Episode Details

The Investigation

Annual check-ups are supposed to confirm your health or raise flags on potential issues. But, could they be a false sense of security? I’ve had so many clients come in with a ‘clean bill of health’ from their doctor that doesn’t match how they feel. Today, we’re going to investigate why so many annual check-ups fall short. 

Insufficient Blood Tests

Are you getting the right blood tests with your annual check-up to truly determine if your healthy? It depends on your doctor. What tests are run is up to each individual doctor. I find that, unless you are seeing an integrative doctor, chances are good that your blood work is very basic. An integrative doctor will ensure that the blood work includes specific markers to get a complete picture of what’s going on in the body. 

How Health Mysteries Start

So often, clients dealing with a health mystery tell me that they’ve had an annual physical and that the blood work came back totally normal. Without more comprehensive blood testing, they presume that nothing is wrong and as a result, doctors may dismiss complaints or rule out issues prematurely. When we presume that things are ‘normal’ it can be very hard to dig deeper to find out what is really going on. And remember, imbalances often start months and years before symptoms appear and a disease is actually found. So, imagine if getting the right blood tests could mean that you catch things before they can turn into a health mystery! 

Avoid Becoming a Health Mystery

The number one way to avoid developing a health mystery is to use your annual check-up as an opportunity to do more comprehensive testing. What does this look like? Ask your doctor to do more than just the basics. You need to be specific, otherwise, you might still fall into a false sense of security about your health. 

Normal is Too Broad

Another way that issues can slip through the cracks is when our results come back inside the ‘normal’ range. The normal range is not the same as the optimal range and can vary depending on where you live. If you want optimal health, you have to compare your results to the ‘optimal’ range and not the normal range. 

What Blood Tests Should be in an Annual Physical

Most routine physicals will include a complete blood count (CBC), a metabolic panel (looks at your glucose, liver and kidney markers), and a lipid panel (cholesterol and triglycerides). This is typically not enough.  

Here is what tests you should have done and the optimal ranges to look for:

• Vitamin D
• • Check both 25 hydroxy and 125 hydroxy, ideally but if you just get one test, ask your doctor for the 25 OH. 
  • The typical ‘normal’ lab range for vitamin D is 30-100. Optimally, we want to be somewhere between 50-60 and if you have an autoimmune disease some say even closer to 70. 
• Thyroid (listen to Episode 27 for more on this!)
• • Most doctors won’t check this in a routine physical and if they do, it’s just a TSH test.
  • You should test TSH, Total T4, Total T3, Free T4, Free T3, Reverse T3 and Thyroid antibodies.
  • Check the PDF Download for optimal ranges of each of these
• Iron
• • While the CBC includes a marker called hemoglobin but it is typically not enough to truly evaluate iron levels
  • Ask for Total Iron, TIBC, Iron Saturation and Ferritin (which is the storage of iron).
• Inflammation
• • Inflammation is what often leads to disease and very few doctors test for it in an annual physical.
  • Ask for a test that looks a marker called HsCRP (high sensitivity c reactive protein). Ideally, this number should be below 1 even though the labs range may allow or up to 5.