Hundred Health Protocol: What My 100-Day Plan Recommends and My Day 30 Checkpoint

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When I published my Hundred Health review back in March, I ended it with an open question. The biomarker panel impressed me, the medical records import surprised me and the app was clean even in beta. But I could not tell you whether the Hundred Health protocol would be built around me or whether it would read like generic wellness advice. That was the question that mattered most and I promised to answer it once the protocol arrived, whichever way it went.

It arrived. My protocol is dated July 1, 2026 and I have been following it for about six weeks. I originally wrote this as a day-one report with nothing to show and then an off-schedule blood draw five weeks in changed that. My total cholesterol is down 68 points, my LDL is down 54 and my ApoB came in at 129, down from 166 earlier this year.

So this article does two things. It shows you exactly what Hundred told me to do and checks every recommendation against the peer-reviewed research, and it reports what happened in the first five weeks, including the one number I failed to measure properly and wish I had.

That first part is revealing on its own. Some of what Hundred recommended is backed by more than 100 randomized controlled trials. One recommendation rests on five small studies. One is a statin in everything but name and I chose not to take it. If you are considering a membership and you want to know what you receive at the end of the process, this is it.

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What Is the Hundred Health 100-Day Protocol?

The protocol is the whole reason Hundred exists. Plenty of companies will sell you a biomarker panel and hand you a dashboard. Hundred's argument is that the dashboard is where most people get stuck, so the platform takes your labs, your wearable data, your intake questionnaire and your imported medical history, runs all of it past clinicians and produces a plan covering four areas: supplements, nutrition, exercise and recovery.

The 100-day window is deliberate. It is long enough for lipids, inflammation markers and body composition to shift and short enough that you are not signing up for an open-ended optimization project with no finish line. At the end you retest, and the protocol updates against the new numbers.

In the app it lives under the Protocol tab, split into Supplements, Nutrition, Exercise and Results. Each item opens into a detail screen with a plain-language explanation of what the thing is, a “Why we chose this for you” panel written against my specific results and a recommended dose.

That “Why we chose this for you” panel is where the personalization claim either holds up or falls apart. This is also the biggest structural difference between Hundred and the other panels I have run. Function Health gives you clinician notes and an AI coach against a dashboard, and Superpower gives you a plan plus chat, but neither hands you a fixed-length protocol with a defined end date and a retest built into it. If you want the full side by side, I compared Function Health and Superpower after running both.

My Day 30 Checkpoint and Why It Proves Less Than It Looks

I wrote most of this article the week my protocol arrived, before I had anything to report. Then a scheduled draw landed about five weeks in, well before Hundred's 100-day retest. Here is what came back, and here is the much longer story around it, because the second part is the one that matters.

Those are good numbers. My non-HDL of 203 and my ApoB of 129 are the best I have recorded in years, both draws fasted and I am pleased to see them. What I am not going to do is tell you the supplements did it for sure and the rest of this section is me showing you why.

Nobody Measured My LDL

Start with something almost nobody is told. On that August panel my total cholesterol was 263, my HDL was 60 and my triglycerides were 154. Take 263, subtract 60, then subtract 154 divided by five. You get 172. My reported LDL was 173.

My LDL was not measured. Three other things were measured and then an equation was run and the equation assumes a fixed ratio between triglycerides and VLDL cholesterol. Work published in JAMA covering more than 1.3 million lipid profiles checked that assumption against cholesterol measured by ultracentrifugation and found the real ratio is not fixed at all. It varies with your triglycerides and your non-HDL, with a median of 5.2 and a middle range running from 4.5 to 6.0.

That is why I now watch two numbers instead. Non-HDL is just total cholesterol minus HDL, both measured directly, no equation anywhere. ApoB is measured directly too. Neither of them can be distorted by whatever my triglycerides happened to be doing that morning, which makes them the honest way to compare one draw against another. If you take one practical thing from this article, make it that: ask for ApoB, and look at non-HDL on the panel you already have.

The Twenty Month Version of the Same Story

Here is my non-HDL going back to 2024. This is the chart I would want to see if someone were telling me their supplement worked.

Look at what that does to the headline. Measured from my July reading of 267, my non-HDL fell 64 points in five weeks. Measured from February, which is where my trend actually sat before that July draw broke upward, it fell 25. Both numbers are true and describe the same August result. The first is the one a supplement company would put on a graph.

I should also say that the 239, 233 and 228 readings are not a downward trend at all. Non-HDL is built from two measured values that each carry ordinary lab and biological variation and on a total cholesterol near 300 that is worth roughly fifteen to twenty points on any single draw. What the chart actually shows is one large drop and then a plateau.

