By this stage you’ve probably seen athletes of all walks running around with a big black dot on the back of their arm. It’s a wearable—a sensor, actually—called Levels ethat helps you understand how your body utilizes carbs (more on this below).

It used to be that you could only get specialized health tests on a doctor’s orders—now, you can mail in blood, saliva and urine tests without ever putting pants on. This shift from outpatient to at-home testing is thanks to advances in sample collection. Whether you’re sending in your samples or going to Quest Diagnostics, the science is basically the same, says Kamal Obbad, co-founder and CEO of Nebula Genomics.
The issue is in interpreting the results. When your doc orders a lab test, they know your history and review your data with that in mind. But when an algorithm spits out recommendations in an app (with oversight from a physician you’ve never engaged with), “be carefeeul about considering that information diagnostic.” Translation: Don’t make any medical decisions based on an at-home test. “Talk to an expert about your results whenever possible.”

What you can use these at-home tests for is optimizing diet and fitness so you feel and perform better.
Courtesy Image1. Levels: Best for Optimizing Diet
Glucose—which comes from carbs—is your body’s fastest, most accessible form of fuel. Head into a workout without enough in your system and you’re likely to bonk. This biowearable uses a small sensor (stuck on your upper arm) to monitor blood sugar levels 24/7 for two weeks at a time. Manually log workouts and meals via its app, and you’ll see live feedback as to how those impact your glucose so you can tweak habits to feel and perform your best.
[$399 for one month; levelshealth.com]
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Inside Tracker Courtesy Image2. Inside Tracker: Best for Fitness and Performance Insights
This blood test (go to a lab or have a technician come to your home) analyzes up to 43 biomarkers involved with energy, metabolism, strength and endurance. Tack on the DNA test to see how 261 genetic markers influence your athletic potential. From there, the app flags problem areas and delivers custom interventions—“have one serving of probiotics each day” or “aim for three 20-minute HIIT workouts per week”—that can help you level up.
[From $179; insidetracker.com]
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Everlywell testosterone test Courtesy Image3. Everlywell: Best for Testosterone
The right amount of testosterone coursing through you can mean the difference between feeling like a stallion versus a mopey zoo lion. High or low T can lead to symptoms like fatigue, depression and decreased muscle mass because it influences metabolism, sex drive, muscle production and fat loss. Spit in a tube, mail your sample to the certified lab, and an independent, board-certified physician in your state will weigh in on whether your level is normal. If it’s not, see your own doc about next steps.
[$49; everlywell.com]
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Rootine Courtesy Image4. Rootine: Best for Nutrient Deficiency
Fill out a 10-minute online quiz about your health and fitness habits, then take an at-home DNA or blood test (or upload data from ancestry.com or 23andMe). Rootine’s medical-grade genetics lab will analyze 52 genetic markers that have been shown in studies to impact how your body processes nutrients. Based on your genetic needs, the company will whip up a custom micronutrient formula with up to 18 vitamins and minerals. Just remember, supplements shouldn’t be used in place of healthy eating.
[$69 per month for 3 months; rootine.co]
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5. Thorne: Best for Fertility
Out-of-whack reproductive hormones can cause unexplained weight gain, sleep issues, mood changes, fatigue, and more—issues that affect people beyond those trying to conceive. Mail in your saliva swab and blood test, and certified labs will analyze hormone levels, thyroid function, and stress responses to provide you with a personalized health plan based on your results (think tips like “focus on resistance training in the morning” or “choose a Mediterranean diet”). Be wary of supplement recommendations; since those aren’t federally regulated, you should always discuss them with your doctor.
[$300; thorne.com]
Get it

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With each year, your habits, beliefs, hell, even your vocabulary can seem to grow stagnant. But with a little effort, you can keep your mind malleable, get smarter, and be a more informed citizen. Try these strategies and apps.

Expert Ways to Get Smarter and Be More Engaged Citizen
1. Break Out of Your Bubble
“We’ve become strangers to each other in sadly dangerous ways,” says learning and development consultant Paula Green. “Set aside time to talk to someone who voted differently or who lives a different lifestyle from you, and really listen. Ask them, ‘What’s important to you?’ Be curious, not cajoling. You might find that your needs are not that different from theirs.”

