What is Hyperio?
Modern society is constantly giving you new ways to improve yourself. Every few weeks there is a new trend – “take magnesium to improve your sleep”, “eat steak and eggs to boost your testosterone”, “take ashwagandha to lower your stress levels”. Encouraging stories from others, influencer endorsements and promising scientific research convince you to pay for a new supplement, start eating differently or change your daily routine. Then what? Sometimes you find that it made no difference. Other times, you have a vague sense that there has been some sort of improvement, but you aren't sure. Sound familiar?
Hyperio was created to let you see if you are really optimizing your body, and if your diet, lifestyle and supplement choices are delivering or not. There are five aspects of your physiology that Hyperio focusses on
- Metabolism – your energy
- Cognition – your thinking ability
- Testosterone (for male users) – your virility
- Cortisol – your stress levels
- Circadian rhythm – your sleep schedule
We call these aspects of your physiology the five ‘domains’.
How does Hyperio work?
Each day, you complete a ‘wake-up’, ‘mid-day’ and ‘end-of-day’ check-in. Your status in each domain is determined by the app asking you some questions and getting you to rate various things. It also gets you to input some basic measurements, such as your weight, body temperature and resting pulse, though these are optional. Some things the app will ask you every day, other things are asked on a less frequent basis. To assess your cognition status, the app gets you to play a few simple games which test your focus, memory and reasoning. There are various optional additional inputs you can choose to record which give the app a more accurate reading. Everything Hyperio asks you is rooted in the biomedical evidence-base; in totality, your inputs should allow the app to form a comprehensive estimation of your physiological state.
You will get a Metabolism, Cognition, Testosterone, Cortisol and Circadian score, as well as an overall score that brings all five domains together, called the ‘Hyp’ score. Every Hyperio score is cumulative rather than being simply a reflection of what you logged that particular day. Before giving you any scores, the app first needs to calibrate. This calibration allows the app to get a sense of your baseline. You can choose to calibrate the app over the course of 1 day, 3 days or 5 days.
Once the app is calibrated, your score in each of the five domains will automatically start at 50. If your inputs indicate an improvement in metabolism, cognition, testosterone, cortisol or circadian status, or you manage to stay at a high baseline, then your score will go up. If your inputs indicate a worsening status, your score will go down.
Remember, your scores are a measure of improvement or regression from your baseline, not a comparison to anyone else. For example, one user having a metabolism score of 65 does not necessarily indicate that they have a higher basal metabolic rate than somebody with a score of 45.
What is Hyperio Insights?
Hyperio Insights is where the app comes together. In Insights, you log anything you are doing, eating or taking in a day. This includes, but is not limited to
- Supplements (i.e. “took creatine”)
- Meals (i.e. “ate steak and eggs”)
- Activities (i.e. “trained legs at the gym”)
- Caffeine (i.e. “had a Red Bull”)
- Peptides (i.e. “took BPC-157”)
You can record as much detail as you want. You can also log an ongoing lifestyle change, for example “started limiting screen-time”.
The app then analyses what you have recorded on Insights and your daily inputs related to metabolism, cognition, testosterone, cortisol and circadian rhythm status. Over time, if a trend emerges, it will show up in ‘Correlations’. For example, “Since you have started taking creatine, your cognition scores have improved”, “Days after you train legs at the gym tend to show higher testosterone scores” or “Since you have started limiting screen-time your cortisol scores have decreased”. You can then choose to follow this correlation going forward, which will provide you with data indicating how strong that association is, updated on an ongoing basis.
The more you log on Insights, and the more detail you record in your daily logs across the five domains, the larger the sample size will be and therefore the higher chance there is that a trend will emerge and be identified. When you first use the app, don't expect to see anything in Correlations for the first week or two, as the sample size is not large enough so any information would be misleading. Also, the app can only show a correlation if you log in the five domains and in Insights regularly, so the more you use the app the more you will get out of it.
Of course, correlation does not necessarily imply a causal link and something not showing up in Correlations does not necessarily imply that it is “not working” – the effect may be over a longer time span than you have been logging or it may be subtler than the app can pick up.
Disclaimer
Hyperio utilises user inputs to estimate a proxy score for the five domains. These scores are not an objective measure of a person's metabolism, cognition etc. and are not comparable to medical tests. The only way to assess your objective hormonal, neurological or psychiatric status is to consult a medical professional. Hyperio scores for metabolism, cognition, testosterone, cortisol and circadian are comparisons to the user baseline determined during the calibration period. They should not be used as comparisons to other users as
- The scores are markers of improvement / regression from your own personal baseline, not markers of objective status
- The data used to generate the scores is wholly user inputted, and as such is not objectively verifiable (regardless of the inclusion of various discrete data points and empirical parameters)
- The domains exist to give users a sense of their physiological status, but they are not comparable to a clinical consultation with a medical professional on the subject, nor are they as accurate as actual bloodwork or other diagnostic procedures
What is the difference between Hyperio Free and Hyperio Premium?
Hyperio Free users are restricted to just two domains – Metabolism and Cognition. If they wish to use the Testosterone, Cortisol and Circadian rhythm domains they must upgrade to Hyperio Premium. This also means that they are only given scores for Metabolism and Cognition, not the other domains nor the overall ‘Hyp’ score. Hyperio Premium also unlocks the ability to follow Correlations and earn Awards for continued usage of the app.
Should I be worried about inputting sensitive health and lifestyle data onto an app?
It is understandable to be skeptical of an app asking you to input sensitive health and lifestyle data. Hyperio was created out of a genuine desire to help people trying to improve themselves, not to analyse or sell-on your data. Because of this, your data is kept private – other Hyperio users can never see it, it's protected by encryption both when it's sent and when it's stored, and we don't share it with third parties. To be absolutely clear: we will never sell your data. No lengthy terms and conditions, no 100 page user agreement – just a simple promise.