Four Things Changed Before I Took a Single Capsule

I share all of this to say no protocol is perfect and you can never know for certain what is moving numbers since you may be implementing other health strategies as you go. In February 2025 I did three things at once. I restarted thyroid medication after being off it for a while. I changed my HRT delivery method, moving off pellets. And I started contest prep, which took me down to about 12 percent body fat. Then from July 2025 to May 2026 I deliberately regained toward a healthier body fat. My non-HDL had already fallen from 290 to 228 before the Hundred protocol existed.

The thyroid change is the one I would bet on. Thyroid hormone drives how quickly your body clears LDL out of circulation and my worst reading in this whole record is the one taken while I was not medicated. A meta-analysis of thyroxine treatment trials found that total cholesterol, triglycerides and LDL all ran higher in people with subclinical hypothyroidism than in matched controls and dropped significantly once they were treated, with carotid artery wall thickness improving alongside. My own free T3 was below range through the first half of 2025 and normal from that autumn on, which lines up with the lipid picture.

Contest prep is the second candidate and the most obvious one. A sustained deficit with real fat loss lowers lipids reliably, and my triglycerides of 85 that April are the lowest in my entire record, which is exactly what that state looks like.

The genuine puzzle is why regaining the body fat did not undo it and I do not have a clean answer. The most plausible one I have found is that not all regained fat behaves the same way. The liver is the organ that manufactures and secretes the particles that eventually become LDL and a review in Molecular Metabolism describes fat accumulating in the liver driving increased secretion of those particles, calling it the primary cause of the lipid abnormalities that travel with a fatty liver. Regaining gradually while still training hard puts weight back on differently than regaining through inactivity does. That is a hypothesis I find plausible.

So: thyroid, hormone delivery, a 12 percent body fat cut, a deliberate regain and then a supplement protocol. Five variables, although none that started after the supplements. One set of numbers going in the right direction.

What Would Actually Convince Me

The 100-day retest in October, with nothing else changed in between. That is the whole point of the 100-day structure and it is the smartest thing about this platform. I am holding my training, my eating and my medications steady until then, specifically so that the October draw means something. I will report back either way.

I am also going to keep asking for ApoB every single time, which is the one mistake in my own testing I want you to learn from rather than repeat. My March ApoB of 166 and my August ApoB of 129 are five months apart, so the comparison spans a window in which the protocol only existed for the last five weeks. The direction is encouraging. The precision is not there and I should have noticed ApoB was not going to be included in that Hundred panel. The initial draw had it back in March but this one did not.

Why My Cholesterol Is Not a Diet Problem

Whenever someone posts numbers like mine, the first response is some version of “what are you eating?” It is a fair question. I happen to have an unusually complete answer to it and it is the reason I did not spend the last few years assuming I could fix this with a grocery list.

When I was in contest prep for an NPC physique show, I weighed and logged every single morsel that went into my body for six months. Not estimated. Not mostly. Every gram, for six months. My fat intake never went above 50 grams a day and most days sat closer to 30. I was in a deficit, losing weight, training hard and sleeping like it was my job.

At the end of it my cholesterol was essentially unchanged. Not modestly improved. Virtually the same numbers I went in with. And this is not the first time I have done this kind of experiment, there have been other times where I tracked for months and checked cholesterol at the beginning and end with no significant change.

That is one person and one experiment, so I am not going to oversell it. But it is a cleaner experiment than most people ever run on themselves. The usual version of “I tried eating better and it did not work” involves guessing at portions for a few weeks. Mine involved six months of weighed food and a fat intake most people would find punishing, in a body that was getting leaner at the same time.

What the Research Says About Diet and LDL

The evidence here is more measured than either side of the internet argument suggests. A Cochrane review pooling 15 randomized trials and roughly 59,000 participants found that reducing saturated fat intake for at least two years cut combined cardiovascular events by 21 percent, which is a real and worthwhile effect. On the lipid numbers themselves, the same review describes small reductions in total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol. Small is the operative word, and that is the average across thousands of people. Some sit above the average and some sit below it. I appear to sit well below it.

What This Is Not

When people hear numbers in my range, familial hypercholesterolemia usually comes up. It has been raised with me before. It does not fit in my case though.

Familial hypercholesterolemia is present from birth. A review of how lipids track across the life course in women and men in Atherosclerosis makes the point plainly: in hereditary lipid disorders, cholesterol runs high from birth onward. It is not something you acquire at 45.

My LDL used to be 110. That single fact does most of the work here. A number that sat in an ordinary range and then roughly doubled is not describing a condition I have carried since birth. It is describing something that changed. That does not mean genetics play no part, since plenty of common inherited variants nudge cholesterol without ever producing the picture familial hypercholesterolemia produces. It means the useful question is what changed and when.

