As advancements in healthcare, wellness, and technology continue to shape our understanding of aging and what it means to live a healthy life, more people are focusing on not simply surviving into their later years — but thriving. Longevity and prolonging our health span — a.k.a. living better for longer — is becoming a key priority, and possibility, for many of us.
With the expansion of MIORA clinics (located within select Life Time clubs) to seven states, advanced performance and longevity medicine is now even more widely available.
MIORA was created for individuals seeking a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of their health. Instead of generalized advice or a simple lab report, MIORA integrates extensive diagnostics, biomarker testing, and symptom analysis with the guidance of a credentialed medical team. The result? A precise understanding of how your systems are functioning and a plan designed around your biology.
Unlike direct-to-consumer testing companies that send results without context, MIORA provides a medically guided interpretation of your biomarkers, along with a personalized action plan that may include nutrition strategies, training guidance, advanced supplementation, peptides, GLP-1s, hormone therapies, or other targeted interventions when appropriate. Every plan is supported with ongoing touchpoints, retesting, and refinement to ensure progress is both safe and effective.
To learn more about MIORA and how it works, we spoke with Jim LaValle, RPh, CCN, chief science officer for Life Time and Cliff Edberg, senior director for MIORA.
Life Time | Can you give an overview of MIORA — what is it and who can benefit from its services?
Jim LaValle | MIORA is a performance and longevity clinic built to bring a more precise, proactive, and medically guided approach to health. For decades, people have been navigating symptoms or vague advice without understanding what’s happening inside their bodies. MIORA solves that issue by using comprehensive diagnostics, including advanced bloodwork and key biomarkers, to identify early metabolic, hormonal, and inflammatory imbalances before they progress into bigger issues.
Whether someone wants to improve their energy, optimize their body composition, support healthy aging, or enhance overall performance, MIORA provides a clear path rooted in personalized data and clinical expertise.
Cliff Edberg | Many people are doing the right things — eating well, training consistently, managing stress — but are still not seeing the progress they expect. That’s often because something deeper is going on. MIORA helps uncover those underlying factors and pairs those insights with medical oversight and ongoing guidance.
MIORA is ideal for individuals seeking more than general wellness advice. If you’re dealing with persistent fatigue, weight-loss resistance, hormone shifts, or gut issues, or if you just want to better understand your biology so you can perform and feel your best, MIORA gives you a personalized roadmap and a care team that supports you every step of the way.
LT | How would you define longevity and why is this initiative important to Life Time?
JL | When people hear the word “longevity,” they minimize its meaning to only living longer. But longevity is really about living better across every decade of life. I believe people deserve vitality at every stage of life. Whether you’re 25 or 85, the goal is to feel your best, function well, and enjoy the life you’re building.
Longevity is about steering your body chemistry away from the common conditions of aging and supporting the systems that regulate energy, mood, recovery, metabolism, and resilience. It’s not a fad — it’s a commitment to understanding what your body needs and adopting the patterns, habits, and interventions that keep you performing well, thinking clearly, and aging with confidence.
CE | At Life Time, we’ve always believed that people deserve to live a healthy, happy life. Our Dynamic Personal Trainers, nutrition coaches, and instructors excel at guiding members in exercise and nutrition, but many members face metabolic dysfunction tied to hormones, stress, gut health, blood sugar, or thyroid. By combining advanced diagnostics with medical oversight, MIORA gives individuals a deeper understanding of their biology and a personalized, medically backed plan for moving forward.
And when you pair that with Life Time’s full ecosystem of world-class fitness professionals, nutrition coaches, recovery services, and environment built to support healthy living, people have access to every tool they need to turn insight into meaningful, lasting change.
LT | Tell us about the Metabolic Code health assessment — what is it and how is it integrated at MIORA?
JL | Your body is interconnected, and your health assessment should be too. True health is about how everything works together, and that’s something that often gets overlooked. That’s why I introduced the Metabolic Code, a system my team and I spent a decade developing to give people a more complete and more accurate picture of their health.
The Metabolic Code is a precision health assessment that collects detailed insights from your biometrics, a comprehensive symptom and lifestyle questionnaire, and an extensive panel of more than 70 key biomarkers. It’s the first step in everyone’s experience at MIORA.
