Optimal health comprises our total physical, emotional, and relational well-being. It’s not just about being free of obvious disease but means performing at our best and experiencing the peak of our vitality. However, maintaining a healthy lifestyle could be somewhat challenging. One common means of boosting our well-being is by increasing our intake of multivitamins and minerals.
The multivitamin market is worth approximately $39 billion and is still growing. About 50% of all individuals in the US take micronutrient formulations. To meet this rising demand, brands flood the market. This has left many consumers confused about what the ideal product for them is.
To address these consumer concerns, personalized multivitamins are quite popular right now. However, a large part of the hype for most products is due to marketing. Vitamin packs cannot claim to be customized if the company does not conduct certain tests on the customer before creating a tailored package. However, completing a lifestyle quiz from one of these brands will give you a more customized vitamin regimen than walking into a store blindly.
Rootine is taking micronutrient personalization a step further so you can achieve optimal health. It aims to fix the problems associated with a one-size-fits-all approach to nutrition. Its initial product was a customized multivitamin and minerals delivered to your door based on genetic testing, data collecting, and sophisticated analytics to provide a comprehensive picture of your needs.
Rachel Sanders is an ex-investment banker and graduate from Harvard Business School Rootine’s CEO and co-founder. She founded the company in 2018 when she was unable to find an optimal solution to her problem of chronic stress and fatigue. Around that time, she met geneticist, bio technician, and nutrigenetics specialist Wallerstorfer, Ph.D., who was also exploring ways to optimize his health and not finding any.
In an interview, Sanders explained to Dr. Brittany Allman that she had noticed an absence of data-driven options available in the wellness industry that suited her unique needs, which led her to establish Rootine with Dr. Wallerstorfer. She noted that consumers lack the tools to make informed purchasing decisions throughout their life regarding nutrition. Sanders said she and Daniel were motivated to make an impact. Their objective is to empower people to leverage their health data to improve their appearance, state of mind, and performance every day.
Speaking with Upside, Sanders explained that the personalized approach is superior to assuming that everyone is the same. This is true when treating diseases and also in the wellness state. She said, “The same diet that might work for me isn’t going to work for you necessarily. That is because we have different lifestyles, our genes are very different, we are eating different things.”
Rootine’s approach is based on nutrigenetics, a science that analyzes gene variants and their relationship with our nutritional needs and lifestyle diseases like obesity, Diabetes Mellitus, cardiovascular disease, and persistent fatigue. The startup conducts continuous investigations into the interplay of genetics and nutrition. This way, they ensure that individuals get the most out of their daily intake.
As Sanders said in a feature on The Momentous Podcast, Rootine is built on over 400 clinical studies related to the functional interplay of nutrition and genes. Genes influence how your body absorbs, processes, and utilizes nutrients and our cells are the backbone of our health while our DNA tells our cells how to function.
To determine which nutrients your body needs, the organization examines your genetic information, blood nutrient concentration, and a lifestyle assessment. In an interview with Levels, Sanders said that Rootine had helped her identify a cellular defect related to detoxification that increased her body’s antioxidant requirement.
Rootine is developing a line of high-tech health products while using third-party testing facilities. The laboratory is ISO certified and follows the current Good Manufacturing Practices of the FDA (cGMP), which provides minimum guidelines for producing, processing, and packaging health products.
Rootine differs from competitors because its customers can get a tailored product based on their health data and follow their progress with a test-take-track system. They may do this using a digital dashboard that offers a premium, easily accessible health experience. According to the brand’s website, “Tracking is the only way to ensure that your formula is working and optimized for your body. Without tracking, even great personalization is mostly guesswork.”
When Momentous founder and CEO Matt Wan asked her where she sees the business heading in the next two decades, Sanders said, “Rootine is really excited about building a precision nutrition platform with a variety of solutions. What that means to us is utilizing new data points, providing products based on data, and helping members track where they are over time. We are continuing to invest in a digital experience and tying the data collection into a comprehensive, tailored solution.”
The startup is putting together a virtual-first team based in Nashville, Tennessee. Their success has seen their member count reach the thousands. Well-known members include professional athletes like Brian Burns and celebrities like Steve Aoki. Their concept remains the same: uncover each person’s DNA blueprint to gain the most complete understanding of them before boldly providing exactly what they require.