Finding the Year the Line Bent

So I went back and pulled every lab report I could find, some of them more than a decade old. Here is the long arc.

The bend happened somewhere between 2017 and 2019, in my mid forties. By March 2019 I was at 200 and by that August I was at 214, and I have been north of 200 far more often than not ever since.

That timing matters, because I did not start hormone therapy until October 2020. My cholesterol had already doubled and settled at its new level a year and a half before my first pellet, which rules HRT out as the cause of the original rise however tempting a culprit it makes. I would not have been able to say that without the old reports, which is the argument for testing regularly that nobody makes compellingly: not so you can optimize anything, but so that when something does change you have the resolution to work out when it happened and what else was going on.

So What Did Change in My Forties?

These are the candidates for the original rise, and they are things a lot of women reading this are living through at the same time I am. They are separate from the four changes in 2025 and 2026 I covered further up.

Menopause. The same Atherosclerosis review notes that women develop a more adverse lipid profile during the menopausal transition, and a review of dyslipidemia and cardiovascular disease in women describes menopause as associated with an increase in total and LDL cholesterol alongside a decrease in HDL. That is the exact shape of what happened to me, and the timing fits my mid forties. Because I had a hysterectomy in 2007 with my ovaries left in place, I have no periods to date the transition by, which is its own small frustration when you are trying to line a lab trend up against a hormonal one.

Thyroid. I manage hypothyroidism, and thyroid hormone governs how quickly your body clears LDL out of circulation. Studies of subclinical hypothyroidism have found higher total cholesterol, triglycerides and LDL with lower HDL compared with matched controls, and both papers I read ended with the same recommendation: screen the thyroid in anyone with dyslipidemia. I have not been consistently medicated across the whole of that period, and as I covered above, my worst panel on record is the one drawn while I was off it entirely.

The one that does not fit. I eat low carb and there is a described pattern where lean, metabolically healthy people on carbohydrate restriction develop large LDL increases. The phenotype has been defined as LDL at or above 190 together with HDL at or above 60 and triglycerides at or below 80. I meet the first two and fail the third, since my triglycerides have mostly run well above 80 although they have definitely been below 80 before as well. So the tidy explanation that would have flattered my diet does not apply to me. I will also note, since this research gets cited enthusiastically online, that a 2025 follow-up study from the same group has since been retracted, so anyone using that body of work to argue high LDL does not matter on a low-carb diet should take a closer look.

Why This Changes How You Should Read My Results

If your cholesterol is driven mostly by what you eat, then eating differently should move it. Mine did not, across six months of tracked and weighed food. That is the reason I take a supplement protocol seriously enough to test it rather than dismissing it and also the reason I am unwilling to credit it after five weeks when four other things about my health changed in the year before it started.

The practical version, for anyone reading this with numbers that will not move: if you have done the dietary work properly and exercise regularly and your panel has not budged, the answer is probably not that you need to try harder. Pull your old lab reports and look for the year the line bent. Ask whether menopause, thyroid function or a medication change lines up with it. Ask for ApoB rather than a standard lipid panel. I spent years assuming the next dietary change would be the one that worked. It was not and the useful step was working out why rather than repeating the attempt.

My Hundred Health Protocol at a Glance

Before I go through the recommendations one by one, here is the shape of the whole thing. This is what landed in my app.

Two things jump out immediately. First, almost every recommendation points at the same target: my lipids. Second, the iron goal is the one I want to flag, because it tells you something about how this system works.

In my original review I wrote about two out-of-range findings from my first draw: my iron and my iron saturation both came back elevated, with a normal TIBC, which is an iron overload picture rather than a deficiency one. I did not tell the app what to do with that. It built a nutrition goal around it on its own and titled it “Iron Saturation Management.” That is the software connecting a lab finding to a food strategy without me prompting it, and it is the moment I stopped wondering whether this thing was generic.

Rising iron in midlife is not a fluke, either. Once monthly blood loss stops, iron has room to climb, which is exactly why I care about seeing serum iron, saturation and TIBC together rather than a lone ferritin value. I dug into that pattern in my Superpower Health review, and it is also why I pay attention to iron leaching from cast iron cookware now in a way I did not a few years ago.

The rest of the protocol is aimed at my lipid panel. The app's own language describes my LDL cholesterol, LDL particle number, ApoB and triglycerides as markedly elevated, references my personal and family history of high cholesterol, heart disease and stroke and mentions my hyperlipidemia diagnosis. Looking at a July total cholesterol of 331 and an LDL of 227, the app was not being dramatic. Those markers were high, they run in my family and they are the reason I started doing this kind of testing in the first place.

