These Simple Lab Tests Can Save Your Life

Hello, our health champions. Today we're going to talk about how getting some blood work done and understanding how to read it correctly could actually save your life and blood work can be life-saving. But let me start off with an analogy regarding automobiles because I know a lot of people have a car and a lot of people like to service their car. So here's the question. Is it better to fix your car before it breaks or after it breaks? And when I ask this in my clinic, I always get a giggle and they say, "Of course, it's better to take care of the problem before it breaks." Because then it may just be a $50 oil change rather than a $5,000 transmission or engine overhaul. And this is how we think about cars and expensive property. But unfortunately, we haven't learned to think about our own vehicle. The most important vehicle are bodies in quite the same way. We typically just wait until it breaks and then we do something about it. And when it comes to the body, it's also not only about the money. Yes, disease care can get very, very expensive, but it's more about the suffering and the lack of quality of life. That if we take care of ourselves, we could extend our health span, our joyous portion, our quality life, probably by 20, 30 years. Imagine you get a phone call from somebody and you pick it up and it's a totally random phone call. And the first thing they say is, "Should I turn left or right?" I'm out driving. And the first thing you want to know, obviously, is, "Where are you?" Assuming that you even talk to this person, but you need to know where they are and where they are going. Otherwise, you can't help them. And this is like a lot of questions I get on my channel. People ask, "Should I do this or that?" But I don't know anything about them. And that's what blood work can do for us is it can provide a baseline. But as great as baselines and blood work can be, it is also useless if we don't know what we're looking for. If we don't understand what it's telling us. Now, this is a big topic and in this video, I'm only going to have time to give you a few nuggets. We're going to touch on a few of the most important markers. But to really do it justice, it would probably be an 8 to 10 hour video. And it's hard enough to get people's attention for 10 minutes if you know what I mean. But if you want to know more than what I can give you in this video, I'm going to let you know later in the video how you can get your hands on a more comprehensive deep dive. It's something that I've been wanting to do for years for my fellow health champions. Enemia is one of the most important things that we can evaluate. Not because it is the most common thing out there, but because it is so fundamental. Enemia means lack of blood. And what they're talking about there is the oxygen carrying capacity. If you're anemic, you don't have the capacity to deliver that oxygen. And if you don't understand how important it is, then just hold your breath for a couple of minutes. And I think the answer will come to you. And now think about this. That is how important oxygen is. But if you're anemic, then it is not getting delivered to the degree that your body needs it. So everything can be affected when you have anemia. Hemoglobin is by far the most important marker to evaluate when it comes to anemia. Because the hemoglobin is what carries the oxygen. And an adult male should have somewhere between 14 and 16 milligram per desolate or optimally of hemoglobin. Women have a little bit less blood volume per body weight and size, so they can get away with a point or two lower. But then you have all these other different markers on your tests. You have your red blood cell count. You have the hematocrit. You have the MCV, which is mean corpuscular volume. It's the size of the red blood cell. Now these by themselves are not all that important. But if your hemoglobin is high or low, now you use these other markers to start playing detective and figure out why it's low. Is it low because you don't have iron? Is it low because you're missing some other things? Some other things you want to look at is total iron binding capacity. That's a marker for a protein that goes to grab iron. So if total iron binding capacity, TIBC is high. That means the body is looking for iron. So if you have a low hemoglobin, you would expect TIBC to be high. But what if it isn't? Then your hemoglobin is low for some other reason. So this is how you can start using this to figure it out. And the best marker to figure out your iron status is called ferritin. That represents your iron reserves and unfortunately it is hardly ever measured. And the reason you want ferritin on every blood test is that it's very inexpensive and it gives you a lot of information. So let's say that your hemoglobin is normal, but your ferritin, your iron reserves are very low. That means so far your body has been able to keep up making hemoglobin and red blood cells. But if ferritin is low, then it tells you you're running out. So especially for menstruating women, we want to check that ferritin. Because if it's trending low, then you might just be a few weeks away from becoming anemic. On the other hand, in men and postmenopausal women, now you want to watch ferritin to see if it gets too high. Because that's called iron overload or hemochromatosis. And just like iron will rust on your car, it can also kind of make your body rust inside. Your liver and your pancreas are the first to get damaged