The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson,

and is narrated by Tina Lehman.

Popular blood tests. The facts, ranges, and alternatives you should know. I'm of two minds when it comes to blood tests. The facts, ranges, and alternatives you should know.

I'm of two minds when it comes to blood testing.

For myself, I'm not a huge fan of obsessive, frequent testing and optimization.

I have a good idea about how to optimize my health through the actions I take and the foods

I eat, and by monitoring how I'm feeling,

looking, and performing in response. It's worked well for me. Whenever I do get a checkup or have

blood drawn, my numbers are great. But many people are the opposite. They like to quantify

what's happening under the hood. That's great and often necessary. The problem is

that there are big problems with many of the most common blood tests. A glaring problem for almost

every blood test are the reference ranges used. What's wrong with those? Reference ranges reflect

what's common, not normal. A reference range for a blood test refers to the values possessed by 95% of the normal population.

Reference ranges for blood tests are based on the people who get lab tests.

Who get lab tests?

People who go to the doctor, often because there's something wrong with them.

They may not reflect normal ranges for truly healthy people.

Reference ranges are extremely broad, which may give a false sense of security.

Having blood sugar on the high end of normal isn't healthy.

It actually presages type 2 diabetes. Another problem inherent to

almost every blood test you'll take is that the result represents a snapshot of time, a brief

glimpse at a situation in constant flux. Your cholesterol was elevated today at 12 noon. What does that

...