We evaluate blood quality, organ function, detoxification pathways, gut health, electrolyte status, blood-sugar regulation, inflammation patterns, sex and thyroid hormones, and how your body responds to stress.
These markers are analyzed within five key systems called TRIADs. This reveals where your physiology is communicating well and where it is not. When systems fall out of sync, it leads to metabolic inflammation, or what we call “metaflammation,” which is the early path toward accelerated aging, or “inflammaging.”
By identifying these patterns, we can pinpoint the areas that need support and create a highly targeted plan that may include nutrients, bioidentical hormones, peptides, compounded medications when appropriate, dietary strategies, exercise, and other lifestyle interventions.
Most importantly, we track your data over time. This allows us to monitor progress and ensure your plan is moving you toward greater vitality, resilience, and long-term performance health.
CE | What makes the Metabolic Code experience at MIORA truly unique is the depth of support people receive. You are not left alone with a lab report to interpret yourself. You spend a full hour with a medical provider and another hour with a registered dietitian who work together to understand your symptoms, goals, daily habits, and metabolic patterns.
From there, we build a meaningful and realistic action plan that supports the areas your body needs most. Our teams help people navigate a wide range of concerns, including weight-loss resistance, low energy, sleep issues, brain fog, gut challenges, low libido, menstrual or perimenopause symptoms, perimenopausal and menopausal transitions, and performance or muscle-building goals.
This level of partnership and medical guidance, combined with the scientific depth of the Metabolic Code, allows us to personalize care in a way that helps people make real progress and feel better in their everyday lives.
LT | Can you tell us more about the blood lab analysis that’s done as part of the Metabolic Code? What markers are looked at and why do they offer important insights beyond what’s standardly collected?
JL | When people think of lab work, they usually think of a basic panel that checks a few boxes and tells them whether they are “normal” or not. The blood analysis we use with the Metabolic Code goes much deeper.
We look at a broad range of markers that tell us how well key systems are functioning. That includes blood sugar and insulin together, so we can see how hard your body is working to keep glucose in range. We look at inflammation markers like C-reactive protein, oxidative stress, and advanced lipids to understand cardiovascular risk long before a problem shows up on a scan.
We also evaluate nutrients and metabolic signals such as iron and ferritin, vitamin D, magnesium, and homocysteine, which give us insight into energy production, recovery, methylation, detoxification, and brain health.
On top of that, we assess thyroid hormones, adrenal stress markers, and sex hormones to see how well your body is regulating metabolism, how resilient your body is, and how you feel in terms of vitality.
The key is not just that we run more tests. It is that we gather greater data and we interpret them through the lens of optimal ranges and patterns over time, rather than waiting for a single number to cross a disease threshold. That is how we identify metabolic roadblocks early enough to change the trajectory.
CE | In a traditional setting, labs are often ordered to answer one question: Do you have a diagnosable disease today? If the answer is no, you might be told everything looks fine even if your numbers are slowly drifting in the wrong direction.
Our lab analysis is designed to answer a different question: Where is your health trending? For example, your fasting glucose might still be considered normal, but when we see it alongside elevated insulin, higher inflammatory markers, or changes in your lipids, it can clearly signal that you are heading toward insulin resistance or diabetes years before it appears on a standard report.
By looking at these markers together, we can connect them back to real symptoms people are feeling, like fatigue, stubborn weight gain, poor sleep, brain fog, gut issues, or changes in mood and performance. That deeper view allows us to build a targeted plan and then when we recheck labs, to make sure your chemistry is moving toward a more optimal state instead of inching toward chronic disease.
LT | How is it determined if a tool like a GLP-1 is appropriate for an individual? And what is MIORA’s approach to using those?
JL | The decision to use a GLP-1 starts with understanding the full picture of a person’s biology. Weight regulation is influenced by many systems interacting at once. Hormones, insulin response, cortisol, thyroid activity, gut health, inflammation, and nutrient status all play meaningful roles. Through the Metabolic Code, we evaluate these factors together instead of assuming that excess weight has a single cause.
