Your Wellness Lab Work

Lately I have been answering questions from several people about their pending lab work and their health concerns. How to get the most out of their labs so they can optimize their wellness plan was the main driver for the questions. The coincidence is that I had to do it for myself. I had many questions about the missing elements of my standard of care, cookie cutter, in the box labs, over the years. I have been working in a functional medicine scope and have been exposed to critical thinking and out of the common box methods and strategic elements to look at. Looking is not the whole story, If you don’t ask the right questions, you can’t get the right answers. So here is a picture, your lab work, how and what does it relate to? What is upstream and what is downstream? What can we, should we, do about it? Just being within a certain range is not the story, and not a safe option to ignore. All the items relate to each other, the ratios matter, other relationships matter. The missing data matters, and also answers a question of what questions were asked and not asked. Often there are many choices, so there may be more discussion, more looking. What put the thinking into positive action for me was reading Dr. Peter Attia’s book “Outlive”, published in 2023. The whole book is outstanding, Chapter 7, The Ticker, really put the test questions together for me. He also explains why these are necessary, not nice to know, need to know. There are threads like this throughout the book. It will be one book that I will read and refer to many times. I have already read Chap 7 three times.
What I do, and suggest you do, is to prepare your doctor for your appointment by writing a note regarding what you want to discuss and want for labwork. Do your homework, your due diligence. Don’t email it, or message it or voicemail it!!! Neatly write it or type it, put it inside a nice card (people open cards, not so much business like mail) and deliver it several days before your appointment. First thing my Doc said last week was “I read your Love letter”. We had a great appointment, exceptional. His assistant had studied it too, and we had a productive pre appointment. You are in charge of you, it is a Do It Yourself project.
The Doc is an advisor, a gate opener who needs your help. TTFN…