Your partner in health
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Performance has preconditions. We make them visible — for every single player.
Laboratory values for the whole squad — vitamin D, iron status, inflammatory markers, minerals. One order for the club, a separate account for every player. Each of them gets their result explained and then knows what to work on.
You see the training. You can guess at the sleep. What a player actually has available in iron, vitamin D or minerals, nobody at the club knows — and the player least of all.
The figures on this are starker than most people expect.
In a thorough entry examination of 558 professional footballers, 95.5 per cent had at least one finding that required treatment or follow-up. The most common medical finding was vitamin D deficiency.
Br J Sports Med, 2016 · PMID 27012663
Among 11- to 18-year-old ball-sport athletes, mild iron deficiency was present in 41 per cent of boys and 53 per cent of girls — almost always without anaemia, so without showing up in a standard blood count.
Nutrients, 2023 · PMID 36769618
A meta-analysis on vitamin D in athletes describes an increased risk of inadequate supply in indoor sports and at higher latitudes. Berlin sits at 52.5 degrees north.
Sports Medicine, 2015 · PMID 25277808
These are not outliers. This is the normal case in a squad where nobody looks.
A value can be within the normal range and still be too low for someone who trains four times a week. That is exactly where the room for improvement lies.
This is best documented for iron. In a systematic review of 23 studies with 669 female athletes, iron deficiency reduced endurance performance by three to four per cent. Where the deficiency was treated, performance improved by two to twenty per cent.
Three per cent sounds like little. Across a season with sixty sessions and thirty matches, it is not.
So that no false expectation arises here: This improvement occurs where a deficiency actually existed and was corrected. In a player with good values, nothing happens. That is precisely why you measure first, instead of handing everyone the same supplement.
A player trains four times a week, works or studies alongside it, sleeps too little and drives three hours to an away match on Sunday. The body does not distinguish between a training stimulus and everyday stress — both run through the same axis of hypothalamus, pituitary and adrenal gland.
Its most important hormone is cortisol. It normally follows a clear daily rhythm: a marked rise shortly after waking, then a decline across the day. The literature on overtraining describes that this rhythm can change under sustained load — in one study of elite gymnasts it was abolished altogether.
Schematic representation, not measured data. It shows why a single cortisol value says little: what matters is the pattern across the day — which is why measurement uses four saliva samples.
Why this counts for a coach: cortisol is the reason some players cope worse than others despite identical training.
cortisol makes energy available in the short term by breaking down stores — glycogen and protein. In the short term that is exactly right. Chronically elevated, it works against the build-up that training is supposed to trigger.
Recovery is an active, hormonally controlled process and happens largely during sleep. The ratio of anabolic to catabolic hormones — usually described as testosterone to cortisol — is studied in research as an indication of recovery status.
The catecholamines govern drive, alertness and the ability to call on everything at short notice. As early as 1992, reduced nocturnal excretion was described as a possible indication of overtraining syndrome.
Drive, concentration and sleep depend on messengers such as serotonin and dopamine. To produce them, the body needs vitamin B6, iron and magnesium among others — the same values discussed above. The circle closes here.
The evidence on stress hormones in sport is not conclusive. Reviews describe that cortisol and catecholamine values in overtraining produce contradictory results and overlap strongly with healthy athletes. A single value is no use as a diagnosis.
What it is good for: as an indication over time. Anyone with a daily profile in August and a second one in January sees a change — and that says more than any single value. This is exactly why we measure with four saliva samples across one day rather than one morning blood draw.
NAD is the cell's shuttle: it takes up electrons from carbohydrates, fats and protein, carries them into the mitochondria and is then ready again. Every step of energy production runs through it.
What matters is where it comes from. The body builds NAD itself — and the kynurenine pathway from the amino acid tryptophan is the only de novo route it has.
This path consists of several enzymatic steps, and each of them needs tools: vitamin B6, vitamin B2, iron, magnesium. If one is missing, the cascade stalls — not because there is too little tryptophan, but because the machinery cannot run.
