I turned 70. Here's what my bloodwork actually says. And why "normal for your age" is the most dangerous phrase in medicine.
|
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 metabolically sick. Your doctor isn't hiding this from you. They're boxed in — a ten-minute visit, a reimbursement code for each value, and no code at all for "look at how these numbers move together." So the reading is value-against-reference-range, and then you're done. That's the trap. And it's the reason a person can be told they're fine for a decade while the actual trajectory is heading somewhere they wouldn't accept if they could see it. I walked through my own panel — insulin, IGF-1, triglycerides and HDL, homocysteine — and showed exactly where I fall against the people I work with. Here's the video More on Friday — I'll show you the two numbers that, read alone, would have had me labeled pre-diabetic. To your health, https://ketonaturopath.com/our-books/ |
Salamander Bay LLC
Hey Reader, Dr Karl here. Flat and boring. If you have ever worn a continuous glucose monitor, you already know what I am about to show you, and you probably did not know it was the point. Four years ago her CGM trace was jagged. Peaks, drops, more peaks. Today it is a low flat line that barely moves all day. Flat and boring. That is the target. I have been saying it since before CGMs were fashionable, and I still say it. Put two people in front of the same ice cream cone. Both spike. But the...
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,...
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...