123: Where I get my blood panels and what to look out for

MK: You know, most people think they're being proactive about their health because they get an annual physical and some basic blood work, lipids, maybe glucose, a thumbs up from the doctor, and that's it. The problem is that those panels are often expensive, incomplete, and weirdly disconnected from how you actually live, train, eat, and recover.

And if you don't have great insurance, they can cost a small fortune for very little insight. What I wanna do in this episode is break down how to get meaningful blood work regularly without breaking the bank. Why? Talk about why most standard panels miss the markers that actually matter, and which tools I have personally used that make this process a lot more practical.

Welcome to the Premier Chief Podcast. Before we get started, I need to thank today's sponsor One Skin, because somehow my wife turned me into a guy talking about skincare on a podcast. Kathy started using one Skin's always one face, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that change was dramatic, not subtle, not maybe if the light's right, real noticeable improvement, and when your wife's skin suddenly looks smoother, healthier, and just better overall, you don't need a clinically study to get your attention.

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You know, comprehensive blood panels are expensive, especially if you're paying out of pocket and. Even when insurance covers your annual checkup, the panels are often shockingly incomplete. And two examples that blow my mind. Fasting insulin and high sensitivity C or P two C reactive protein, which is an inflammatory marker.

You know these two are arguably some of the most meaningful and important blood markers for metabolic health and systemic inflammation. And they're often not included in routine labs. You know, whenever my family calls me and they're like, Hey, can you look at my blood work? And I'm like, where's CRP?

Where's fasting insulin? Oh, they didn't check for that. I'm like, the rest is really worthless unless you're already dying. You know? And you know what you get instead is fasting glucose, which is, unless you already have full-blown diabetes, irrelevant, maybe total cholesterol. Also pretty, mostly irrelevant and a couple of other things that are, you know, great to have.

But they only tell you if you're already in serious trouble. You know, it doesn't really tell you, it doesn't really tell you anything about, you know, what direction you're heading. And that's a problem. And another problem really is that, you know, if you get your blood work once a year, you know, that's a, that's a good thing to do.

But it doesn't really tell you anything in terms of what your trends are. You know, there are so many things that can negatively influence or positively influence your blood markers at a certain time of the year that don't really reflect how your blood markers behave. The other 364 days, you know. And so regular blood work is important, but again, if it's expensive, it's not practical to get it every three months or so.

And the other nuance is, you know, if you only get your blood work done once a year, you know, there might be confounding factors like training. There are, I dunno how often I've gotten my blood work back. And had forgotten that I just did a very intense training session, either the morning off, worst case scenario, or even the day before, or two days before, and certain liver enzymes and other things would be elevated and the doctor would say, well, you know, there is a problem.

And I'm like, well, you know, is, I mean, I, I don't understand why those would be elevated. And then it occurred to me, well, I just worked out very intensively, you know, did like a CrossFit session or whatever. That elevated my enzymes. And so, you know, I did the same blood work then two days later and everything was fine.

And so that's why it's important to a pay attention to, you know, what you're doing around that blood work. You know, I really, you really have to plan your blood work and do it at a time when there is nothing that could potentially negatively influence the reading and then do it more than once a year.

You know, that's really the, the key takeaway here is. I'm gonna share with you in this episode some of the labs or platforms that I've used to get my blood work done more frequently than I could afford otherwise. But before we do that, I'm gonna share with you just real quick some of the key biomarkers that I pay very close attention to.

Not, not that the, all the other ones are irrelevant or not important, but I would argue they are less important if you are generally healthy. And if you just want to get an idea how. Metabolically healthy you are. And if you're heading in the right direction, if the lifestyle choices you've been making, um, are conducive to maintaining optimal health or maintaining good health, or if there is something that you might wanna change or do differently.

And so fasting insulin. It's the one thing that I pay very close attention to because it's one of the earliest signals of metabolic dysfunction. And fortunately, my fasting insulin levels have always been, uh, below three for a long time, especially when I was on keto, they were actually below. The lower cutoff, they were 1.8 for the longest time.

Now they're typically hover around 2.0 to 2.5 or so, so below three. That's one of the things I pay attention to. Leptin, it's an appetite signaling and metabolic health market that I also pay attention to. If you leptin, um. Resistance, that's also not a good thing, and that goes very much hand in hand with being insulin resistant.

So those two I pay attention to, my high sensitivity is C or P, uh, a marker of systemic inflammation. I make sure it's below one. In the last check I had, it was 0.7. Uh, you know, again. CRP can be temporarily elevated without meaning. There is a problem, like, for example, if you work out very hard, your CRP is temporarily elevated, so doing blood work right after your CrossFit workout is probably a bad idea.

I did this once in the past, and my h my, uh, my CRP was elevated until I realized, oh, I shouldn't have done the workout before. But otherwise, especially if you look at trends, you can very clearly tell if there is something that causes systemic inflammation or not. Uh, testosterone obviously is important for me.

Um, not only because I'm a man, it's also important for women to have adequate testosterone levels because they are, you know, important for overall health and resilience and all of the things that. Testosterone is responsible for my triglycerides, uh, especially in relation to HDL. So HDL and triglycerides.