The Six Supplements, and the One I Declined

Hundred's materials say each protocol includes the top six recommended supplements with timing and dosage guidance. Mine delivered exactly that: six, each with a dose. Plant sterols at 2,000 mg, omega-3 at 2,000 mg, amla at 1,000 mg, red yeast rice at 1,200 mg, plus creatine and magnesium.

I am taking five of them. The sixth is red yeast rice and I chose to leave it out, for a reason I will come back to at the end of this section, because it is the most interesting recommendation in the whole protocol.

One more app note: each supplement carries a small numbered badge on the protocol list screen. Nothing in the app explains what those numbers mean. In beta that is forgivable, but it is exactly the kind of unexplained data point that Hundred says it exists to eliminate and they have since removed.

Now the research. I looked up every one of these on PubMed and I am reporting what I found, including where the evidence is thinner than the app implies.

Plant Sterols for LDL Cholesterol: What 109 Trials Show

The app's reasoning: my elevated LDL, LDL particle number and ApoB, combined with my family history, make plant sterols a non-pharmaceutical way to lower LDL by reducing cholesterol absorption in the gut. My recommended dose is 2,000 mg.

This is the best-supported recommendation in my protocol. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis of 109 randomized controlled trials in Phytotherapy Research found phytosterol intake significantly reduced total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, with LDL falling by roughly 12.6 mg/dL on average. That is a large evidence base by supplement standards.

Here is the nuance the app does not give me. A review in Nutrition Reviews on why people respond so differently to plant sterols notes that while they lower LDL by about 5 to 15 percent in a dose-dependent way, they have no significant effect in a substantial number of individuals. Response depends heavily on whether you are a high cholesterol absorber or a high synthesizer and there appears to be a genetic component. So plant sterols work well on average, and “on average” is doing real work in that sentence.

There is also a trial that cuts the other way. The SPORT trial in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology randomized 190 adults to low-dose rosuvastatin, placebo or one of six supplements including plant sterols. After 28 days the statin lowered LDL by about 35 percent more than placebo, and none of the supplements, plant sterols included, produced a significant LDL reduction against placebo at all.

So how do I hold that against 109 trials pointing the other way? A few ways. SPORT ran 28 days, which sits right at the edge of how long plant sterols need to reach full effect. It had roughly 24 people per arm against a meta-analysis pooling more than a hundred studies. It was single-blind, single-center and tested one product at one dose in people with lower baseline risk than mine. None of that makes it wrong, and it is a well-run trial from a serious group. What it does is sharpen the same point the non-responder data already made: plant sterols are the best-supported supplement in my protocol and they still might do nothing for a given person. My own numbers happen to have landed on the other side of that question, at least so far.

The 2,000 mg dose sits inside the range used across this literature, so no complaints there.

Omega-3 Fatty Acids: Does Fish Oil Raise LDL?

The app's reasoning: my elevated triglycerides, LDL and ApoB plus my family history of heart disease and stroke make EPA and DHA a strategic choice, with anti-inflammatory benefits supporting heart and brain health as I navigate menopause and manage hypothyroidism. My recommended dose is 2,000 mg.

This is the recommendation I have the most to say about and it is the one I am taking to my doctor.

The triglyceride case is strong. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis of 21 randomized controlled trials in Nutrients found marine omega-3s produce substantial triglyceride reductions, with the largest effects at doses above 2,000 mg per day sustained for eight weeks or more. Good. My triglycerides are elevated and that is a real target.

But the same analysis found something the app's summary does not mention: LDL cholesterol may increase with omega-3 supplementation, particularly at lower doses, and the authors explicitly recommend monitoring LDL changes. That matters for me, since my LDL tends to be the biggest offender in my labs.

It gets more specific. A meta-analysis in Clinical Nutrition pooling 33 trials found that EPA and DHA are not interchangeable for someone in my position. Both lower triglycerides, but EPA decreased total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol, while DHA increased total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol. So for a person with markedly elevated LDL and elevated triglycerides, the EPA to DHA ratio is not a detail.

My protocol says omega-3 fatty acids, 2,000 mg. It does not specify an EPA to DHA split. Based on the research above, that split could pull my LDL in either direction. My LDL came down over the five weeks, so whatever I am taking is not working against me, but I would still rather know the ratio than infer it backward from a result. This is a good recommendation with a missing variable, and it is exactly the sort of thing I want a clinician looking at rather than a dose slider.

Does Amla Lower Cholesterol? The Evidence Is Thinner Than the App Suggests

The app's reasoning: given my significantly elevated LDL, total cholesterol, triglycerides and ApoB, optimizing my lipid profile is a top priority, and the app states amla has demonstrated the ability to lower LDL and total cholesterol by 10 to 21 percent in clinical studies.

This is the recommendation where I want to slow down, because that 10 to 21 percent figure is stated with a confidence the literature has not earned.

