My prescriber ordered three tests and this board recommends about twenty, and I would like to know which of those two lists is right.
Post reference ranges alongside numbers when you share them. Units differ by country — glucose and lipids especially — and half the confusion in these threads is unit mismatch rather than disagreement.
What would genuinely help is knowing how often to repeat it, because quarterly seems to be the convention and I cannot find the reasoning.
If the honest answer is that nobody knows, that is a useful answer and I would rather have it.
This one has a reasonably settled answer, so here it is. A defensible baseline is short: HbA1c and fasting glucose, a lipid panel with ApoB if you can get it, ALT and AST, creatinine with eGFR, TSH, ferritin and B12, and a full blood count. That set catches the things that change, the things that explain symptoms, and the things that alter the prescribing decision. Almost everything else on the long circulating lists is either invariant, uninterpretable without a specific question, or an incidental finding waiting to cause an unnecessary workup.
Ask again with the specifics and you will get a better answer than this one.
Dr.NutriCornell said:A defensible baseline is short: HbA1c and fasting glucose, a lipid panel with ApoB if you can get it, ALT and AST, creatinine with eGFR, TSH, ferritin…
No disagreement with Dr.NutriCornell. One condition attached. One addition: if the lab changes analytical platform between your draws, the comparison breaks and nobody tells you. It is worth asking when a value moves inexplicably.
Sigma-Aldrich — Research-Grade Standards
Certified reference materials, analytical reagents, and research-grade standards for peptide verification. Trusted by laboratories worldwide.
Shop Reference Standardsdave_SLC said:My prescriber ordered three tests and this board recommends about twenty, and I would like to know which of those two lists is right.
This matches mine closely enough to be worth saying so. The single most useful discipline is bringing the whole panel to a clinician rather than one flagged value. One out-of-range result in isolation generates anxiety and unnecessary tests; the same result next to the trend and the rest of the panel usually generates a shrug.
Happy to go further on any of that.
From the other side of the consultation, briefly.
PSA: get baseline labs BEFORE starting baseline bloodwork therapy. You need a "before" picture to measure progress. My recommended pre-treatment panel:
- CMP + A1C + fasting insulin
- Complete lipid panel with particle count if possible
- hsCRP, ferritin, B12, vitamin D
- Thyroid panel (TSH + free T4)
- CBC with differential
- Liver panel (ALT, AST, GGT)
- DEXA scan or body composition
Total cost at Quest without insurance: ~$200. Worth every penny for the data.