Those two are my lipids that I pay attention to. I don't really care too much about my total cholesterol and LDL, uh, they're. Elevated, uh, but not really just in a modern context or based on, you know, what your regular doctor would tell you, but as long as they're not outrageously high, I don't pay much attention to, uh, regular total cholesterol and, and LDL, vitamin D something I pay attention to because it influences everything from immune function, uh, to hormone production.

So I make sure that I have high enough vitamin D levels, and I achieve this by being out in the sun without wearing sunglasses, without wearing sunscreen, uh, as much as my skin can handle. Obviously there's such a thing as getting too much UV light and that can, can potentially cause skin damage over time, but this, when you're smart about it.

Being out in the sun. Um, especially if you combine this with a, you know, proper diet, low in seed oils, et cetera, that helps your, your skin become more resilient. And if you already build up a sun's callous during winter, so right now I'm out in the sun whenever it's warm enough, I take my shirt off, get the sunlight in, because that prepares me then for summer.

Um, and the thyroid markers, obviously because they are, you know, metabolic, uh, rate matters. And, uh, those are some of the things that I also pay attention to. Now, you know, here's the thing. You don't need 200, a 200 marker panel every time, but you need to get the right markers. And what I do is I combine fairly extensive panels maybe once or twice a year, and then spot checks off markers that I wanna pay close attention to that I wanna see maybe more of, especially if one was off during one of the tests.

And I don't have a good explanation for that. Now, with that all out of the way. Let me share with you some of the comparatively inexpensive and convenient options that I've used in the past to get my blood work done that doesn't break the bank and the ano in no particular order. Uh, just mentioned them based on how they popped into my head when I, uh, wrote down the notes for this episode.

And the number one is called Ox Health. That's S-I-P-H-O-X health and. Cy Fox have has one of the more straightforward ways to get a genuinely complete panel without a ton of friction. You can do this from home. So they send you a kit and you take, you know, a couple of drops of blood depending on how many, you have different tests of like a baseline, and then they have several, several add-ons that you can pick from.

And depending on how many add-ons and you know, type of tests you, you choose, you have to, you know. Give a couple of more or a fewer drops of blood and you send it back, and then a few days later you'll get your result. It's very, very convenient. They have a fairly comprehensive set of tests that you can choose from, you know, again, the baseline and then some of the add-ons.

And very good option if you just want to get a, a broad, relatively comprehensive insights into what's going on. They also track, you know, previous tests. You can again, see the trends very important and you can sign up for a subscription and, you know, that gives you access to, I don't know, four tests. So a year for a relatively reasonable.

Fee. So I really like, uh, Cy Fox Superpower is another one that I just recently stumbled into. And they're interesting because they combine, uh, comprehensive panels, which also they also have some of the add-ons and AI driven interpretation. So even if you don't know exactly what something means, they tell you, okay, this is.

What those numbers actually mean. They give it an overall health score. They do some, you know, um, biological age testing. So it's fairly comprehensive. And the cool thing about that is, you know, as with most other test platforms, you know, if your cholesterol is high, chances are it's gonna get called out.

And the same was with superpower. And I'm like, oh, you know, come on guys, you know, total Co. Just because my total cholesterol is two 80 or whatever, I don't even know what the num list, uh, number was. Uh, it's not a problem. And so I talked with that chat bot and it actually provided some more context to Nuance.

Said, okay, yes. Hey, based on your very low inflammatory markers based on, you know, X, Y, and Z, that is fairly low. And in the optimal range, chances are your total cholesterol is. It is not a problem, you know, so you can actually have a conversation, so to say. And get more insights and nuance that can help you then interpret the results and decide if you need to take action or not.

The one thing that, uh, superpower revealed that was new to me was, um, my, some of my liver enzymes I mentioned before that I've, I've experienced it in the past doing CrossFit workout and doing a blood work, and some of my, my liver enzyme levels were slightly elevated just out of the range, but. Before doing this test, it was actually, I think three days after I came back from a biohacking conference and I performed an electrical muscle stimulation workout that absolutely ruined me.

I was so sore. I've never, and, and I've done fairly tough workouts. I've never been so sore in my entire life. I was sore for a week. So total muscle breakdown. Um. Obviously, you know, needless to say, that workout was probably way too much for what I should have done, but it was like a trade show. That guy wanted to probably tell, teach me a lesson on what, you know, to show me that I'm not as strong as I think I am, or whatever the reason doesn't really matter.

But I had complete muscle breakdown in a lot of areas and my, some of my enzyme levels were skyrocketing high, like in a, in a sense like you are, there is something wrong with you and. Superpower showed me that and it was super interesting. But again, then with the context with, oh, okay, so muscle breakdown because of workout, you know, probably not a problem you might wanna retest, but so again, superpower, uh, one of the newer platforms I wanna say.