2. Volunteer
Lend your energy and expertise to those who need it, and you’ll pull back the curtain on a different slice of life—and feel valued for your efforts. Luckily, it’s easier than ever to find a volunteer opportunity that suits your availability and expertise: Peruse sites like VolunteerMatch, Catchafire, and HandsOn Connect.
Illustration of a man reading on subway Illustration by Kagan McLeod

3. Keep Learning
Your dorm days might be in the rear view, but that doesn’t mean you need to rely on a stash of edibles for mind expansion. Thousands of college courses are available for free online—including over 500 from Ivy League schools like Harvard, Cornell, and Princeton. Whether you’re looking to learn coding, go deep on Bitcoin, or tackle Shakespeare again, you’ll likely find a lesson plan for you. Bonus: Most are self-guided and taught virtually. To narrow down the offerings, use Class Central.

4. SHARPEN YOUR SCREEN TIME
Stop the mindless scrolling and bolster your brain with this trio of apps: Climb makes it easy to expand your vocabulary via fun, personalized quizzes with clues that include animated GIFs. Lumosity trains your brain through memory, multitasking, and focus challenges, sharpening skills that have real-world applications. And Memrise is like TikTok for learning a second language. Instead of memorizing awkward, outdated textbook phrases, you learn common phrases and slang from native speakers in snack-size videos.
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The gym can’t replace therapy, but it’s a damn good release when you’re dealing with a tough day at the office or a stressful family affair. Running can be meditative and yoga can be relaxing, but if you need to blow off steam, you need to lift—and lift heavy.

When your temper is high and you’re frustrated beyond belief, throwing some weight around is an incomparable release. Here are four heavy-lifting routines to help you blow off steam.
Anger Management: Best Heavy-Lifting Workouts to Blow off Steam
Workout 1: Locomotion
Equipment needed: Turf space, loaded sled, heavy dumbbells
1. Farmer’s Carry — 6 x 50m: Stand tall with a weight in each hand. Maintain a “proud” chest, pull shoulder blades down and back, and walk forward using short heel-to-toe steps. Aim for your body weight equivalent to be carried. If you can’t find dumbbells that can equate to this, try loading a trap bar to that equivalent instead. Rest 90 seconds between carries.
2. Sled Push — 6 rounds x 50m: Stand behind the sled with arms straight and flexed, body leaning forward. Drive the sled using a fast yet controlled pace. Again, aim for bodyweight equivalent to be pushed. Rest 90 seconds between pushes.
3. High Box Jump — 5 x 6 reps: Squat down to just above parallel and bring arms back behind hips. Explode with a strong forward-arm swing, tucking your knees after you’ve fully extended your legs. Land softly in the same squat depth you started with. Stand up tall, locking hips to finish the movement. Rest as long as needed between jumps.
Workout 2: Upper-Body Power Play
Equipment needed: Slam ball, bench, pullup bar, dumbbells
1. Med Ball Slams — 5 x 15 reps: Keep the weight relatively light (15 pounds) but move explosively to blow off steam and torch calories. With feet shoulder-width apart, reach to full extension with the ball overhead (try not to bend your elbows). With your full force, slam the ball down between your feet. Pick the ball up and repeat. Rest 60 seconds between rounds.
2A. Dumbbell Bench Press — 10 reps: Go heavy. Sit on end of bench, holding dumbbells resting on thighs. Lie back, guiding dumbbells over chest with legs, then plant feet to start. With dumbbells angled in and thumbs over collarbone, squeeze shoulder blades together and down. Press weights over chest to a wide V shape, then return to start.2B. Plyometric Pushups — max reps: Don’t clap your hands during the pushups. It’s an easy way to catch a finger and be out with a silly injury. Just explode up from the bottom position so hands come off the floor, then immediately drop into the next rep.
Directions: Perform 4 contrast sets of bench press and plyo pushups, resting 90 seconds between rounds. Contrast sets comprise a heavy lift followed by an explosive movement that mimics the mechanics of that lift. These trick your muscle fibers into exploding even more than they normally would since the body is duplicating the loaded pattern during the second set.
3. EMOM Chinups — 10 x 5 reps
Directions: EMOM stands for every minute on the minute. Start your clock and perform the first 5 reps with the clock running. It should take you around 15 seconds, give or take. The remainder of that minute (the next 45 seconds) is your recovery. Once the next minute begins, you should be starting your first rep of set 2. Repeat until you’ve completed 10 sets in this fashion.

