How I Use Function Health and AI to Build My Personal Wellness Protocol

Most people I know manage their health the way they manage their home: reactively.

Something breaks, you fix it. Something hurts, you address it. The rest of the time, you assume things are fine because nothing is obviously wrong.

I understand that approach. I lived it — until the night my mother had a brain bleed and I realized that “nothing obviously wrong” is not the same as “everything is well.”

That was nine years ago. The way I think about my own health, and the homes I design, has never been the same since.

The Problem with Not Knowing Your Numbers

When you walk into a home for the first time and something feels off — the light is wrong, the rooms don’t flow, there’s a persistent smell you can’t place — you don’t guess. You assess. You look at what’s actually there before you decide what to do about it.

Most people never do that with their health.

A basic annual physical gives you a narrow snapshot. Cholesterol. Blood pressure. A general “you look fine.” But within range and optimal are two different things, and I spent years settling for “within range” without knowing I could aim higher.

I wanted to see my actual numbers. All of them.

What I Use: Function Health

Function Health is a membership that gives you access to over 100 biomarkers — hormones, nutrients, metabolic markers, thyroid, inflammation, organ function, and more — tested twice a year.

Referral note: That link gives you $25 off and gives me $25 as well. I mention it because I genuinely use it and it changed how I understand my own health — not because of the commission.

The first time I ran my results, I found things my regular doctor had never flagged. Not because anything was dramatically wrong, but because the bar for “normal” in a standard physical is set at “not diseased” — not at thriving. Those are very different targets.

My Actual Process

1. Run the Function Health panel. Full bloodwork, twice a year. Raw numbers, reference ranges, everything included.

2. Feed the results into AI with my goals. I take the full results and put them into a conversation with Claude alongside a clear statement of what I’m working toward: hormonal balance, fertility optimization, cognitive clarity, energy, and longevity. I ask it to analyze the results against those goals and build me a personalized daily protocol.

3. Get a specific protocol. Not generic wellness advice — targeted guidance built around my actual numbers. Which supplements at what doses. What to eat more of and less of, and why. What kind of movement supports where my body is right now.

4. Live the protocol. Organic meals where I can. The right supplements. Movement that matches what the data calls for.

5. Add what the AI doesn’t know yet. This matters: AI is good, but it isn’t omniscient. Some things I’ve found in current research haven’t made it into AI training yet. Basil seeds for PFAS elimination is one example. I stay in the research and add things the tools haven’t caught up to yet.

6. Retest. Repeat. After enough time to mean something, I run the panel again. Feed the new results back in. Adjust. This is the step most people skip — and it’s the entire point. A protocol built on last year’s data is a guess. A protocol built on current data, regularly updated, is a system.

The Oura Ring Layer

I also wear an Oura Ring, which adds something bloodwork alone can’t capture: real-time data on recovery, sleep, and for women, cycle phase.

This matters more than most people realize. For women, hormonal cycle phase affects how we respond to stress, exercise, and recovery in measurable ways. Training identically on day 3 as on day 20 ignores the biology entirely.

I’ve built a system where Claude monitors where I am in my cycle — pulled from Oura data — and schedules the right workout for that day. Not a generic plan. The kind of movement that’s actually supportive for that specific phase: restorative work when the data says restore, more intensity when the physiology supports it.

It took about twenty minutes to set up. Now it just runs.

A Note on Supplements and Staying Current

One thing nine years in this research has taught me: the landscape shifts. I was an early adopter of NMN — read the research, tried it on myself first before recommending it to anyone. And then the research shifted. Emerging studies raised enough concern about NAD+ boosters and cancer cell behavior that I applied the precautionary principle and stopped.

That experience is actually what shaped how I now approach everything: test first, build protocols from data, and stay willing to change course when the evidence does. I write more about the NMN decision in a separate post if you want the full picture.

What testing makes possible is informed decision-making rather than trend-following. You can’t optimize what you can’t measure.

What All of This Has to Do with Home Design

You might wonder why I’m writing about biomarkers on a home design website.

Here’s the answer: I can’t separate them anymore.

Circadian lighting directly affects melatonin production, cortisol rhythm, and sleep quality. When I specify lighting for an aging parent’s home, I’m thinking about their sleep architecture as much as glare reduction and fall prevention. These are not separate considerations.

Air quality shows up in bloodwork. VOCs from flooring, PFAS from certain surfaces and cookware, particulates from poor ventilation — these have physiological effects that accumulate over time. The materials in a home are not neutral.

Ease of movement reduces chronic low-grade physiological stress. A home that requires effort to navigate — tight doorways, abrupt transitions, poor lighting at night — creates a daily load on the body. Designing for ease isn’t just safety. It’s load management.

Sensory environment affects cognitive function and mood in measurable ways. My father became calmer after we transformed my parents’ home — less cluttered, better lit, more organized. His doctor noticed. The environment did that.

I’m not a medical professional. I’m a designer who has spent nine years at the intersection of wellness research and home environments. That’s a different credential — and in this particular niche, I’d argue it’s the more useful one.

Where to Start

Function Health is where I’d begin. The twice-yearly panel gives you a real baseline. Once you have data, you have something to work with. (You get $25 off with that link, I get $25 — full transparency.)

Oura Ring is the most useful wearable I’ve found for understanding how your body is actually recovering. The cycle tracking alone changed how I approach my weeks. (ouraring.com)

Feed your data to AI. A thoughtful conversation with Claude or another capable AI model, with your actual lab results and your actual goals, will produce more personalized guidance than most generic wellness programs.

Retest. Don’t skip this step.

And keep reading. The tools are good, but curious humans who stay in the research often know something useful before the algorithms do. That’s been true for me more than once.

Rachel Blindauer is an interior designer and aging-in-place specialist. She is not a medical professional. Nothing on this site is medical advice. Please consult your physician before making any changes to your health protocol.