And also very comprehensive and good interpretation of the results. I think that's really one thing that, you know, I. I, I don't wanna, you know, steer you away from, from letting your primary care physician interpret the results, but just based on what I've seen, those guys often don't really have a good understanding of some of those factors and why reference ranges are not where they should be.

Um, again, I'm not giving medical advice. I'm not gonna tell you to not trust your doctor. You should always seek advice from. Knowledgeable medical professional. Um, but nonetheless, you know, if, if you wanna just know what's going on, the interpretation of superpower is a great resource in my opinion. Um, some other ways you can get your blood tested is if you already own a wearable, such as the Ultra Human Ring Air, or maybe WHOOP or Levels Health.

The Continuous Glucose monitor. Most of those platforms now also offer blood panels, fairly comprehensive blood panels depending on the platform. And so you can sign up for that. And the neat thing is that, that those platforms then correlate some of those biomarkers or bloods with your biomarkers so you can help you then, you know, improve your sleep, your, you know, raise your HRV and some of the other things that those wearables track.

And I've done those blood panels. With ultra human with levels, they've always been super interesting and insightful, and yet another way to get. More insights for relatively little money. I mean, yes, some of those panel can cost a few hundred dollars, but I remember back in the days when I used insurance to get my, my blood work at Quest, um, they charged my insurance $3,000 for the one thing that I can get for 500.

So as you can see, there is still a significant difference. Now in addition to those. Panel packages that, those platforms I just mentioned provide. Uh, there are also other options like walkin labs I've used in the past. My wife just used it. Uh, and that's very useful if you just want to get specific blood markers may be retested or you only interested in, you know, this time, oh, I only wanna look at my testosterone levels, but nothing else.

Um, with walk-in Labs, you sign up online, you pay for the test online, and then you go to a quest, uh, near you to get the blood drawn. So it's not an at home test, but it's also fairly inexpensive because you can pay a la carte. You only pay what for what you actually need. And those tests are then from, depending on the type of test from maybe, you know, 20 bucks to a hundred and something.

But again, fairly inexpensive. Now, I would not necessarily. Use walk-in labs to get the 200 marker comprehensive blood panel because that would also then be very expensive. But for spot tests, you only wanna see this or retest, maybe a handful of markers like my wife trusted her thyroid and your testosterone.

Um, and, uh, I think that those, you know, maybe five or so markers and he has thyroid and um, and with walking labs, it was fairly inexpensive and fairly convenient to do as well. Now. As I mentioned before, my recommendation is to get at least one comprehensive panel once a year and then pick some of those more meaningful markers and, and what is meaningful for me might be different to you.

You know, if you're in optimal health already and you just wanna make sure you stay on the right path, then it might be your insulin, your CRP. You know, CRP is something I would test several times a year just to make sure there is. No problem with systemic inflammation, especially if it was elevated once, um, you know, and, and some of the other like insulin.

Um. Some of the thyroid, you know, maybe testosterone, maybe some of the other inflammatory markers, um, that are, that can give you an idea of what you are doing. Generally speaking from a lifestyle perspective, keeps inflammation low because inflammation is at the root cause of most metabolic diseases. So that's what I would do.

A combination of comprehensive. Once or twice a year with spot checks, ideally every three months or so, so you get really a good trend line of some of those more important biomarkers without spending too much on those blood tests. Now, if there is one thing. I want this episode to drive home is that you don't need elite insurance or endless cash to get meaningful insights into your health.

You just need the right markers. Test it consistently and with some context, you know that's very important. And before you go and get your blood drawn, make sure you know you don't do anything that you would not. Normally do, like for example, you know, don't do it right after Thanksgiving when you might have, you know, more alcohol than you usually do, or you might have eaten more carbohydrates and what you usually do, you know, try to avoid those, um, like outlying moments.

Um, obviously. Workout. If you workout regularly, I would still encourage you to not work out the day or maybe even two days before, or tone it down a little bit, a few days leading up to the blood work so you don't negatively or artificially inflate your CRP and some of your liver enzyme markers. That would otherwise be completely fine.

And, you know, just do it regularly and pay attention to what those markers mean in the context of your lifestyle. If you are in an animal based diet, if you're in a ketogenic diet, then your total cholesterol is, cholesterol is bound to be higher. LDL is likely bound to be higher. I don't think that's a problem.

You know, look at your triglycerides, look at your HDL, look at your inflammatory markers, you know, and make sure those are low. If you have no, or low inflammation, chances are that there is no oxygen. There's a chance that there's no oxidation going on. Those high cholesterol numbers are not really a problem.

And, uh, yeah. With that, we're gonna wrap it up. I hope you found this episode useful. Maybe share it with someone who, you know, might or should be getting more blood work regularly done, uh, but is struggling with, you know, paying for it. Maybe that could be an option. Um, I'm gonna link down all of the options.

I'm gonna include discount codes where I have them in the show notes, so check that out. And, um. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. If, if you're watching this or listening to this on a platform, supporting comments, leave me a comment. You know, what, what, do you get tested regularly? How often do you get tested?

Do you get tested at all or you don't care? Uh, let me know. I'd love to hear from you, like, subscribe. Stick around Until next time.