SiPhox Health - At-Home Blood Test Review
My Battle With Brain Fog Part 2
I've been dealing with brain fog and crushing fatigue for months, and honestly, I was starting to think this was just my new normal.
You know that feeling when you can't concentrate, can't remember simple things, and feel exhausted even after sleeping eight hours? If not, believe me when I tell you it sucks.
I decided to try SiPhox Health's at-home blood testing to see if my blood work could reveal what was actually going on inside my body.
What I discovered in my results completely changed how I think about fatigue and brain fog, and I want to show you what this process looks like, whether you’re trying to pinpoint an issue or optimize your health.
Choosing Which Test To Take
SiPhox offers several different sets of labs and frequencies of testing. Their core testing can be buffed up to include more blood markers for metabolic, heart health, nutrition, and hormone testing. These are all combined together in the Ultimate Program.
Since I’ve been dealing with brain fog and fatigue, and athletic performance is still highly important to me, I went with the ultimate program.
At my age, I haven’t done a lot of regular blood testing, so I wanted to get the most comprehensive results. Plus, my friend Josh has been studying blood analysis and told me that some of the tests, like the thyroid and hormone panels, are much more useful when you look at the comprehensive results instead of the markers you get in core testing.
SiPhox has a handy quiz that can guide you in the decision-making process but I turned to my trusty ChatGPT assistant to help me even further. I already have created a Life Coach GPT that knows a lot about me and I used it to help me figure out which blood markers would be most important for me to test. It came back with identifying some crucial markers that I’d only see with the complete picture.
Cost comparison to other tests
Labs In Canada
In Canada, we get basic blood testing covered by health care. This can be great for identifying medical emergencies but becomes a barrier to more comprehensive health optimization testing. Most doctors won’t even provide a requisition for you for another more complete than a basic blood test. At my age and with no history of serious health complications, the best I’ve been able to get is additional testing of the thyroid hormone T4 and iron levels. These don’t provide much insight into what’s going on with things like low mood and brain fog.
You can pay for additional testing out of pocket but again, doctors are reluctant to provide the support needed to get this help. So that path felt out of the question when I was comparing my options.
Inside Tracker
The other main company I compared to was Inside Tracker. The blood panel on Inside Tracker’s Ultimate looks pretty much identical to what the Ultimate test for Siphox looks like, but in Canada you also have to pay extra for a mobile blood draw. I even asked ChatGPT to help me see if there was a big difference between these two companies tests.
What it came down to was cost, because a single Inside Tracker test was about as much as the year with two tests would be for SiPhox and I just didn’t know if I wanted to spend that much on blood testing.
The Testing
First off, does the test hurt?
You’re self-administering a blood test after all.
It’s just a finger prick test, but at first when I thought of a lancet, it made me think of something sharp and pointy that I didn’t know if I wanted to prick my finger with.
You don’t see anything sharp from inside the plastic tip of the lancet and it’s spring-loaded to be quick and painless. It feels more like a dull pinch than anything sharp.
What was more painful was the testing process the first time I went through with it. I spent over an hour squeezing my finger to try to get enough blood and didn’t even complete one test. Maybe I didn’t wait long enough after waking and I couldn’t get the spot of the finger prick to bleed enough before it healed.
It was insufficient but I contacted their support and within a couple of days they had sent me a new test kit to try again.
It went much smoother the second time. I waited a bit longer after waking which I think helped my body to be warmed up more and blood flowing better.
The lancet isn’t a problem but for me, the testing procedure is still quite slow. The SiPhox demonstration video makes it seem pretty easy and quick but for me, blood flowing out of my finger took a very long time to get enough for the samples. While I liked the convenience of at-home testing, I don’t have a problem with getting blood drawn either.
The at-home convenience is really the most important factor for me since I have not found it as easy to get testing done in Canada.
The Results
So then you’re ready to ship off the package and wait for the results.
Waiting for the results took about 3 weeks for the results to come back. Keep in mind I’m in Canada and I’m pretty sure that the lab it gets sent to is in California, so it takes a few days for travel. I got an email about a week after I sent my samples that the lab had received them. I then got a few more notifications about delays due to the lab being busy and having a lot of tests in the queue. If you’re looking for a fast turn around on your results, I can only imagine that SiPhox will continue to get slower unless they expand their network of labs.
I got multiple rounds of automated emails saying due to an unexpectedly high volume of samples, that my test results were delayed.
Once the results did come in for me, they were very telling. A lot of the symptoms of low mood, brain fog, tiredness, and lack of energy are clear when I look at the results of the testing. Some results that we want to test for fixing brain fog and energy issues shocked me to see:
Vitamin D was actually in a good range. This is hard to achieve for many people in Canada due to inadequate sunlight half the year. I balance this by taking lots of vitamin D (3,000 - 5,000 iu per day) and tanning regularly (1-2 times per week).
Morning cortisol was very low. To me this suggests late stages of burnout when the body can no longer mount a cortisol response to deal with suppressed adrenal hormones but a more complete cortisol test looking at the pattern throughout the day (which you can get from SiPhox as well) is helpful for identifying this.
Low T3 thyroid hormone. T4 is what most basic labs will test for but the conversion to T3 is important for energy and metabolism. Poor conversion indicates unmanaged chronic stress and needing more sleep.
Hormonal results is where I was really taken aback.
Estradiol was very high.
Free androgen index and free testosterone were low.
Total testosterone was very low (half of what is considered out of range on the low end).
These markers were concerning, and combined with LH being considered optimal but on the low end, suggest a hypogonadal condition likely caused by chronic stress and maybe sleep being less than optimal.
Not only does SiPhox show me these results, it provides a really great summary of why each blood marker matters, and what to do to work on improving it.
You then get to put together an action plan of what you want to work on before your next blood test.
If you want to see screenshots of the SiPhox test results and the insights and actions they provide to help guide your health optimization, check out the video review I did here:
Recommendations and Next Steps
First off, if you’re making adjustments on the fly to optimize your health, it doesn’t seem like SiPhox will give you the fast results you likely want. Although once you get into the routine of testing, you’ll know what you’re working on and this should give you enough time to adjust between tests.
I’d suggest that you take very detailed notes of anything you’ve done at the time of testing and in the window after testing, or keep your lifestyle the same until the results come in.
While the initial wait was long, I’ll see how it goes with my next round of testing. Now that I know what I’m working on based on the results of the first test.
I selected to test twice a year because I feel like that’s enough, but depending on how things go I may add on another test sooner to see if the changes I make are improving my symptoms.
I’ll keep you posted on how things go, so if you want to follow along on the journey or are looking to sort out your own health challenges, be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel or Substack.
And if you want to access the convenience of at-home testing to optimize your health or help you identify issues you’re facing, you can get 25% off your Siphox testing when you use my code.
Click the link or use the code RJKAYS721478 at SiPhox