Hey Reader, Dr Karl here. Nine point six. That is where her fasting insulin sat four years ago. On a Labcorp range runs 2.6–24.9 µIU/mL so 9.6 prints without a flag. Nobody called. Nothing was said.Four years later it is 3.4.Her glucose came down 16 points, from 108 to 92. Her CRP fell from 3.6 to 0.47, which is an 87 percent drop. She was 35 pounds over her ideal body weight and she is now 24. No medication for any of it. She takes progesterone for a twenty-year history of endometriosis,...
11 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Dr Karl here. It shows up in the data, and it's the opposite of what most people track. When I plot my clients by age, something shows up that I didn't go looking for. The older people in my data — the ones still healthy, still going — have a much lower fasting insulin. Not lower cholesterol. Not lower weight, particularly. Big difference between fasting Insulin levels between Insulin Resistant people versus Non Insulin Resistant ones. Lower insulin. The same pattern shows up in...
16 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Dr Karl here. It predicts dementia and heart disease. Almost nobody orders it.And he got Fired from his lab at Harvard when no one would support his research. In the late 1990s a researcher named Kilmer McCully was working at Harvard on a marker called homocysteine. He thought it explained a great deal about heart disease — more, in some cases, than cholesterol did. That was the wrong thing to be right about ... and the wrong place to be right about what he discovered. He lost his...
19 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Dr Karl here. Six labs. Most doctors won't order half of them. Over the last two weeks I've shown you my own numbers at 70 — the pairings, the surprise, and why "in range" told me almost nothing. So here's the practical end of it. If you want to know where you actually stand, this is the short list: Fasting insulin — the master context. Almost never ordered. Mine is 4.5, and the "normal" range runs to 25. Fasting glucose — only meaningful read alongside insulin, never alone. IGF-1...
23 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Dr Karl here. Two of my numbers moved the wrong way this year. IGF-1 dropped 30 points — from 142 to 115. Fasting insulin rose from 3.6 to 4.5. Neither is alarming on its own. Together, moving in opposite directions in the same year, they're a question. So I went looking for what changed. About a month before the draw I'd seen my dermatologist — routine, I go every year. Fair skin, northern European ancestry, I collect sun spots. Actinic keratoses. He gave me a cream and told me...
26 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Dr Karl here. My fasting glucose came back 102. The lab flags that high — technically pre-diabetic. My A1c is 5.6, which sits one tenth of a point below the pre-diabetes line. A1c versus HDL and Triglycerides If that were your panel... most practitioners would start the conversation about carbohydrates and metformin Now here are the numbers that were on the same page: fasting insulin 4.5. HDL 117. Triglycerides 51. Read together, that's not insulin resistance. That's a metabolism...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Dr Karl here. I turned 70 last week. So I did 70 push-ups — and then I did something more useful. I put my actual blood work on screen. Not theory. Not a study about other people. My numbers. Here's why that matters. Most people my age get a lab report back with a row of check marks and the words "normal for your age," and they walk out reassured. But think about what that phrase actually means. It means you've been compared to a population that is, by any honest measure, mostly...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Everyone wants the one number that predicts how well they'll age. After five years tracking biomarkers across more than 100 clients, I'll give you mine. It isn't a supplement, and it isn't on your doctor's radar. It's HDL. And more precisely, it's what your HDL does relative to your triglycerides as the years add up. Here's the pattern that hasn't moved once in five years of plotting it. The people who live longer have higher HDL. And the non-insulin-resistant ones? It's dramatically higher...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Dr Karl here.Let me introduce you to a different perspective of looking at your lab results with the aim being it will change how you use your results to understand your health... and what action you may need to consider taking.Certainly my position has changed over the last 14 years. Having to save your own life has a way of doing that.What's changed exactly? The cloud of collective data has grown from working with clients over the years... a lot. The database of collective...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read