Amla does have supportive data. A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis of amla supplementation in Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome found it significantly reduced LDL cholesterol, total cholesterol, triglycerides, fasting glucose and CRP while raising HDL. Those results are real and they point the right direction.

Now the caveats, all of which come from that same paper. The meta-analysis pooled five randomized controlled trials. Five. Interventions ran from three to 12 weeks. The authors themselves conclude that additional investigation is warranted to confirm the findings. Compare that to the 109 trials behind plant sterols and you can see the gap.

The individual trials are interesting though. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled multicenter trial in BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine gave 98 people with dyslipidemia 500 mg of amla extract twice daily for 12 weeks and found significant reductions in total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL and VLDL against placebo, along with a 39 percent reduction in the atherogenic index of plasma. Notably for anyone weighing this against statins, cholesterol reduction happened without the drop in CoQ10 that statins can cause.

My protocol puts me at 1,000 mg. So my honest read: amla is a promising, low-risk addition with early evidence, tested mostly in small short trials. It is not in the same evidentiary tier as plant sterols and I do not think the app should present it as though it is. I am taking it. Given that my own LDL drop lands in the range you would expect from sterols and amla stacked together, I suspect it is contributing.

Magnesium for Sleep and Recovery

The app's reasoning: supports sleep quality, muscle recovery and cardiovascular health.

This one made me laugh a little, because I have taken magnesium nightly for years. I have written at length about tolerability and interactions in my guide to magnesium glycinate side effects, and about which form to choose in magnesium for sleep. I use BIOptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough. Hundred had my medications and supplements from onboarding, so recommending something I already take is less a discovery than a confirmation. Still, confirmation has value. If the system had told me to stop, I would have wanted to know why.

The evidence here is real but modest, and I want to be careful not to oversell a supplement I personally like. A 2025 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in Nature and Science of Sleep gave 155 adults 250 mg of elemental magnesium as bisglycinate or placebo. The magnesium group's insomnia severity scores improved more than placebo, but the effect size was small at a Cohen's d of 0.2, which the authors describe as a modest benefit. The more interesting finding: improvements were notably greater in participants with lower baseline dietary magnesium intake, suggesting the people who benefit most are the ones who were short to begin with.

A separate 2024 trial in Sleep Medicine: X is worth mentioning because of how it measured things. It tracked 80 adults aged 35 to 55 taking magnesium L-threonate or placebo for 21 days, with sleep measured both by questionnaire and objectively by Oura ring. The magnesium group showed improvements in deep sleep score, REM sleep score and readiness while the placebo group declined. I will note that several of that study's authors are affiliated with an ingredient supplier, which is worth knowing when you read it.

Magnesium is a keeper for me. It is also not magic and the honest summary is a small effect that is largest in people who are deficient.

Creatine for Women in Midlife

The app's reasoning: I exercise five or more times per week with a focus on strength and bodyweight training, which raises my need for recovery and energy support. It specifically notes creatine is beneficial for women in midlife to preserve lean muscle mass, enhance performance and support cognitive health.

That reasoning is sound and it is well matched to me. I lift five days a week and I compete in NPC physique competitions, so muscle retention is not a hypothetical interest.

The research supports the framing, and the female-specific angle is real rather than marketing. A review in Nutrients examining creatine across the female lifespan notes that women have roughly 70 to 80 percent lower endogenous creatine stores than men, that supplementation improves strength and exercise performance in premenopausal women and that postmenopausal women may see benefits in skeletal muscle size and function at higher doses, with favorable bone effects when combined with resistance training. It also points to positive effects on mood and cognition.

A 2025 review in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition on creatine and women's health reaches similar conclusions and adds the caveat I appreciated most: data on perimenopausal women specifically remains limited, and the authors call for more work on dosing strategies in that group. Given that I am somewhere in the menopausal transition and cannot use cycles to pin down exactly where, that limitation lands close to home.

If you are new to this one, my full guide to creatine for women covers dosing, the creatinine question that shows up on blood panels and what to expect. Members can get creatine through Momentous or Thorne at a discount through the platform.

Red Yeast Rice: The Recommendation I Declined

This is the one I want you to pay attention to, because it is where the line between supplement and drug stops meaning anything.

My protocol recommended red yeast rice at 1,200 mg. Red yeast rice is fermented rice, sold on every supplement shelf in the country and it is the recommendation in my protocol with the most direct pharmacological effect on my cholesterol.

Here is why. A review in Nutrients explains that the cholesterol-lowering component of red yeast rice is a family of compounds called monacolins, and that monacolin K is structurally identical to lovastatin, targeting the same enzyme in cholesterol synthesis. Not similar to. Identical. The review reports LDL reductions of roughly 15 to 34 percent against placebo, comparable to a low-dose first-generation statin, and notes that at doses providing around 3 mg of monacolin K per day the adverse event profile also resembles a low-dose statin.

