These Simple Lab Tests Can Save Your Life

Hello 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 cars 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 our 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 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 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 anemia 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 anemia 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 gram per deciliter  

optimally of hemoglobin women have a little bit  less blood volume per body the 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 to figure it  out and the best marker to figure out your iron  

status is called ferritin that represents your  iron reserves and unfortunately 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 like on  the other hand in men and post-menopausal 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 U.S  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  

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 percent 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 at two and a half percent and they  cut off the bottom two and a half percent and  

they cut off the top two and a half percent  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 two and  a half percent on either side let's take another  

car example imagine you take your car into the  garage and they do their checkups and you ask  

think my tires are a little flat and they say no  we check them you have more air than the worst two  

and a half percent and you're saying yeah but my  manufacturer recommends 35 PSI I want to be here  

in the Middle where my car drives the best I don't  want to be down here at the worst two percent or  

the highest two percent that might be 10 or 60  and they say oh don't worry you're not down in  

the last in the lowest two and a half percent  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 two and a half percent 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 a  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  five percent 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 one percent 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 sicker the range is widen to fit  

the population the 95 percent 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  

it 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 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 two and a half percent 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 there's hardly ever  gets checked and I tell my patients to ask for it  

if we don't do the test and they have 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 balance level so  

if this is in year one 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 could be where there are Financial interests at  stake and there are certain interest groups that  

push for these changes and here they are often  willing then after some pushing to make exceptions  

to these 95 percent 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 others like insulin and  

blood sugar and triglycerides all of the other  components of metabolic syndrome now you can  

probably have 200 to 400 and do perfectly fine and  still the range is 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 0 to 99 as if it was okay or even  possible to live with a zero level triglycerides  

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 you're 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 0 to 5 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 I 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 a hundred percent 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 that even though they do measure a lot of  

different markers and they 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 prayer 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 percent 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 percent  of our active form of thyroid hormone so this  

person can have a perfect effect 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 thyroglobulin 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 Hashimoto's 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 c-peptide they're kind  of the same thing they're built in parallel the  

c-peptide 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 percent 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  B 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 six or  seven to keep your inflammation under 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 the 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  

with 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 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  

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.