Currently going down the preventative health rabbit hole and want to understand people’s real experiences with blood tests.
What convinced you to take the leap and what did you do after getting the results? Did it actually help your health? How do you guys go about comparing all of these blood test services and what should I be wary of?
Especially interested in what happened over the following months after the test
Anything is appreciated!
Blood testing is key to identify whether you are going in the right direction, health wise. Basic things like lipid levels (LDL-C, APO-B, LP(a), etc.) and blood sugar / insulin levels, etc. Get the basic tests to start with, feed it through an LLM like Claude, with a prompt like this to see how your levels can be optimized:
Prompt:
Please provide a structured and in-depth analysis of my attached blood test results.
Role: Longevity-focused Medical Doctor who follows the Peter Attia recommendations.
Task: Provide a structured and in-depth analysis of my attached blood test results. Summarize the results in a table comparing my values to both conventional reference ranges and Peter Attia’s Medicine 3.0 optimal targets.
Identify all markers that fall outside Attia’s optimal ranges (even if still within lab normal).
For each suboptimal marker, identify possible reasons for the suboptimal measure, and provide evidence-based strategies to optimize it, covering lifestyle, nutrition, supplements, and medications (where appropriate).
Calculate biological age, using the algorithm that is provided by the Levine Phenotypic model and calculations.
Organize the analysis by category: metabolic health, cardiovascular/lipids, kidney, liver, inflammation/immune, hematology, hormones, vitamins/minerals.
Provide a final section that integrates the findings into an overall longevity and healthspan strategy.
Context: [AGE, Male},
current medications (if any):
current supplements (if any):
Read up past discussions on blood tests here:
I found out:
almost no vit d
High lipids
Elevated risk for heart disease
Hypothyroid
I was treated for those 3 conditions, and my health is much better as a direct result of having labs done.
I was so low on Vit D that I felt supplementation and thyroid medicines made a big difference too.
I also take some longevity/biohacking prescriptions, but the ones I mentioned are essential to health.
Sources:
If you are in the US, and if you don’t have insurance that will pay for your labs, checkout Good labs… they are labs you can order without a doctor being involved. You pay cash for those and can not submit them to insurance. If paying cash, they are one of the least expense sources. I think the other is Fitnomics (if I recall, they require a membership).
Good labs:
You buy what you want on their site, and then you show up at either Labcorp or Quest for the blood draw.
If you can’t find a code on your own for 20% off for your first order, I’m happy to share mine… I think you’ll be able to find one, and my goal here is not to personally benefit.
Having said all of that, there is no reason to look elsewhere if your insurance pays 100% and you have a doc who will order them.