Personal Biometric Testing Comes ‘Home’ to Your SmartPhone

Inexpensive testing/monitoring encourages healthy lifestyle and promotes peak performance. 

Your smartphone just got a whole lot smarter… at least when it comes to maintaining your health. Over the next six months and starting as early as April, at least one innovative company will be bringing biometric testing of stress/cortisol levels into your home. And for a few dollars you’ll be able to gauge cortisol (a stress hormone) peaks and valleys, track your stress and monitor the success of your anti-stress programs -- from cortisol mitigating supplements to meditation to yoga.

It seems that a clever device, patented by a company called i-calQ, easily attaches to your iPhone (Android models will follow). And by optically testing a small drop of saliva, the machine will accurately determine your cortisol levels… and cortisol levels are a direct reflection of stress.

Using your smartphone to track cortisol levels will give you a full picture of your daily peaks and valleys. If the difference between top and bottom numbers is too great, stress is indicated; and whether you feel stressed out or not, your body can take a real beating from stress: poor skin health, obesity, circulatory problems, the works.

Using your personal biometric tests, you’ll monitor the peaks and valleys to find out when you’re most stressed… so  you can take steps to cut anxiety. And, for example, if you take a supplement to mitigate cortisol production or try exercise or meditation to lessen stress, you’ll be able to chart your progress to see which activities work best for your system.

And while stress-related testing is about to hit the market in a month or so, as 2013 progresses other tests will be coming online -- able to measure lactate buildup to track peak exercise performance, hormone levels in men and women, cholesterol health and more… many more as personal biometric testing via smartphones is about to become a multibillion dollar segment of the healthcare industry.

It’s mind-blowing in a way. Less than a year ago, biometric testing was done in a doctor’s office or a lab, and the cost per test was enormous. I guess that’s why people like Tim Ferris were the ones who could afford weekly testing. (See Ferris’ video on biometric testing at http://www.hulu.com/watch/352863 -- begin at approximately 3:48.)

 In a few short months, biometrics has gone ‘personal’ and has come right into your home, into your pocket via a very smart smartphone attachment. The sky’s the limit here. And whether your a 20-something looking to maximize your fitness or a 60-something trying to take back some control of your healthcare destiny, personal biometric testing is the newest, best answer. 

Stay tuned.