Workout 3: Leg Day From Hell
Equipment needed: Squat cage, barbell, kettlebell, leg press
1. Paused Back Squats — 5 x 3 reps: In a squat rack, grasp the bar as far apart as is comfortable and come under it. Step back and stand with feet at shoulder width and toes turned slightly out. Inhale, then bend your hips and knees to lower your body using a slow negative. Pause at your full depth (you shouldn’t lose the arch in your low back). Extend through hips and push knees out to stand. Nothing beats standing under the heavy bar when you’re on your last nerve. Rest 2 minutes between rounds.
2. Romanian Deadlift — 5 x 8: Grasp the bar at shoulder width, holding it in front of your thighs. Bend your hips back and lower your torso, allowing your knees to bend only as needed, until you feel a stretch in your hamstrings. Focus on a hovering RDL, rather than touching the floor with the barbell. Extend your hips to come back up. If your back begins to round, you’ve either gone too heavy or descended too low. Rest 2 minutes between rounds.
3A. Kettlebell Swing to Squat Swing x 12 reps: Perform a typical kettlebell swing, but at the top of the swing, use the weight of the bell to counter your balance as you squat, then rise to go into a swing. It may take a couple of reps to get the rhythm down.3B. Barbell Split Squat x 8 reps each side: Load a barbell and rack it in the back squat position. (Use a power rack, or clean and press barbell and rest it on shoulders.) Stand tall with feet hip-distance apart, knees soft. Step right foot back two to three feet so torso is equidistant between feet. Plant the ball of back foot on ground and keep heel raised to start. Lower right knee toward floor until left knee is bent at a 90-degree angle and shin is perpendicular to the ground. Press through left heel to rise and return to start. Do all reps with right leg back, then switch sides.
Directions: Perform 3A and 3B as supersets, performing 3 total rounds. Rest 2 minutes between rounds.
Finisher: Heels-Elevated Leg Press x 2 min: This is a maniacal finisher that’ll torch the quads, helping you blow off steam and then some. The goal here is to match your body weight on the leg press machine, and perform continuous reps until the 2 minutes has elapsed. You can’t rack the weight, but you can rest-pause when needed with straight legs. Focus on the quads by keeping a narrower stance that’s lower on the platform, allowing the heels to raise off the platform at the bottom end ranges. You’re only doing one killer set of these, so make it count.

Workout 4: Isometric Mayhem
Equipment needed: Squat cage, safety pins, barbell, and two benches
Note: The goal with isometric training is to work as hard as possible against the immovable object. If you’re not giving it your all, you’re missing the immense training benefits. This method doubles as a great way to blow off steam since, well, you’re going to zap your nervous system and every shred of pent up energy you may have had at the start of the workout. Once you give it a try, you’ll see.
1. Isometric Deadlift — 6×30 sec.: Set the pins on the squat cage to the lowest setting, and wedge the bar between the bottom of the cage and those pins. Set up for a typical deadlift, pulling the bar into the pins as hard as possible. Keep the form strict, and attempt to lift the entire machine off the ground (assuming you can’t). Rest 60 seconds between sets. 
2. Isometric Bench Press — 5×30 sec.: If you don’t have a Smith machine setup, use a bench or squat cage with pins. Set up so the racked bar is above your chest, rather than your eyes, at a low-rack position that allows you to keep elbows bent at 90 degrees. Make sure the bar is loaded to a weight far above your 1RM, and press as hard as you can into the bar for 30 seconds straight. Rest 60 seconds between sets.
3. Back Plank — 5 x 20 sec.: Set up between two benches while seated on the floor. Place elbows on the benches, and keep arms at a 90-degree angle to your body. Make fists, look at the ceiling, and raise hips off the ground by planting feet into the floor and driving elbows into the benches. Squeeze glutes and upper back to keep your body from falling below the level of the benches. Return to the floor to rest for 90 seconds between sets. 
4. Wall Sit — 3 x 1 min.: Take a “seat” against the wall with knees bent at 90 degrees. Press your back into the wall with force to engage the quads. If 1 minute is beyond your current capabilities, go as long as you can. Rest as long as needed between sets.

