That is Optimizer, a weekly e-newsletter despatched each Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the newest telephones, smartwatches, apps, and different gizmos that swear they’re going to vary your life. Optimizer arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 10AM ET. Choose in for Optimizer here.
At CES 2026 this week, individuals saved asking me what well being tech I used to be seeing on the present flooring. My solely reply was this: bodily fluids. As in urine, blood, sweat, and saliva.
With most individuals, my response sometimes bought a handful of groans and raised eyebrows. Amongst insiders, I stunned nobody.
CES is floor zero of the wellness Wild West. At Eureka Park and the Venetian Expo, you’ll discover dozens of digital well being startups hawking every part from smartwatches and sensible rings to sensible pillows. This isn’t new, per se. Urine tech specifically has all the time been a staple on the present, however what’s notable this yr isn’t merely the presence of this tech — it’s the concept that mining these fluids will help you reside longer and more healthy.
Right here’s a few of what I noticed: at-home hormone testing kits utilizing urine and saliva; sensible menstrual pads and panty liners; an in-toilet hydration tracker; a mirror that analyzes your facial blood flow to estimate how effectively you’re growing old; a sperm microscope; and a smart scale that analyzes metabolic well being via foot sweat.
It’s not simply tiny startups, both. Larger names within the house are additionally opening their platforms to accommodate information sources past coronary heart price. On the present, Withings announced it was partnering with Abbott to combine the latter’s steady glucose screens (CGMs). Oura has an identical partnership with Dexcom that was announced in 2025. Whoop additionally added the flexibility to get blood panel data integrated into its app final yr, adopted quickly by Oura, and now Ultrahuman is doing the same.
On the core, this fixation on bodily fluids is proof that your complete business is doubling down on metabolic well being as the following frontier. The place digital well being began with cardiovascular well being, the following section hinges in your metabolism. So after logging tens of hundreds of steps on the present flooring, I sat down with Oura CEO Tom Hale and Dexcom CEO Jake Leach to speak about the place metabolic tech goes, the challenges forward, and what we’re more likely to see as customers.
Each mentioned the true balancing act is between discovering helpful information from extra metrics and the potential to overwhelm individuals with well being nervousness. Whereas individuals could also be high quality with step and coronary heart price information, stepping into deeper metabolic insights comes with rather more delicate information. Introducing extra superior detection options — like, say, hypertension or glucose alerts — raises the stakes.
“Truly, we don’t want extra sensors. We’d like extra sense,” says Hale, who views metabolic insights derived from blood or urine testing as extra more likely to be episodic than steady. For Hale, the purpose is to mix occasional, use-case-driven information with longer-term baseline information.
“You’re making an attempt to unravel a sure drawback. Perhaps you’re going via an excellent disturbing time, and also you’re making an attempt to handle your stress since you’re hypertensive. Okay, possibly a cortisol sweat take a look at is admittedly helpful, however once you determine that out, are you going to repeatedly measure your cortisol? Most likely not.”
“Bringing the information collectively in a single place is admittedly useful. Having it in disparate locations on disparate units is problematic, however you’ve bought to have expertise and software program floor precise insights and never simply, ‘Right here’s all these blood markers and right here’s the place they need to be,’” says Leach.
This can be a story as previous as well being tech — and one many corporations try to unravel with AI. Therefore why you’re beginning to see so many corporations including AI-powered vitamin monitoring, chatbots, and insights into their apps. Dexcom added AI insights for its Stelo CGM. Oura has also done it. In the meantime, at CES 2026, Garmin introduced it was additionally adding AI nutrition logging to its app for subscribers.
On paper, it’s a development that makes a ton of sense. The fact is that the AI just isn’t there yet. After I push Leach on that, he agrees.
“We’ve bought to push previous that, and that is the place issues are type of caught. A expertise like CGMs that has such apparent outcomes is a superb expertise to be pioneering that,” Leach says, noting that there are direct correlations between the approach to life adjustments an individual makes and the way they’re mirrored of their glucose readings.
The opposite drawback, nonetheless, is information privateness. Getting blood checks is invasive, and many individuals at the moment dwell in a state of heightened nervousness. It’s a troublesome time for well being tech to ask for extra information from its customers.
Living proof, Oura — and by extension, Hale — obtained backlash earlier this summer time when Oura was revealed to have a partnership with Palantir and the Defense Department. Customers accused the corporate of promoting and sharing consumer information, forcing Hale to return on social media to refute the accusation. In public statements on social media, Hale said that Oura by no means sells or shares consumer information; the Palantir partnership in query referred to a separate enterprise program. After I press the difficulty, Hale reiterates this level, including that customers’ menstrual information specifically is off-limits.
Months later, Hale says “Palantir-gate” didn’t damage the corporate a lot total, however was a compelling expertise. “We weren’t promoting anyone’s information, however we discovered simply how afraid individuals are about that and the way a lot of a 3rd rail that’s.”
In any other case, each Leach and Hale pointed to vitamin, blood stress, and wearable gadget ecosystems as probably traits within the house. Dexcom plans so as to add macro monitoring and a redesigned app later this yr. In the meantime, Hale famous that we would quickly begin seeing better integration between sensible glasses and meals monitoring. For instance, taking a photograph of your meal, getting calorie estimates, after which cross-referencing all that information along with your given tracker of selection. Hale additionally recognized continual situation administration as one other potential avenue wearables and well being tech are beginning to discover.
“The wearable house on the whole is experiencing fairly the growth proper now, and I feel it’s pushed by the precise need of individuals to dwell more healthy and for healthcare methods to enhance their outcomes,” agrees Leach. “Wearable expertise is the way in which we do that at scale, as a result of not each physician can see each affected person the entire time.”
Taking all this in, I don’t assume the common Joe is all of a sudden going to be putting in pee collectors of their bathroom, going for month-to-month blood attracts, or stepping on $600 scales that inform you how lengthy you’re going to dwell based mostly in your foot sweat. That would actually be a dystopian 2026. However based mostly on what I noticed, and what I heard from Hale and Leach, I do assume you’re going to start out seeing a bigger shift away from fundamental health and extra towards this concept of selling longevity via preventive measures. It’s going to be much less about closing your rings each day and extra about doing small life-style experiments over a number of months and monitoring any adjustments. Optimistically, these adjustments could assist forestall or enhance widespread illnesses that construct up over time, like diabetes, hypertension, or excessive ldl cholesterol. Perhaps these experiments will contain bodily fluids, possibly not. However clearly, the business appears to assume metabolism is the important thing to unlocking a more healthy you.
Sadly, I feel which means extra bodily fluids.