Schematic representation of the principle, not measured data. We do not offer NAD itself — what is measurable is the path to it and what disturbs it.
At the entrance to the path stands the enzyme IDO. It is switched up by Inflammation — more precisely by messengers of the immune system. If silent inflammation is running in the body, more tryptophan is pulled into this path, regardless of whether energy or serotonin is what is needed.
Often from the gut. The literature describes the connection between intestinal inflammation, immune activation and the balance between serotonin and kynurenine production. That is why a topic that sounds like energy often hangs on one that sounds like digestion.
More throughput on a path is no use if the enzymes have no tools. For one section of this path, the dependence on vitamin B6 is well described — where it is lacking, intermediates build up instead of NAD coming out at the end.
Training measurably shifts tryptophan metabolism in muscle and acts on energy balance and the immune system at the same time. So the stimulus is there — whether the body can follow it is decided by building material and inflammatory state.
We do not offer NAD itself. What is measurable is the path to it together with what disturbs it, and in a single profile: kynurenine, kynurenic acid, 3-OH-kynurenine and quinolinic acid show where the path stands; the IDO and KMO activity zeigt, wie stark er gerade angetrieben wird; neopterin shows whether immune activation lies behind it. Plus catecholamines, cofactors and methyl donors.
This answers a question that otherwise stays open: is there too little building material in this player — or is silent inflammation drawing it away? Those are two different answers, and they lead to two different measures.
On NMN in athletes we found no study in the literature database. For nicotinamide riboside, a 2026 paper describes effects that diverge from those of training. And a paper in Cell Metabolism 2025 zeigte im mouse model, that even 85 per cent less NAD in muscle did not impair function.
It does not follow that the topic is irrelevant. It follows that the shortcut via a capsule is not established — and that the questions before it are the more important ones: enough amino acids, enough cofactors, no persistent inflammation.
In the mitochondria, what a player eats becomes the energy they play with. How many of them a muscle cell has and how well they work helps decide how long someone holds high intensity and how quickly they are back between two sprints.
Endurance stimuli trigger the formation of new mitochondria — one of the best studied adaptations in sport. And the loss is not a theory: in a longitudinal study of 380 people, mitochondrial capacity in muscle was measured directly; those who were lower lost more physical function in the following years.
But training alone builds nothing. Mitochondria are built from material — and they only work with tools.
Every step of energy production depends on cofactors: B vitamins, iron, magnesium, coenzyme Q10, amino acids. If one is missing, the mitochondria are there — but they produce less than they could. The training stimulus comes to nothing because the material for the answer is missing.
Schematic representation of the principle. Which parameters our acid profile contains in detail is something we clarify with the laboratory before ordering — we deliberately name no values here that we have not had confirmed.
Endurance load stimulates the formation of new mitochondria. That is why a well-trained player is back faster between two sprints than an untrained one — not because of stronger willpower.
The stimulus is the request, the material is the precondition. Without B vitamins, iron, magnesium and coenzyme Q10 the body cannot follow the request. The same holds for amino acids — mitochondria consist largely of protein.
Then metabolism takes a detour: pyruvate does not enter the citric acid cycle, lactate is produced instead of energy — although oxygen and mitochondria are present. The ratio of lactate to pyruvate is used in diagnostics for exactly this reason, as an indication of a disturbance in the respiratory chain.
Thiamine deficiency is considered an underappreciated cause of a lactic acidosis that does not arise from a lack of oxygen. In a case series of eleven patients without circulatory failure, lactate averaged 4.5 mmol/l — and improved on thiamine. A missing vitamin, a blocked path, a high lactate value.
The example above comes from the clinic, not from the changing room. It shows the principle in its clearest form: a missing nutrient can slow energy production without anything being wrong with oxygen, training or willpower. In a player with a mild deficiency the same process is weaker — and therefore not recognisable without measurement.
There is no test that measures the performance of mitochondria directly. A profile of organic acids in urine gives indications about energy production, vitamin metabolism and oxidative stress; it originally comes from the diagnosis of mitochondrial disease. In healthy athletes it provides indications, not proof — and can only be read properly over time.