Lee Boyce is a strength coach based in Toronto, Canada

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If you’ve been fighting an infection and your doc recommends antibiotics, consider waiting until after your 10K or half-marathon to begin taking them. Researchers at the University of California at Riverside found that, in lab studies, a 10-day course of antibiotics decreased aerobic performance by 21 percent.
“Antibiotics can kill many, if not most, bacteria in your gut that play an essential role in normal bodily functions,” says co-author Theodore Garland. Antibiotics don’t just kill off the harmful bacteria causing your infection, he explains, they also remove important bacteria from the gut that provide energy for muscles in the body.On the positive side, researchers found no indication of other negative health side effects from the antibiotics. Your takeaway? Weigh the severity of your symptoms against the importance of your sporting event. If the race takes precedence, hold off on your antibiotics until you cross the finish line to preserve your aerobic performance.

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You’ve probably heard of turmeric by now, the golden spice that’s been promoted for a host of health boons. But what exactly is it? Can turmeric benefits make a difference in your day-to-day life? And what are the best ways to consume it? Here’s everything you need to know.

What Is Turmeric
Turmeric is a spice that’s derived from the curcuma longa root, which is part of the ginger family. In fact, it looks remarkably similar to ginger root. The major difference, however, is turmeric has an intense golden-yellow color. That pigment comes from its active compound, curcumin (more on this below). The spice is used worldwide, but is especially common in Indian cuisine and as a remedy to treat certain health conditions such as arthritis and heart conditions.

Health Benefits of Turmeric
Turmeric contains many plant-based substances that have a number of proposed health benefits. One group of these substances is called curcuminoids, which provides the greatest health-promoting benefits. That includes the powerhouse we mentioned before, curcumin, which is revered for its anti-inflammatory, anti-aging, and antioxidant properties. In fact, it’s arguably the most potent, naturally occurring, anti-inflammatory agent around.
Now post-workout, inflammation increases in your body as a healing measure. But excess inflammation can be disruptive to healthy cellular processes, like metabolic function, and can damage certain cellular structures, like arteries. By prioritizing a spice like turmeric—and nixing bad behaviors like smoking, being sedentary, and consuming foods that are processed or high in saturated fat—you can boost recovery and overall well-being by lowering inflammation.
The downside to curcumin is that it isn’t absorbed very well in the gut when consumed. To get the dosage that’s going to be most beneficial, supplementation is often needed. Luckily there are many methods that can help increase absorption. Two of the most common: Pair turmeric with piperine (or black pepper extract), or combine it with fats. We’ll show you how below.
How to Consume Turmeric for the Greatest Health Benefits
It’s easier to combine fats and turmeric than you’d think. Add the spice with black pepper, avocado oil or coconut oil, and veggies, tofu, and/or chicken to boost its bioavailability. Golden lattes have also become incredibly popular: heat together coconut oil, almond milk, fresh turmeric, honey, and cinnamon. (Make it at home so you know you’re getting high-quality turmeric.) You can even blend turmeric into your post-workout or morning smoothie; just make sure you use almond milk or full-fat dairy as your liquid to get those healthy fats to bind to the turmeric. There’s one caveat: When you add the spice to meals, it might contain as little at 3 percent curcuminoids, the beneficial active compound. In this case, supplementation is your best bet to get the benefits of turmeric and curcumin.
Take 1,500 mg of curcumin with 60 mg of piperine per day. Or, try supplementing with Meriva, a patented form of curcumin; take 400–1,000 mg per day. Extracts like these are the most potent forms and yield the greatest health benefits.

Top 3 Turmeric Supplements to Take:
Jordan Mazur, M.S., R.D., is the coordinator of nutrition and team sports dietitian for the San Francisco 49ers.

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