Blood Feud: Oura’s Health Panels vs. Whoop’s Advanced Labs

Hey, Theranos? Never I heard about it? Former founder and current criminal Elizabeth Holmes may have greatly exaggerated her claims when she claimed that many affordable health tests could be passed with a single drop of blood, but the company was trying to solve a real problem.
Many people undergo a series of blood tests as part of their routine health check, and it’s no fun at all. Blood tests are not convenient to schedule. For many of them, you have to fast at least eight hours in advance, and it’s hell if you’re afraid of needles.

This year, fitness tracker companies like Oura and Whoop have started offering blood tests as part of their subscription services, but with an added fee. Ultrahuman also offers a blood panel called Blood Vision, which we have not yet tested because the Ultrahuman ring is no longer sold in the United States. It should also be noted that these two tests are only available in the United States at the time of writing and exclude Arizona, Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, which have stricter laws restricting direct access testing without a doctor’s order.

I booked through the respective apps, starved myself (OK, didn’t eat or drink caffeine for eight hours) for multiple test dates, and had my blood drawn for 11 vials total at the same Quest Diagnostics, where the techs probably decided I was having some weird issues. Dusk fetish. (Disclosure: Oura and Whoop covered my costs, and the devices and tests are HSA and FSA eligible.) I compared these labs to others I had done with my doctor. Here’s what I discovered.

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The first thing you’ll notice when you take a blood sample from a consumer rather than through your doctor is that you have to book the tests through that company’s app. 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 physician in this country is already a pretty big hurdle.) My doctor orders labs for my annual exam; I just walk down the hall and have them done as part of my annual exam.

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

For my annual exam, given my overall health, my primary care doctor ordered a basic blood test with three tests including 20 biomarkers: a complete blood count, an HbA1c level to check for diabetes, and a lipid profile, which includes your cholesterol level and indicates your future risk of heart disease.

Oura’s test cost $99 and the full panel measures 50 biomarkers, more than double what my doctor ordered. In addition to lipid panels, blood count and A1C, it includes other panels such as blood sugar, insulin, potassium, sodium, total protein and triglycerides. These results took longer to arrive than expected. The first set of results arrived after 24 hours, but it took almost two weeks to get my full results and report interpreted by a doctor.

Although most of my results were optimal, there was one that was alarming: my blood test for lipoprotein(a) came back at 214 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L). (The normal range is <30 nmol/L.) This indicates a very high inherited genetic risk of cardiovascular disease, such as heart attack or stroke, that is largely unaffected by diet, exercise, or lifestyle.

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The Whoop test, by comparison, starts at $349 for two per year, and unlike Oura, you can upload tests performed by your doctor’s office to the Whoop app for free. Whoop’s Advanced Labs costs more because it offers 65 biomarkers instead of 50, and some of these tests are extremely expensive, like a vitamin D test and various hormone tests.

Again, most of my results, even the hormonal ones, were optimal. Whoop caught a few things that Oura missed, like being very low in iron and vitamin D. It’s a simple and convenient solution with a daily multivitamin, and I’m glad Whoop figured it out.