So the honest description is that red yeast rice is a statin that happens to be sold as a supplement. It works the same way, it lowers LDL by a similar amount and it carries a similar side effect profile.

I chose not to take it, because it is the same mechanism of action as a statin and I would rather make that decision deliberately with my doctor than arrive at it through a capsule I bought online. If I am going to take something that inhibits cholesterol synthesis, I want it prescribed, dosed and monitored, with my liver enzymes and my muscle symptoms being watched by someone whose job that is.

None of that is a criticism of red yeast rice, which has real evidence behind it and a legitimate role for people who cannot or will not take a statin. My criticism is of the framing. Nothing in the app told me that monacolin K and lovastatin are the same molecule, although I did happen to already know that having been deep into cholesterol research in the past. That is the single most important fact about this recommendation and a reader who did not go looking would never learn it. A platform whose entire pitch is turning data into clarity should have mentioned this in my opinion.

One more detail worth noticing and I will come back to it later. My updated protocol added CoQ10. Statins are known to deplete CoQ10, which is why people taking them are often told to supplement it. So pairing a statin-equivalent with CoQ10 is a coherent clinical move and it tells me the system knows exactly what red yeast rice is even though it never says so.

I am not taking the CoQ10 either, for the same reason. It was there to offset a supplement I declined. Take away the red yeast rice and the CoQ10 has no job to do in my protocol.

My Nutrition Protocol: 27 Foods and Four Goals

The nutrition tab organizes into four goals, listed as my top four out of a larger set, plus a browsable list of 27 foods to consume more of and a corresponding consume-less list.

My four goals: hormone and energy balance, iron saturation management, cholesterol and triglyceride reduction and avoiding heart risk and iron loading foods.

The 27 foods include almonds, arugula, avocado, black tea, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, cheese, chia seeds, chicken breast, cocoa, coffee, cucumbers, extra virgin olive oil, flaxseeds, hazelnuts, herring, kale, mackerel, salmon, sardines, spinach, sunflower seeds, Swiss chard and walnuts.

Two observations. First, this list is remarkably compatible with how I already eat. It is whole foods, protein-forward and heavy on fatty fish, cruciferous vegetables, leafy greens, nuts and olive oil and the app describes the hormone goal as fiber-rich and keto-friendly. Nobody is telling me to give up cheese (thank goodness). For a platform that could easily have produced a low-fat lecture given my LDL, that restraint is notable. It also matters for interpreting my results, because I did not overhaul my diet during those five weeks. The food list largely described what was already on my plate.

Second, and this is the detail I find clever: coffee and black tea are on the consume-more list, and coffee is the image the app uses for the iron saturation goal. Polyphenols and tannins in coffee and tea are well established as inhibitors of non-heme iron absorption. Read that way, the app is not telling me to drink coffee because coffee is healthy. It appears to be using coffee and tea as a dietary lever against my elevated iron saturation. That is a specific, mechanistic and slightly non-obvious move and it is the strongest evidence I have seen that something thoughtful is happening under the Hundred Health “hood”.

I will hold that read loosely, because the app does not spell out the reasoning on the food cards themselves. But the pairing of an iron goal with coffee and tea is not likely to be a coincidence.

My Exercise and Recovery Protocol

Five recommendations came through here: weight training, bodyweight exercises, Zone 2 cardio, hiking and yoga.

This is the section where the personalization is most obvious and the evidence is loosest, and I say that as someone who has been a yoga instructor for years and lifts five days a week. It's not that these recommendations are bad for me. They are what I already do and I did not change any of it during the five weeks covered above, which is part of why I am comfortable pointing at the supplements as the new variable.

But look at the pattern. Four of the five rationales lead with lowering LDL particle number or triglycerides. The protocol has clearly decided my lipids are the priority and routed everything toward them, which is defensible. The problem is that the specific claim attached to weight training, that it lowers LDL particle number, is stated more confidently than the trial evidence in women supports.

What I could find on exercise and LDL particle number specifically is thinner than you would expect. A randomized trial in Obesity put overweight and obese adults through 12 weeks of endurance training and measured lipoprotein subfractions, finding that in the women, training reduced LDL3 concentration and particle number and shifted HDL subfractions favorably. Useful, and it points the right way. But that was endurance training, not resistance training, in a population that does not look like me and it is a small study.

So the honest version is this: exercise improves lipid profiles, that much is not in dispute, and Zone 2 and hiking have a reasonable claim on the triglyceride and particle number effects the app describes. Attributing LDL particle number reduction specifically to weight training is a longer reach. I lift because it preserves muscle, supports bone and is the single best thing I do for my body composition in midlife, which is the case I make in my guide to strength training for weight loss. I would not sell it primarily as a lipid intervention.

