I fell down the health-maxxing rabbit hole—and crawled my way out

Piles of collection kits and instruction booklets surround my laptop in a manner that would make a lab technician weep. To my left, there’s a package containing a swab of my inner cheek, which will tell me my biological age, a reflection of cellular damage over time. To my right, there are two poop samples from the past few days, the small plastic vials discreetly tucked into envelopes, primed to reveal the state of my gut microbiome.Now, bleary-eyed on a weekday morning in June, I try to gather enough saliva to determine my cortisol levels, and thereby my stress. If only my 7-year-old son, an early riser, would stop knocking on the office door seeking help with a packing list he’s making for his upcoming camping trip.“How do you spell ‘pajamas’?” he asks, kneeling on the floor with his notebook, as I painstakingly accumulate spit in a small tube. The instructions suggest thinking about delicious foods to generate more saliva, but I’m struggling to reach the designated line, even while dreaming of coffee. Will the stress of taking the test influence my results?Fifteen minutes later, as I try to coax vibrant red droplets from my pricked ring finger onto a paper collection card, I’m…