from excess iron. And it will aggravate and promote insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome. But it's also possible to have a high ferritin and a low hemoglobin. So traditionally, anytime we are anemic, we assume that we're lacking iron. But what if it's something else we're lacking and we already have too much iron? If these people are now given iron, when they have too much, that just makes the damage worse and they're not solving the problem. In order to make red blood cells, we also need some B vitamins. We need B6 folate, which is also B9 and B12. So interestingly, we can look now at the MCV, the size of the red blood cell. And if it's very small, it is usually iron deficiency. But if it's very large, then it is usually a B vitamin deficiency. And if we're anemic, but we have plenty of iron, it could also be that we're low in copper and zinc because they are also necessary to make red blood cells. There are 7 billion blood tests performed in the US alone. That's like 20 per person. And sometimes they just look for one specific marker in a hospital setting, but a lot of times it's large panels and there's six big problems that we're going to go through. Why a lot of these panels are wasted? The first reason is that it is not about health. They're not looking to keep you healthy. They're looking for disease. They're looking for after it's already gone wrong. Most of the ranges that you see on blood tests are based on a bell curve. They're based on averages. And they're based on a 95% interval. So if we draw this, then we can see the bell curve like this. And what they do then, this is a normal statistical distribution. And then they take 95%. So they start a 2.5% and they cut off the bottom 2.5% and they cut off the top 2.5%. And if you're in the middle, if you're in the 95% in the middle, then you're considered normal. But as I'm sure you can see now, all it's really saying is that you're not in the worst 2.5% on either side. Let's take another core example. Imagine you take your core into the garage and they do their checkups. And you ask, I think my tires are a little flat. And they say, no, we check them. You have more air than the worst 2.5%. And you're saying, yeah, but my manufacturer recommends 35 psi. I want to be here in the middle where my core drives the best. I don't want to be down here at the worst 2% or the highest 2% might be 10 or 60. And they say, oh, don't worry. You're not down in the last in the lowest 2.5% yet. And then they say, let's just do this again next year and see what it looks like then. Let's wait till your next car service. And then if you get the blood work next year and you're actually in the lowest 2.5%, now you get what's called a flag. And another problem. with this bell curve distribution is that it changes over time. It's different with different populations, it's different in different states, and as people get sicker, then the norm changes, but it doesn't mean that normal is optimal. The second big problem is that most practitioners, the vast majority of doctors who order blood work, only look at the flag. So they get a report back something like this and their eyes just focus in on wherever it says flag and wherever it's marked high or low. And the rest of the test gets no attention at all. So everything here where there's a question mark, what does that mean? Well, all it really means, all you really know is that you're not in the worst 5%. And to me, that is not very comforting. So I think it's great that they're running all this blood work because it's very inexpensive, relatively speaking, but the way they're reading it, they're only using 1% of the information it could give us. They're throwing 99% of it away because they don't understand enough to get the big picture. It's the equivalent of waiting until the car breaks down in my opinion. And then if you say, what does this mean? Am I healthy? Then the chances are that most doctors are simply going to answer, you don't have a disease yet. And this ties into the third big problem. And that's that a lot of these ranges are way, way, way too broad. As the population gets thicker, the range is widened to fit the population, the 95%. And one marker in particular is insulin that I talk a lot about, but that rarely gets measured. So insulin reference range goes from about 2 to 25. And 2 is a healthy level. 25 is typically a full-blown diabetic. So again, they wait, it's normal to wait until you have that full-blown disease. But imagine instead that this is a dipstick for your car, for your oil check. And it's supposed to be up here. That's where they say that's where the oil gets the best lubrication for the engine. And you take your car in for a check and they put the dipstick, they check the dipstick, and they get a tiny little bit of oil down here at the bottom. And you're asking, well, shouldn't we fill it up? And they say, now we'll wait, we'll wait till next time you come in for service, because you're still better off than 2.5% of the population. So if they were to measure it, then they would allow this entire range to be called normal. But even worse is that this hardly ever gets checked. And I tell my patients to ask for it if we don't do the test, and they have to fight with their doctors. Most of them come back saying that they refuse to run the test. It's not standard. But here is why you absolutely have to understand what this does, and why it could save your life. So if you have the normal measurement of glucose that would