitude than obsessing over chemistry and stuffing yourself with pills. Same as full-body CT scans.
You do realize that our body keeps going via chemical processes? Genetics can cause insufficient absorption of certain nutrients, and given the long term consequences of chronic deficiencies, testing may not be such a bad idea after all. Also, knowing your blood work means that you won't be stuffing yourself with pills you don't need.
That's what I'm talking about :) 99% of people will go on to live just fine without knowing their precise blood levels. "Preventive medicine" is not considered to be advantageous, usually the anxiety and stress outweights any benefits unless you end up being the 0.1% and finding a serious condition that didn't raise any alarms in your body.
I was just going to ask if there are similar services in the UK. I'm assuming that we can't get this through the NHS, so does anybody know of any private services?
I think it's incorrect to use free health care as a "competitor" for this product. Here in Belgium (with free and awesome healthcare) people still pay for organic food, supplements, gym memberships and many other things to stay healthy.
So I would assume there would be a market for this too. I am speaking anecdotally though, like you.
They are competitors. Both do blood tests. It depends on how much your current healthcare provider would charge and what kinds of tests they'd run. They do the same thing (but possibly give you the results in a more enjoyable/easier to understand interface).
There will be quite some people that would pay more for better treatment/faster service. Or because doctors refuse the tests.
WellnessFx is a very neat idea. I wish they would allow you to get your own blood work and type in the results yourself and only charge for the analysis. Personalized medical advice would not be possible for plans like this - can't really trust the data, but at least you get some automated advice from the system, and your market could be the entire world not just three states.
My advice is to get yourself tested, supplement, and continue testing. http://wellnessfx.com is a great service for minimum effort monitoring. Alternatively you can use cash-based services like this to order easily and without a doctor: http://www.mdlabtests.com/Vitamin-Tests/081950-Vitamin-D-25-...