how much of what we believe about bloodwork actually comes from baseline labs threads
how much of what we believe about bloodwork actually comes from baseline labs threads. Searched first, found three threads that contradict each other, hence the post.
ApoB counts atherogenic particles rather than the cholesterol they carry, which is why it can diverge from LDL-C and why it is the addition most worth making.
Why so many single values look alarming and turn out to be nothing.
A reference interval is built to contain about 95% of a healthy reference population, so one test in twenty falls outside one by construction. Add biological variation, assay imprecision, fasting state and time of day, and a genuinely stable person will produce occasional out-of-range results.
That is why repeat testing before acting is standard. Regression to the mean handles most of it. None of which means an out-of-range value should be ignored — it means it should be repeated and taken to somebody who can put it in context, which is emphatically not a ranked feed.
The confounding problem, stated plainly, because this board keeps stepping on it.
Substantial weight loss moves lipids, liver enzymes, insulin sensitivity markers and several others in its own right. If you are losing weight while taking something, any change in those markers has at least two candidate explanations and you cannot separate them from your own panel.
What you can do is standardise, take a baseline, keep the series long, and be honest in your posts about what is and is not attributable. The threads that say "this compound did X to my TSH" almost never have the design to support the claim, mine included.
If somebody has the same thing measured a different way, post it next to mine and we will see whether they agree.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Retitled — the original asserted a causal claim the post does not support.
Repeat testing before acting is standard practice for a reason: regression to the mean does a lot of work on single outlying values.
one measurement is a point, two is a line, three is a trend
draw at the same point in the week if you want comparability
Fasting or not, and what time of day?
Repeat testing before acting is standard practice for a reason: regression to the mean does a lot of work on single outlying values.
Adding the obvious one — take it to whoever ordered the panel. This board cannot read it for you.
How to make a panel worth comparing, which is most of the value people leave on the table.
Standardise the conditions: same lab, same fasting state, same rough time of day, same point in the week, similar hydration. Take a baseline before you change anything. Repeat any surprising value before acting on it. Change one thing at a time if you want to attribute anything to it.
Do that and a year of panels is a trend. Skip it and a year of panels is a collection of unrelated mornings, which is what most of the alarmed posts here are actually describing.
Added ApoB to the panel after a thread here. It told me something the standard lipid panel had been hiding.
Same lab as the previous draw?
Same lab as the previous draw?
Agreed — and standardising the draw conditions is the cheapest improvement available.
Agreed — and standardising the draw conditions is the cheapest improvement available.
Disagreeing with this bit: that change is confounded by the weight loss itself and cannot be attributed.
Took a baseline the week before starting purely because this board told me to. Best five minutes I have spent on this.
Small fix — a reference interval is not a treatment target, and the post above uses them interchangeably.
I would not draw a line through two points, especially when the second was taken at a different time of day.
- 1Repeat testing before acting is standard practice for a reason: regression…6 comments in this branch · started by u/emeka_chowdhury