📊 Superpower Review

 📊 Superpower Review:

One of the biggest misconceptions about the anti-diet movement is that we don’t care about health. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The anti-diet movement is all about reclaiming health from diet culture and embracing a more personalized, more accessible, weight inclusive version of health that’s not based on weight loss being the holy grail. Especially as I’ve entered middle age, I’ve been thinking more about my health. Things that I used to take for granted feel…less so. New aches and pains arise. My friends and I have become that table at the restaurant that pulls out our phone lights to see the bill. I watch TV with the captions on. 

I’m not proud to say, but I can’t remember the last time I got an annual physical exam. Being married to a physician, I find myself leaning on him when medical issues pop up, even if they aren’t in his area. The process to find a primary care doctor is daunting. I recently contacted over 10 different primary care physicians that had been recommended to me from various sources only to find that they were either not accepting new clients or exorbitantly expensive. I considered myself lucky when I finally found a doctor in-network with my insurance who had an appointment available 8 months from now. 

That’s why, when I was approached by Superpower to try their blood testing service, I was intrigued. The company promises comprehensive at-home blood testing of 100s of biomarkers that can aid in disease detection and personalized health decisions. The testing ranges from the mundane tests commonly run at your yearly physical to more obscure tests and analyses. Superpower gifted me their “Superpower Blood Panel” but I also purchased several other tests including the methylation panel, metabolic panel, organ age panel, cardiovascular panel, gut microbiome analysis, and the Grail Galleri Multi Cancer Test. When in Rome! 

Here’s what I thought of the service…

The Testing Process

The process for scheduling the blood test was easy but the execution was a bit glitchy. The first time I scheduled the test, Superpower emailed me the evening before I was scheduled for the blood draw to let me know that the appointment was never confirmed in their partner phlebotomy company’s system so they would need to reschedule the test. Kind of annoying because I had already blocked my schedule and followed the pre-test instructions but okay, life happens. Then there was another mishap where a blood draw was accidentally cancelled and I wasn’t notified until I reached out after my two-hour window passed and no one showed up. I received confirmation texts, which made it even more confusing. After those hiccups, I kept my fingers crossed for my next scheduled blood draw and things went smoothly. My phlebotomist was friendly, professional, and seamlessly got blood from my often hard to access veins. The whole blood draw process took less than 15 minutes. Then it was a waiting game but not for long. 

The Results

The day after my Superpower Blood Panel test, I got a text notification that my results were ready. They start off by giving your “Superpower Score” (a snapshot of your overall health) and your “Biological Age” (how your body is aging “at a cellular level”). Then it goes into all the test results. For areas that came back with abnormal testing, they give you a plan to follow moving forward, with a focus on supplements (which of course they sell). They do a good job at providing an overview of the data and what it means in broad strokes, especially for areas with abnormal results. But if you want to dig in more granularly, the amount of tests and data can be overwhelming and, in my opinion, difficult for a lay person to understand. It was a lot of data. And some of the “tests” are just the same data presented in different ways. Without your own doctor, you would have to rely on the guidance of Superpower to understand what all the data means. Superpower is a longevity/functional medicine company so how comfortable you feel relying fully on their guidance is influenced by how much you align with that approach. Longevity and functional medicine can focus on “optimizing” levels that traditional western medicine wouldn’t be concerned about. There’s nuance in medicine and the “art of medicine” gets lost in biotech. That being said, Superpower isn’t claiming to replace your doctor so ideally this testing is done in conjunction with your doctor who can help you analyze it in the context of your medical history, lifestyle, and goals. 

How Superpower Aligns with an Anti-Diet, Intuitive Eating, Mindful Eating, Weight Inclusive Approach

When I was approached by Superpower to try their product, my main concern was how it would align with my anti-diet approach. I’ve spent the last decade of my life getting off the diet-binge rollercoaster by practicing mindful eating and using my “internal GPS” to guide my eating. I believe strongly in an anti-diet, weight-inclusive approach to health. In medicine–especially functional and longevity medicine–that can be hard to find.

So how did Superpower hold up? While I wouldn’t say it’s an eating disorder informed or weight-inclusive program, it wasn’t as bad as I feared. For the most part, their analyses and recommendations were weight neutral and the nutrition advice I was given was more additive than restrictive. My tests came back with high cholesterol; a diagnosis that can elicit weight loss and diet recommendations from doctors. While not completely weight inclusive, the recommendations focused on tips like “eat fatty fish 3-4 times per week,” “add soluble fiber daily,” “pair iron sources with vitamin C-rich foods,” and “add a daily handful of walnuts or almonds.” But mixed in was the recommendation to “manage your weight, as being overweight or obese can increase your LDL cholesterol and lower your HDL cholesterol” and “limit refined carbs and added sugars.” They also calculate your BMI; it’s based on self-reported height and weight so you could just put in a placeholder number. If you click on that section, an elevated BMI comes with all the weight-centric warnings and recommendations you would expect. But they do a pretty good job of keeping it all contained to the BMI section so you can just skip over it. Despite my “high” BMI, my weight didn’t seem to seep into other parts of the analyses or recommendations. All in all, I feel like there was less focus on weight and dieting than you might encounter at a doctor’s office–but that bar is low. So very low. 

Final Thoughts

Overall, I thought that Superpower delivered on their promise to analyze my biomarkers to aid in disease detection and help me make personalized health decisions. Personally, I was looking to get some health insights and basic bloodwork since I don’t have a primary care physician, and Superpower served this purpose. While this isn’t necessarily the intention of Superpower, I think it’s not a bad stopgap for those who aren’t able to access a primary care physician or preventative healthcare. If you don’t have health insurance or if you have a high deductible plan, the basic Superpower panel is likely cheaper than an out-of-pocket doctor’s visit and may be a good option if you are just looking to get your bloodwork done. They didn’t bombard me with weight loss advice or restrictive diet guidance, which is more than I can say for many physicians. My main health take-aways from the testing were pretty standard and most likely also would have been picked up on an annual physical (high cholesterol, low vitamin D). They do give you data above and beyond what you would get at an annual physical. Your “biological age,” many more tests, and a differentiation between “normal” and “optimal” levels. My goals weren’t to go down the supplement-health-optimization pipeline but it definitely provides an opportunity to dive deeper into all of that if that’s your jam. For folks in eating disorder recovery, I would use caution and talk to your treatment team before trying Superpower. There’s a lot of data and the focus on “optimizing” your health can be triggering, especially for folks with or recovering from orthorexia. But overall, while I want to emphasize this is not a weight inclusive product, I do think they do a pretty good job at keeping things relatively weight neutral, which can be a rarity in this day and age. Would you try this type of bloodwork? I would love to hear your thoughts!  

*This post contains links to my affiliate code for Superpower