A Cream For Two Sun Spots Changed My Bloodwork
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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 to use it for two weeks. I used it for a few days.
The cream is fluorouracil. It is the same drug oncologists run through a chemotherapy IV bag for their cancer patients. It's one of the most widely used cytotoxic drugs in the world. In a tube. For my face. And on the 5% formulation, it's measurably absorbed: in one pharmacokinetic study, fluorouracil was detectable in the plasma of nine out of ten patients using it. Now the honest part, because I won't overstate this: I cannot prove from a single blood draw that the cream moved my IGF-1. What I can tell you is the timing fit, the drug's mechanism fits, this has been documented in others as well. A one-time panel would have shown me nothing but "in range." Your labs remember exposures you forget. But only if someone is watching them. To be clear: actinic keratoses are pre-cancerous and treating them is good medicine. My dermatologist did the right thing. The lesson isn't fear — it's know what you're being handed, and do your labs before and after if in doubt. The full story, with my numbers on screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1B8QJyx0GE That's the whole reason I wrote Unlocking Optimal Metabolic Health: A Data-Driven Approach to Thriving at Any Age — to show you how to read your own labs, see the patterns, and act on real data instead of generic reference ranges. 📗 Grab the book Here: website
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Salamander Bay LLC
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