For some individuals, addressing the underlying imbalances directly is enough to create meaningful, sustained progress. For others, their physiology shows patterns that make weight loss extremely difficult, even when they are disciplined with nutrition and exercise. In those cases, a GLP-1 can be a medically appropriate tool to improve metabolic signaling and help overcome barriers that lifestyle alone cannot fully correct.
If a GLP-1 is recommended, it is used with precision. We personalize dosing to avoid overly rapid weight loss and to protect muscle, metabolic rate, and long-term vitality. The medication is paired with targeted nutrition, resistance-based training, and supportive therapies so the improvements in metabolism are reinforced rather than temporary.
A GLP-1 is never the entire solution — it is one part of a medically guided, comprehensive approach that addresses the root causes driving weight challenges and supports true metabolic change.
CE | There can be a misconception that using a GLP-1 is taking an easy way out. From what we see in practice, it is often the opposite. Many individuals come to us after months or years of doing everything they can to improve their health. They train consistently, they eat well, they make real lifestyle changes — yet their progress does not reflect their effort.
When someone is working that hard and still not seeing results, the issue is usually not motivation but biology. A GLP-1 can be the missing puzzle piece that allows their body to respond in the way they have been striving for.
People can feel discouraged or uncertain when they have never been offered this option or when they do not fully understand how the medication fits into a bigger plan. Our role is to provide clarity. We explain what the labs are showing, why change may be difficult, and what tools are available to support them.
If a GLP-1 is part of their plan, we guide every aspect of the process. Appetite often decreases, so we create a structured nutrition strategy and use targeted supplementation to make sure they get the nutrients they need. We design a strength-focused exercise program to protect and build muscle. We work on sleep, recovery, and stress patterns so the positive changes become sustainable. And throughout the process, our medical team oversees dosage, safety, and progress.
The goal is not simply to lose weight; the goal is to improve metabolism, protect long-term health, and help people feel in control of their bodies again.
LT | Walk us through what the first visit for a member looks like — and then what the ongoing support entails.
CE | The MIORA experience is designed to feel personal, unrushed, and rooted in clarity. It begins with a complimentary concierge call during which our team learns about your goals, answers questions, and schedules your bloodwork, which is the foundation of your Metabolic Profile.
When you arrive for your lab draw, the experience is streamlined. There are no long waits or crowded rooms, and most people are finished within minutes.
Your Metabolic Profile is a $599 comprehensive assessment that includes full bloodwork and a symptomology assessment along with one-on-one appointments with both a medical provider and a registered dietitian. By the end of these appointments, you leave with a clear and personalized plan rather than a one-size-fits-all template.
From there, your roadmap may call for a month-by-month ongoing care program. Depending on what your bloodwork shows and what you are working toward, this may include prescriptions such as GLP-1s, peptides, or hormone therapies, as well as targeted supplements or advanced protocols designed to support metabolism, recovery, and long-term vitality.
Each ongoing care path provides regular lab retesting and structured touchpoints (every three to six months, depending on your care plan) with your medical provider and registered dietitian. These ongoing check-ins allow us to track your progress, refine your plan, and ensure your body is responding safely and effectively.
The intention is not simply to give you information: It is to provide continued medical guidance and support so you feel informed, empowered, and confident in your path toward better health.
LT | I’m interested in learning more about MIORA. How can I get started?
JL | I’d encourage anyone interested in MIORA to visit our website or to schedule a complimentary consultation with our concierge team (which you can do via our website). They will walk you through the process, answer questions, and help you schedule your Metabolic Profile.
MIORA is currently licensed to support Life Time members and nonmembers in Minnesota and Illinois, and will be arriving soon to Colorado, Tennessee, Texas, Nevada, and Florida. To learn more or to schedule your first call, visit miora.lifetime.life.
A MIORA membership is a monthly subscription that, after an initial comprehensive metabolic assessment for a one-time fee, enables members to receive access to various services (some included in the subscription fee, some at an extra cost) from licensed health care practitioners through a MIORA medical practice. Life Time provides administrative, non-clinical support to MIORA as well as services and amenities related to general wellness and fitness; Life Time does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, treatment or care.