The Protocol Updated Itself, and Here Is What Changed

When I started writing this I listed “whether the protocol updates” as an open question. Hundred's whole premise is that this is dynamic rather than a PDF you receive once. I can now answer it, because my August draw went in and the protocol rewrote itself.

Read that table for a second, because a lot happened in it.

The two cholesterol absorption supplements came off. Plant sterols and amla, the two recommendations aimed squarely at pulling my LDL down, are both gone from the updated list. My LDL and non-HDL had just come in at their lowest in years, so a system that de-escalates when your numbers improve is behaving the way you would want it to rather than selling you more capsules.

My omega-3 doubled, from 2,000 mg to 4,000 mg. That is a meaningful change and it moves me from the bottom of the effective range into the middle of it. The Nutrients meta-analysis I cite above found the largest triglyceride reductions at doses above 2,000 mg per day sustained for eight weeks or more. At 4,000 mg I am solidly in that territory. The EPA to DHA ratio is still unspecified, which is still my main complaint.

Two things were added: vitamin D3 with K2, and CoQ10. The CoQ10 is the interesting one. Red yeast rice stayed on the list, red yeast rice works like a statin and statins deplete CoQ10. Adding CoQ10 alongside it is exactly what you would do if you knew that, and it is the most quietly competent decision in the whole protocol. It is also the clearest signal that the platform understands what it recommended, which makes the silence about it in the app harder to excuse rather than easier. I've been taking the D3 with K2.

I am skipping the CoQ10 as well as the red yeast rice, since the one was there to cover for the other. Of the six on the updated list I will be taking four.

Red yeast rice stayed. Which means the platform still thinks I should be inhibiting cholesterol synthesis and I still think that is a conversation for my doctor rather than a purchase.

So the dynamic claim holds up. This is the thing I was most skeptical of in March and it is the thing the platform delivered most convincingly. To be clear about what this article covers: my 30-day numbers came from the original protocol, which is what I had been taking. The updated one starts now.

What the Protocol Gets Right

The question I asked in March was whether this would be built around me or generic advice dressed up in my numbers. The answer is that it was built around me, and I can point to why.

• It found the iron thing and built around it. A nutrition goal named for iron saturation, apparently supported by coffee and tea as absorption inhibitors, is not a template output. It traces directly to an out-of-range result from my first draw.
• It used my medical history, not just my labs. The rationales reference my family history of heart disease and stroke, my hyperlipidemia diagnosis and my hypothyroidism. That is the 21 years of imported records doing visible work.
• It used my training data. The creatine rationale cites my five-plus sessions per week and my strength focus. That came from my intake and my wearables, not a guess.
• It respected how I already eat. No low-fat sermon, no telling me to drop red meat entirely, no fighting my whole foods approach. Cheese and coffee stayed.
• Every supplement came with a dose. Six recommendations, six doses. That is what the marketing promised and it is what arrived.
• Five of six supplements have real evidence. Plant sterols, omega-3, creatine, magnesium and red yeast rice are all defensible on the research. Amla is the weak one.
• It updated itself when my new labs came in, and it de-escalated rather than adding more. That is the dynamic claim actually working.
• Five weeks in, the numbers moved. Total cholesterol, LDL, non-HDL and ApoB all came down together by roughly a fifth to a quarter. That is one data point rather than proof, but it is the data point I wanted.

What I Would Push Back On

Now the other side, because a review that only says nice things is not a review.

• It never tells you red yeast rice is a statin. Monacolin K and lovastatin are the same molecule. That is the most important fact about that recommendation and the app leaves you to find it yourself.
• The omega-3 EPA to DHA question. For someone with markedly elevated LDL, the split matters, and 2,000 mg of unspecified omega-3 leaves the most important variable open.
• The amla claim outruns its evidence. Ten to 21 percent stated flatly, resting on five short trials, sitting in the same visual format as a recommendation backed by 109 trials. The app gives the reader no way to tell those apart.
• The weight training and LDL-P claim is a reach. Right recommendation, shaky stated reason.
• Unexplained numbered badges. Small thing, but this is a platform whose pitch is turning data into clarity.

This is less a criticism of Hundred but more something to consider about doing your own labs without a doctor. My ApoB is 129 after a 37-point improvement, and optimal targets sit below 90, or below 80 given my family history of heart disease and stroke. Plant sterols, amla and omega-3 are legitimate adjuncts and my own numbers suggest they are doing something. They are also not the same order of magnitude as what a pharmaceutical conversation would offer someone with my risk profile, which is exactly what the SPORT trial's statin arm demonstrated.