be this high, and then you have the insulin measurement that would be that high, they should balance. They're different units, but that would be like a normal balanced level. So if this is in year 1, and then we wait 10 years, and now we measure again, the thing they measure is glucose. That's a standard test. And it's a controlled variable. The body is working very, very hard at keeping that variable in control, that glucose level. But the way it's working hard to do it is to produce more insulin. So if it takes this much insulin now to keep the glucose down, we have just quadrupled our insulin resistance. But it's still considered normal because it's within this range. And if we wait another 10 years, then we might have still the same glucose, or maybe it's gone up a few points, but now it takes 10 times. And we're basically just a few months, or it's just a matter of time before we have that full-blown diagnosis of diabetes. And if we measure for health, and we understand the physiology instead of just looking for disease and pathology, then we can catch it 10 years earlier. We can catch it in its infancy. And that's what prevention is all about. Problem number four is that sometimes they're just using the wrong range altogether. And this could be because of old data, old misconceptions that just take a long, long time to get cleared up, or it can be where there are financial interests at stake, and there are certain interest groups that push for these changes. And here they're often willing, then, after some pushing to make exceptions to these 95% bell curve ranges. And the classic example, of course, is cholesterol, where I did a video recently and pointed out that there is massive data suggesting that the best ranges are between 200 and 250 total cholesterol. And if you control for other factors like insulin and blood sugar and triglycerides, all of the other components are metabolic syndrome, now you can probably have 200 to 400 and do perfectly fine. And still, the ranges published go from 100 to 199, even though we know that low cholesterol is many times more dangerous than a higher cholesterol. Problem number five is a lack of common sense. They don't question where these ranges come from or what they mean. So one example here is where triglycerides and LDL cholesterol, the range says zero to 149. And zero to 99, as if it was okay or even possible to live with a zero level. Traglycerides is the most important fuel in the body. We have two fuels, glucose and triglycerides. And triglycerides make up most of the fuel in the body. So how would it be possible to have zero? It has never happened. You would be long dead before you ever got to zero triglycerides or zero LDL. And yet the range goes to zero. And then there are more inconsistencies because we looked at cholesterol just a second ago and total cholesterol should be between 100 and 199. So apparently are allowed to have some total cholesterol. But then we look at the ratios. And this is kind of an important ratio, total cholesterol to HDL. It's a good thing to look at. And here they say the range is zero to five, which the only way that can happen is if your total cholesterol is zero. So in this ratio now it's okay for total cholesterol to be zero. And it is a good marker because if your total cholesterol to HDL is five, then you're at average risk of heart disease. And obviously you want to do better than average risk of heart disease. So I tell people that typically you want to be about three and a half and down. But not too low either because an excessively high HDL can indicate other problems. And then based on this number they estimate your risk for heart disease. So if your risk of heart disease is one, then you have the normal risk of heart disease, 100% of normal. But apparently the lower the number, the better off you are, all the way down to zero. So the lowest risk of heart disease according to this is when you have zero cholesterol in your body, which of course means you're already dead. But I guess they do have a point here that you can't develop heart disease if you're already dead. So we want to question the ranges if they don't make sense. And if something is essential for life and the range goes all the way down to zero, then obviously these ranges are not really thought through. Problem number six is that even though they do measure a lot of different markers and they'd run all these blood tests, they often don't measure the stuff that really matters. So here are these markers. They're not the only ones you need to measure. They're the ones in addition to the ones usually measured. And you want to measure your LDL particle count and you want to measure your small LDL particle count so that you can see the ratio, which is an indication of how much damage is taking place in your body. The third marker related to that is the LDL size so that you can confirm what you're finding. We talked about ferritin. And if it's very low, then you're either anemic or you're close to becoming anemic. There's a high risk of it. If ferritin is very high, you have iron overload. And it's really tragic that this is not a standard routine marker. It's becoming more common, but it's still kind of rare. I find this in a lot of people. I send a couple of people every week to go donate blood and unload some iron. Hemoglobin A1C is another marker that's becoming more common, but it's still not totally standard. Glucose is usually always measured, but it's the instantaneous glucose, which fluctuates. The