A New Age of At-Home Mitochondrial Testing

The candles on your birthday cake reflect your chronological age but not your biological age — a better indicator of your overall health. Now, your biological age can be measured by the health of your mitochondria, the microscopic power plants in your cells that convert the oxygen you breathe and the food you eat into energy (learn more about these essential energy factories at “The Care and Feeding of Your Mitochondria“).

Testing mitochondrial performance used to be for researchers and elite athletes, requiring lab muscle biopsies. New at-home tests offer a novel way to assess your biological age and health.

Such tests can take you beyond counting steps to tracking your ­cellular efficiency — and may lead to personalized longevity strategies.

“We’re entering a new era in which mitochondrial health becomes the central biomarker of metabolic health — and the brain’s destiny,” says neurologist David Perlmutter, MD, FACN.

“These tools allow us to assess our own biology in real time and make targeted, data-driven decisions to support long-term cognitive resilience. And that’s empowering,” he adds. “It’s exactly the kind of shift we need as we move away from late-stage disease treatment and toward true prevention.”

Mitochondrial function is essential to your metabolism, energy, vitality, and cognitive powers.

Each of your body’s 37.2 trillion cells has hundreds or even thousands of mitochondria — thousands of trillions in total. And each mitochondrion contains thousands of biochemical assembly lines that produce adenosine triphosphate, or ATP — your body’s most basic fuel.

“We’re entering a new era in which mitochondrial health becomes the central biomarker of metabolic health.”

“When we test mitochondrial function, we’re assessing the engine that powers virtually every cell in the body,” Perlmutter explains. “We gain real, actionable insight into our metabolic flexibility, our energetic capacity, and our overall cellular health.”

Two new at-home tests — ­Mito­Swab and Mescreen — may herald “a democratization of mitochondrial testing,” he says. “We’re moving from lab-based, highly specialized tools into consumer-facing, noninvasive platforms that give us a window into mitochondrial health at scale.”

That window, however, does not offer a complete view of mitochon­drial activity, notes Theodoros Kelesidis, MD, PhD, MSc, a professor of medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center and coauthor of a 2025 review of mitochondrial function.

MitoSwab focuses on mitochondrial enzymes collected with a swab from the inside of your cheeks — “but it does not measure actual activity and function,” Kelesidis explains.

Mescreen offers a broader, more systems-oriented snapshot of mitochondrial health using a blood sample from a simple finger prick. But it also falls short of the gold standard provided by muscle biopsies, he says: “Mescreen measures mitochondrial function in blood cells but not at the tissue level.”

Kelesidis notes that neither product has received FDA approval. “These tests are promising tools but need validation in clinical studies.”

Perlmutter adds one further note of caution: “The main concern is that people may overinterpret the data. These tests provide relative information, meaning patterns and trends, and not an absolute diagnosis.”