Nutrients liefern Material und Werkzeug. NAD transportiert die Elektronen dorthin, wo sie gebraucht werden. The mitochondria machen daraus Energie — aber nur, wenn beides da ist. Und cortisol helps decide whether the body is currently building up or breaking down.
That is why it makes little sense to pick out one of them. An iron value without an inflammatory marker misleads, a cortisol value without a time course says nothing, and a supplement without a measured deficiency changes nothing. The connection is the point — not the single value.
You do not have to measure everything at once. For a squad it almost always begins with the first profile; the other two are added if a question stays open.
Capillary blood, 75 parameters. Contains the material: amino acid profile, fatty acids, vitamin D, plus magnesium, iron, zinc and selenium — and stress markers. For most players this is the baseline assessment to start with.
Urine. Captures the path: the kynurenine pathway by which the body makes NAD, plus adrenaline, noradrenaline and dopamine, GABA and glutamate, cofactors, methyl donors and mitochondrial parameters.
Urine, 21 acids. Shows the production: statements on mitochondrial energy production, vitamin metabolism, methylation and oxidative stress.
Which individual values a profile contains exactly is something we clarify with the laboratory before ordering and put in writing for you. We deliberately name no parameters here that we have not had confirmed.
Your season runs through the whole winter. The hardest part sits in the middle of it: a dense run of fixtures, indoors, barely any daylight, little recovery.
Among Norwegian Olympic athletes, illnesses — not injuries accounted for 48 per cent of all health problems. On average, 40 training days were lost per year among the women and 26 among the men.
A single value in August does not answer where a player is heading. Only the second measurement in winter shows whether the stores are holding. That is why we recommend two points in time, not one.
A PDF with seventeen values is no help to a nineteen-year-old. That is why with us it does not end with the laboratory result.
For many of your players this is the first look at their own body that goes beyond “everything is fine”.
At this point almost the same question always comes up: and what do we as the club get to see?
The answer: who took part. Not what came out of it.
This is not a legal compromise but the condition under which the whole thing works. A player who fears that their values will influence selection either does not take part or does not fill in the form honestly. Either makes the result worthless — for them and for you.
| Sees | Does not see | |
|---|---|---|
| Club | Participation, one invoice, an anonymous overview from ten participants upwards | Individual values, names, abnormalities |
| Player | Their full report including trend and interpretation | — |
| Coach | The same as the club | Anything personal. If a player wants to talk to you, they decide that themselves |
Laboratory values are health data under Art. 9 GDPR. Consent is given by the player, not the club — voluntarily and revocable at any time.
We work out which values make sense for your squad and what it costs. We name no figure beforehand that will not hold afterwards.
The club orders for everyone who wants to take part. Each person automatically gets their own kit, their own form and their own account.
No appointment you have to fit into the training plan. Everyone does it when it suits and sends it back themselves. Reminders run automatically, not through you.
Every player gets their result explained by an ORY expert. From ten participants upwards, the club gets an anonymous overview.
From ten participants upwards the club gets an evaluation without names: is the same value low in several players? Does something shift across the whole team between August and January?
That answers no question about an individual. But it answers whether you should be talking about catering, winter planning or load management — and that is the level a coach decides on anyway.
A report is of little use if nobody at the club can interpret it. That is why we work with coaches rather than merely delivering to them.
Registration goes through our page for professional partners — coaches and trainers are named there explicitly as a target group. The academy and the expert network already exist; the module specifically for coaches is currently being finalised.
Abnormalities are most common precisely among adolescents: growth, high training load, the onset of menstruation, plus eating habits that rarely follow requirements.
For minors, the consent of those with parental responsibility is added to the player's. The report goes to both. Not to the club, not to the coach.
We go through this before the first order, not afterwards.
Tell us how big the squad is and which league you play in. We will sort out the rest in conversation — including whether the coach training is an option for you.
The works cited describe general connections and do not refer to ORY Athletik. Laboratory values and their interpretation do not replace a medical diagnosis or treatment.