From step counts, sleep tracking, 75 Hard challenges, glucose graphs and Strava-tracked running routes, tracking and sharing our health stats has become increasingly popular over the past few years. As the old saying goes, health is wealth, and visible signs of good health have long signalled social status. But lately, the stats we’re sharing have become more intimate – think biomarkers, hormone levels, and DNA test results. Our biological make-up, it seems, is the new frontier of beauty ideals.

Genetics testing is big business: the global market is projected to reach a valuation of $49.72 billion by 2033, up from $21.47 billion last year (2024). But, where most people will have come into contact with it for the purpose of prenatal screenings, ancestry analysis or paternity testing, now a slew of companies, like 10 X Health and Medichecks, are offering patients at-home tests specifically so that they may tailor their health and wellness plans according to their genetic predispositions. It’s personalised hyper-optimisation, to the extreme.

“The rise of wearables like the Oura Ring, WHOOP band, and continuous glucose monitors enables individuals to turn their inner states into shareable metrics, blending self-optimisation with social identity,” says J’Nae Phillips, a writer and trend analyst. This increase in internal health awareness has a clear catalyst: the pandemic. “What were once private medical concerns – respiratory strength, immune function, inflammation – have entered mainstream discourse. Covid shifted the health conversation from external appearance to internal resilience.”

Take an email I received recently with the subject line: ‘Invite to try 10 X Health Gene Test and IV Drips – used by Hailey, Kendall, & Kylie’. I don’t need an appointment with a needle to tell me that I’m not as genetically blessed as these three women. But I was intrigued that something so ostensibly medical was being marketed with the help of arbiters of a very mainstream beauty standard. I watched the IV episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians for research purposes. “I feel like we’re just, like … really big on our health journey for sure,” Kendall mused. If Hailey, Kendall and Kylie are being leveraged as endorsements for these tests and treatments, there is clearly social capital to be gained by hopping on board the trend. 

“Where luxury once meant exclusive material goods, today it also includes access to high-tier wellness. Sharing pristine lab results, biological age assessments, or optimal gene variants acts as a subtle flex – it signals discipline and wealth to afford testing, coaching and biohacking,” says Phillips. “Just as clean eating became aestheticised on platforms like Instagram, ‘clean data’ is now doing the same. It reflects a cultural shift where control over one’s biology is seen not just as health-conscious, but aspirational.”

The wellness industry was valued at $6.3 trillion globally at the end of 2024, a continuous growth despite, as Global Wellness Institute researchers pointed out, “a decline in global wellbeing on many fronts.” The link between health and status is likely a consequence of this decline. Sasha Mills, integrated creative at sports agency PACER, says, “the lifestyle that creates a ‘good’ result in these tests can only be a result of living conditions that are becoming increasingly out of reach. You can’t have eight hours of good quality sleep a night if you live in a damp, noisy rental flat, and you can’t have a perfectly balanced vitamin profile without the time and financial means to put together well-balanced meals every day.”

Staying healthy is expensive, especially in countries like the US, which don’t have universal healthcare. Exercise requires enough free leisure time to work out, and with food prices rising and air quality dropping, access to fresh produce and clean air is increasingly exclusive. Climate change is having an impact on the health of those in the Global South, while vulnerable groups, like trans and disabled individuals, are being systematically prevented from accessing essential services. In this context, good health is a valuable commodity and a wealth signifier.

Of course, with so much money being spent on wellness, we need to prove to ourselves – and, crucially, others – that it’s not all been for nothing. In June, make-up artist Isamaya French posted an Instagram story with the caption: “I always said the next phase of beauty ideals would be displaying your DNA.” The story was posted from Neko Health, the so-called ‘Apple of healthcare’, which has clinics in London and Stockholm with slick, space-age interiors that are like an Andres Reisinger rendering brought to life.

Neko’s credo is accessibility and, at £300 for a full body scan, it is considerably more accessible than its competitors (see, for example, the Longevity Full Body Check Up programme at Palazzo Fiuggi which starts from £10,499 and includes electrocardiograms, bioelectrical impedance analysis, ultrasounds, gut tests and lung checks). However, the sexiness of its design, the hype surrounding its opening, and the subsequent thousands-long wait lists for appointments, has lent it an air of exclusivity. To bag a Neko scan – to don the HAY gown and step into the womb-like calm of its buttermilk-yellow interiors, to watch the scanner’s geometric light patterns dance across your skin, and to have thousands of high-def images map every marking on your body – is, inevitably, an experience you want to share on socials. I’ve seldom felt more smugly in control of my life than in the hour I spent at Neko.

So, where do things go from here? Phillips says to expect a future where there is even deeper integration of biometric identity into personal branding. “Future developments may include live biomarker streaming, AI-curated health feeds, and hyper-personalised wellness dashboards shared like Spotify Wrapped. Health will become gamified – leaderboards for HRV, fasting hours, or cellular age could emerge in social fitness platforms.” As these metrics become normalised, she says, social comparison might shift from ‘how you look’ to ‘how optimised your mitochondria are.’

They say money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy health – or the appearance of health, which, where the ephemeral construct of social status is concerned, may just amount to the same thing.