A1C represents a three-month average, so we can see the long-term trend. It gives us a whole lot more information for just a few dollars. And thyroid is so critical to our metabolism and healing and overall function, and yet it is very poorly evaluated. Typically, if they measure anything, it's always only TSH, like 98% of the time, if they measure it's only TSH, which is a pituitary hormone. The pituitary tells the thyroid, TSH, stimulates the thyroid to make thyroid hormone, which is T4. So we don't want to just see what the pituitary is saying. We want to see what is the thyroid actually putting out. But then we also want to measure T3 because that's the active form of T4. So it's possible to have a normal TSH and a normal T4, but still a low T3. So we want to understand where in the range we are, not only if it's normal or out of normal. So if this is T4, and here is the total reference lab range, and here might be optimal, let's say that we find ourselves right in the middle. We have a normal TSH, normal T4, but then we go measure T3. And now we find out that we are not in the optimal range, but we're still in the reference range. So we wouldn't get a flag on the regular blood test either way, but we would know if we look for the optimal range. But here's the point that now it's a totally different problem. It's the problem is not with the TSH, it's not with the pituitary, and it's not with the thyroid. It's the conversion that's not working. So now it's either the liver or the gut that are not working, that are not healthy. So the liver converts about 60% of this, and the gut does another 20, and another 20 is kind of wasted because it's flipped around. But if we don't have a healthy gut, a healthy microbiome, we could lose 20% of our active form of thyroid hormone. So this person could have a perfect TSH, perfect T4, and still be functionally hypothyroid. They don't have enough of the finished product. So we need to understand that if the T4 is here, it should be somewhere in the same relative place in the T3 range if our conversion is working properly. And then there's a couple of more markers called thyroid peroxidase and thyroid globulin antibodies. And these are becoming quite common, and they're not that expensive. So I would suggest everyone, regardless of symptoms, get that done at least once. And if they're negative, then you don't have to test them every time. But everyone should do it just to know if you have an autoimmune problem, if you are having hashi modus, then you need to know about that. Most commonly missing marker, considering 88% of the population is insulin resistant, and we don't measure insulin routinely. You can measure insulin or CPEPTide, they're kind of the same thing. They're built in parallel. The CPEPTide has a little bit longer half-life. So it's maybe a little bit better marker, but it's also a little more expensive. So insulin works fine for usual regular purposes of just getting a baseline. But the only time these are typically measured is if they suspect type 1 diabetes. But like I said, 88% of people have too much insulin, and we need to measure it to see where they are. And then we need a baseline so we can see where it's going. On my panels, I always add homocysteine. Next to insulin, it's the single strongest independent risk factor for heart disease. If it's high, it means you're not converting, you're not getting rid of it because you're low in methylation factors. And the vitamins, it's usually a pretty easy fix. But we need to know what it is. And the ranges again are typically way, way too big, like 0 to 17. And you really want to keep this under 6 or 7 to keep your inflammation on the control. And vitamin D is an absolutely critical marker. The more they study it, the more they find that vitamin D participates in just about everything in the body. And it's a simple test that we can get a precise number. And if we're low, we just supplement. Like I mentioned earlier, this video can only be a brief introduction to blood work. Because covering it in detail would probably be a 10 hour video, which doesn't work so well here. So I've created a blood work course that is more comprehensive. And it is for the layperson to help understand what's going on with them. But let me put that in frame for you. That when I started this channel, when I really started becoming active with the channel a couple of years ago, I just wanted to get information out there. But because of all of the feedback, the positive feedback of the thousands of lives that have been changed for the better, this interest of mine has taken on more of a mission, more of a calling. And now my job I realize is to change or be part of the group of people who change the paradigm of health on the planet. There's so many sick people who get the wrong information or no information. And we need to have something for them. And now more and more, I want to create a movement. I want to create a tribe of health champions where people take charge and do something about their health and take pride in doing the right thing for their health. So in order to help people on that journey, a blood work course is the next logical step. So I've created the more comprehensive course and I put a link down below in the description where you can go and find out more about that. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one. And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell, and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life-saving video.