Function Health is a real company that provides real lab testing through Quest Diagnostics, one of the largest clinical lab networks in the country. It is not a scam. But whether it’s worth $365 a year depends on what you expect to get out of it, and some doctors have legitimate concerns about whether testing 100+ biomarkers in healthy people does more good than harm.
What Function Health Actually Does
Function Health is a membership-based service that orders comprehensive blood work on your behalf. For $365 per year, you get two rounds of testing: an annual panel of 100+ lab tests and a mid-year follow-up of 60+ tests. That adds up to over 160 lab tests per year, roughly five times what a typical annual physical covers.
You schedule your blood draw at a Quest Diagnostics location (there are over 2,000 across the U.S.), and results start arriving within a few days. The full set takes three to four weeks. A clinician then reviews everything and writes a summary, which is delivered within one to two weeks after that. The results are organized into categories and displayed through Function’s online dashboard, with each biomarker color-coded to show whether it falls within an optimal, borderline, or out-of-range zone.
What It Tests That Your Doctor Doesn’t
A standard annual physical typically checks 10 to 15 markers. These usually cover the basics: a metabolic panel, a lipid panel (total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, triglycerides), and maybe a blood sugar check. Function Health goes considerably broader. Some of the additional categories include:
- Advanced heart risk markers like ApoB (a measure of the actual number of cholesterol particles in your blood) and Lipoprotein(a), a genetically determined risk factor that most doctors never test unless you have a family history of early heart disease.
- Full hormone panels including testosterone, estrogen, DHEA, cortisol, and a more complete thyroid picture (free T3 and free T4, not just TSH). Most annual physicals only check basic thyroid function, if they check it at all.
- Nutrient and mineral levels like vitamin D, B12, folate, iron, magnesium, and zinc. These are not part of routine screening unless you’re showing symptoms of a deficiency.
- Inflammation markers like C-reactive protein, which can signal chronic low-grade inflammation before it causes obvious problems.
- Autoimmune antibody panels that may hint at autoimmune conditions in their earliest stages.
- Biological aging markers like homocysteine and DHEA-S that correlate with how quickly your body is aging at a cellular level.
The pitch is straightforward: catch problems earlier and optimize what’s already working. A standard physical is designed to detect existing disease. Function Health is designed to spot trends before disease develops.
Who’s Behind It
Function Health was co-founded by Pranitha Patil, who left Harvard graduate school to build the company, and Seth Weisfeld, a product designer with over 20 years of experience. The Chief Medical Officer is Mark Hyman, M.D., a well-known figure in functional medicine who previously practiced at the Cleveland Clinic.
The scientific advisory board includes JoAnn Manson, M.D., who is Chief of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor at Harvard, along with Andrew Huberman, a Stanford neurobiology professor, and Toby Cosgrove, M.D. These are credentialed people at respected institutions. The advisory board lends real academic weight, though advisory roles vary in how hands-on they actually are.
The Case Against Testing Everything
Not everyone in medicine thinks this approach is helpful. The core concern is well established in medical practice: when you cast a wide net on a healthy person, you will almost certainly find something that looks abnormal. The question is whether that finding actually matters.
One primary care doctor, reflecting on a patient’s Function Health results, put it bluntly: totally benign conditions are suddenly perceived as significant problems that need to be addressed. He emphasized that the standard blood tests he orders during annual physicals are enough to catch the important issues. Everyone’s body is different, and some people naturally run higher or lower on certain biomarkers without it meaning anything is wrong. In his view, casting a net as wide as Function Health does more harm than good.
This isn’t a fringe opinion. It reflects a well-known problem in medicine called overdiagnosis. A slightly elevated marker in an otherwise healthy person can trigger a cascade of follow-up testing, specialist visits, anxiety, and sometimes unnecessary treatment. The psychological toll of seeing a red flag on your dashboard, even one that turns out to be meaningless, is real. If you tend toward health anxiety, 100+ data points is a lot of fuel for worry.
The Case for It
Supporters argue that early detection is the whole point. Catching insulin resistance years before a diabetes diagnosis, identifying a genetic heart risk marker like Lp(a) that your doctor never thought to test, or spotting a vitamin D deficiency dragging down your energy are all scenarios where extra data leads to a better outcome. The tests themselves are standard lab tests processed by Quest Diagnostics, the same lab your doctor uses. There’s nothing experimental about the individual tests. The question is only whether ordering all of them at once in a healthy person is worthwhile.
For people who are proactive about their health and comfortable interpreting data (or who have a doctor willing to discuss the results with them), the information can genuinely be useful. Knowing your ApoB level, for example, gives you a more accurate picture of cardiovascular risk than standard cholesterol alone. That’s a real clinical insight many cardiologists wish more people had access to.
What $365 Gets You (and Doesn’t)
The membership covers the lab tests, result delivery, and a clinician’s written review. It does not include treatment. If your results reveal something that needs attention, you still need to bring those results to your own doctor. Some physicians will be happy to review Function Health data with you. Others may be dismissive, especially if they view broad screening skeptically.
At $365 per year, the per-test cost is low compared to what these labs would cost out of pocket. Ordering even a handful of the advanced tests Function includes (ApoB, Lp(a), a full thyroid panel, insulin, vitamin D, and a few others) through a traditional lab without insurance could easily run several hundred dollars. If you specifically want those tests and your insurance won’t cover them, Function offers genuine value on price alone.
The service is not covered by insurance. You also need to live near a Quest Diagnostics location, which covers most of the U.S. but not every area.
Is It Right for You
Function Health is legitimate in the sense that it delivers real lab work from a trusted lab partner, reviewed by a clinician, with an interface that makes results easy to understand. It is not a scam, and it is not snake oil. The tests are the same ones hospitals use.
Where it gets complicated is in the gap between data and action. If you are someone who will use the information productively, share it with a doctor, and not spiral over every out-of-range marker, it can be a genuinely useful supplement to standard care. If you don’t have a good relationship with a primary care doctor who will help you interpret the results, or if you tend to catastrophize health information, the sheer volume of data may cause more stress than clarity. The service gives you a much more detailed snapshot of your body than a standard physical. What you do with that snapshot, and how you handle the inevitable ambiguities, is what determines whether it’s worth the investment.