• Preventive health tests that bypass a person’s regular healthcare provider are a growing market.
• This trend made a Business Insider health reporter fear she was unknowingly unhealthy.
• A buzzy health test gave her the all clear but felt like a waste of money.

It was a Friday afternoon in London’s financial district, and I was standing barefoot on a scale, blood freshly extracted from my arm.

I’d just spent £65, around $80, at a private clinic on a buzzy preventive health test to check my heart health, diabetes status, blood, inflammation level, and body composition.

I stay on top of health trends as a reporter at Business Insider, and, despite being only 27, I’d become increasingly paranoid about the poor health indicators you can’t see, such as high cholesterol or visceral fat, which surrounds the organs and increases the risk of heart disease, cancer, and type two diabetes.

The rise of wellness culture, preventive medicine, longevity treatments, and misinformation on social media made knowing how to care for my health confusing. I might be eating lots of fiber and vegetables, but am I spiking my glucose levels too much? And is my gut microbiome diverse enough? I work out, but is my VO2 Max high enough? Is my muscle-to-fat ratio OK?

Adding fuel to the fire, as a health reporter, I’m also acutely aware of the unavoidable elements of modern life that can impact our health. From the ultra-processed foods linked to 32 health problems that make up 73% of the US food supply to the endocrine-disrupting microplastics that have been found all over the human body to how sitting at a desk all day can increase the risk of early death.

It feels like there’s an endless list of bodily systems and functions to consider, and all of this culminated in a quiet but persistent voice in my head that worried, “Even though I seem healthy on the outside, am I really?”

To soothe that anxious voice, I booked an appointment with a company that provides a wide range of direct-to-consumer health tests, which can be done at home or in one of their clinics. These are widely available in the UK, where healthcare is free at the point of delivery via the National Health Service, and in the US and other countries.

I chose the most basic in-clinic test because it was the cheapest option, and I’ve struggled to take my own blood at home. But there was a similar general at-home health test that cost $82.

Such at-home and clinic-based direct-to-consumer tests, which involve little or no involvement from a healthcare professional, are becoming increasingly available — with the market forecast to be worth $2 billion by 2025, according to a 2023 research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine. While such tests provide accurate results, experts say it’s debatable whether they are useful for the average consumer or feed on health anxiety.

Healthcare companies are capitalizing on the boom in at-home testing

Since COVID, interest in health and wellness has skyrocketed. The global wellness industry is now estimated to be worth $6.3 trillion, up from $4.2 trillion in 2018, according to a report issued this year from the Global Wellness Institute, and it has become more common to do health tests at home.

“We all got quite used to testing ourselves regularly, and now we think, ‘OK, so if I did it for that, why not for other things?'” Annette Plüddemann, a senior research fellow at the Center for Evidence-based Medicine at the University of Oxford, told Business Insider.

Companies have jumped on the bandwagon because there’s money to be made, Plüddemann, who studies the evidence for diagnostic tests and technologies and whether they provide health benefits, said.

With a quick Google search, you can find tests for almost anything and get them delivered straight to your door. Meanwhile, luxury longevity-based healthcare companies such as Canyon Ranch in Arizona offer in-depth diagnostic testing retreats costing $20,000 for four days. And luxury hotels such as One&Only, Four Seasons, and Six Senses are adding these services to their offerings.

The test results were reassuring, but I felt like I wasted my money

A few days after I had my blood taken, my height, waist, and hips measured, and my body mass weighed, I received an email with a 15-page report detailing my results. I was relieved to learn that there was nothing to be concerned about. My good cholesterol was slightly low, as was my platelet count, but that was all.

I also had a remote appointment with a doctor from the clinic to discuss my results, and she assured me that my health was good overall. Essentially, no notes. That cost me another £60 (approximately $76).

I did feel reassured, and in all honesty, it has squashed my worries. So I am happy I did it.

But I questioned if I had wasted my money as a young, fit person. I paid $156 to have tests that I didn’t need, to ease anxiety created by the idea that knowing for sure would make me healthier.

The noise around preventive medicine made me think that regular exercise, good sleep hygiene, and a healthy diet weren’t enough.

I may have felt differently if the results were concerning.

More testing isn’t necessarily better

People tend to think that tests can only do good, but unnecessary health testing can actually be harmful, Plüddemann said. Results can be inaccurate, leading to a false sense of reassurance or misdiagnosis, and when done outside a clinical setting, you don’t always have a doctor to contextualize the results, she said.

Plüddemann added that despite the notion that tracking all of our health markers will lead to longer, better lives, there’s good evidence to suggest that general health checks don’t necessarily improve a person’s health outcomes.

“Whether people have been either given a health check or not, overall, hasn’t meant they necessarily live longer or better lives,” she said.

In a 2023 study published in the journal BMJ Open, researchers in Australia looked at 103 types of direct-to-consumer tests and 484 individual products ranging in price from 13 Australian dollars ($8.44) to $AUS1,947 ($1,264). The researchers found that 11% of the tests were likely to benefit most consumers.

The authors wrote for The Conversation: “Direct-to-consumer tests might seem like a good idea, but in most cases, you’d be better off letting sleeping dogs lie if you feel well or going to your GP if you have concerns.”

Testing when you have symptoms, are at risk for a certain condition, or are following population-wide medical advice like getting a colonoscopy from the time you’re 45 is important and can be life-saving.

But getting tested when I had no reasonable basis for worrying about being unhealthy felt like it was more beneficial to the company’s health than mine.