Hundred does not claim otherwise, and to its credit the platform is explicit that it does not prescribe and does not replace your physician. But if you are reading this with a lipid panel that looks like mine did in July, do not let a tidy supplement list substitute for the conversation you need to have with your doctor. I am having mine and I am having it with better numbers than I had six weeks ago rather than instead of having it at all.

Does the Wearable Integration Show Up?

Wearable integration is Hundred's headline differentiator over Function Health and Superpower and I said in my full Hundred Health review that I would report back on whether it added real context or was just a badge feature.

Partial credit. My training frequency and focus clearly informed the creatine rationale and that information can only have come from my intake and my connected devices. The exercise protocol is calibrated to someone who already trains hard rather than someone starting from zero.

What I do not yet see is my Oura and Whoop data feeding the protocol dynamically. Magnesium is framed around sleep quality and I have years of continuous sleep data sitting right there. I would expect a platform built on wearable integration to reference my deep sleep trends or HRV when recommending a sleep supplement. It does not, at least not visibly. The integration informs the plan at the margins rather than driving it. However, I believe more is coming since I now have a screen in the app that says wearable insights coming soon.

That is still more than any competitor at this price does. If you are deciding which wearable to connect in the first place, my Whoop vs Oura comparison and my Oura Ring alternatives guide cover the tradeoffs.

What I Am Tracking for the Remaining 70 Days

The five-week draw answered one question and sharpened several others. Here is what I am watching between now and the October retest:

• Whether it holds with nothing else changing. I am keeping my training, my eating and my medications steady until October, specifically so the retest means something.
• ApoB, with a baseline I can trust. It is down to 129 from 166, but I have no July reading to compare against, which is the one mistake in my own testing. Every panel from here includes it and my target is well below where I sit now.
• Whether my LDL keeps falling on omega-3. The research says fish oil can push LDL the wrong way depending on the EPA to DHA split. Mine went down. I want to know whether that continues and am looking at the ratio in the supplement I've been taking.
• Iron and iron saturation. Both were out of range in March but went down with a blood donation. I'll be interested so see where they are in the next draw.
• Adherence. Five of the six is manageable and I have taken magnesium nightly for years, so I know what sticks for me and what does not.
• Whether the de-escalation was right. The updated protocol dropped plant sterols and amla, but I am continuing with the original same protocol. Most people would have started the protocol right away and then used the retest. Due to the nature of my job and testing certain things I wasn't able to do that this time.

I will also be tracking my biological age composite, which comes out of the same panel.

My Preliminary Verdict on the Hundred Health Protocol

I set a bar in March: would this be built around me, or generic wellness advice? It cleared that bar. The iron goal alone convinced me, because I did not ask for it and would not have thought to. The recommendations trace to my labs, my history, my family risk and my training. That is what Hundred said it would deliver and it delivered it.

Five weeks in, my numbers moved in the right direction across every marker I can check. I am not crediting the capsules for it, because four other things about my health changed in the year before I started and my non-HDL was already falling before the protocol existed. What I can say is that the platform gave me a structured reason to retest on a schedule, which is how I noticed any of this.

Where the platform falls short is in presenting evidence of wildly different quality with identical confidence. A recommendation resting on 109 randomized trials and a recommendation resting on five short ones look exactly the same in the app. For a platform whose entire pitch is clinical rigor and turning data into clarity, that flattening is the thing I would most want fixed. Tell me how strong the evidence is, not just what to take.

The unspecified EPA to DHA ratio and the silence around what red yeast rice actually is are the two gaps I would most want closed. The 100-day structure remains the smartest thing about this platform, because it forces a retest and a reckoning instead of letting you take capsules on faith indefinitely, and my protocol did rewrite itself when the new numbers came in.

Would I recommend it? Yes, with the same framing I would give a coaching client. The Hundred Health protocol is a well-built, closely tailored starting point and a structured way to act on your labs instead of filing them. It is not medical care, and if your numbers look like mine did, it should send you to your doctor rather than away from one.

Ask me again in October, when the 100-day retest is back and I can tell you whether the drop held and how much further my ApoB moved. I'll be updating this article then.

For the full breakdown of the panel, the pricing, the medical records import and how Hundred stacks up against the competition, read my complete Hundred Health review. If you are still choosing between platforms, I have also written up whether Function Health is worth it and an InsideTracker vs Function Health comparison. Check current Hundred Health pricing and availability here.

This article describes my personal experience with a health platform and my own lab results. It is not medical advice, and my results are one person's data rather than a predictor of yours. Supplements can interact with medications and are not appropriate for everyone, and elevated cholesterol, ApoB or iron markers warrant evaluation by a qualified healthcare provider. Please talk to your physician before starting any supplement protocol or making changes based on biomarker testing.