The Panel To Actually Run — And What It Costs You Not To
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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 — the growth signal, which only means something read through insulin. Triglycerides and HDL — you already have these; nobody does the division. Mine: 51 over 117 = 0.44. Homocysteine with RBC folate — the aging-brain and aging-vessel marker, and usually a correctable methylation problem. That's roughly five percent of the panel I actually run, and it will tell you more than the annual physical you've been getting for twenty years. Most doctors won't order half of them. Ask anyway — or go around. Then the harder part, and the reason I make these videos: the numbers are only half of it. What they mean depends on where they fall relative to each other, and relative to people who look like you. That's the work I do — reading the constellation, not the check marks. If you want your own labs read that way, reply to this email and I'll tell you how it works. I read every reply myself. You can run these labs next month, or you can run them in five years after something forces the issue. The full walkthrough is here if you missed it: To your health, Dr. Goldkamp 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
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...