Fasted insulin all day, which is weird because it’s an easy and cheap test to do but your blood panel rarely measures it. I keep hearing triglyceride:HDL but I haven’t really seen the justification for this. Triglycerides are typically pockets of fat created by insulin when blood sugar is above homeostasis. So to me the triglyceride level by itself would be a red flag but I could be off. If anyone has an explanation for why HDL matters in relation to triglycerides, I’d be interested in learning. Also, your reticulocyte count in relation to your HBA1C. Reticulocytes are very young red blood cells. So if you’re low carb you MAY experience a rise in HBA1C, which your doctor or clinician will ignorantly express concern over, but if they can’t compare it to a marker that rates the age of your RBCs, it’s kinda meaningless. So if your HBA1C is elevated but your reticulocytes are low, that mean your marrow isn’t pumping out a lot of new RBCs and your HBA1C is probably elevated because your RBCs are living longer and thus accumulating more glycation during their lifespan. The whole blood panel in totality and context needs to be looked at in addition to HOW YOU FEEL, because if you’re feeling amazing and firing on all cylinders the last thing you need is to have your anxiety raised by a doctor concerned about your T3 or whatever. They don’t know what they’re talking about usually.

@Lindsey Morales thanks! I started as an EMR and found it very interesting, so I moved up to EMT basic, and now I’m almost certain I want to become a medic. It really opens up my options for me if I want to move, which I need to (Mississippi is awful lol). Plus if civilization ever collapses it’s a pretty useful skill set to have. 😎

I’m coming to the conclusion that the scientific method is either not taught at all anymore or has been relegated to an archaic and outdated relic of the past. I can only explain to them that nutritional studies are associative and observational and thus can never approach scientific veracity, and I have yet to ever encounter someone who agreed that proper epistemological interventions have never been conducted on humans for many reasons, not the least being it would be egregiously immoral. There is a very low level of control in these studies, even the gold standard studies. The level of control needs to be basically total for you to come to a scientific conclusion, and even then, in the spirit of the method, this should only encourage the scientist to expand and improve his inquiries. But these clowns want to claim causality is being established. So explain it to them once and then when they laugh at you, move on.

They’re a very inaccurate way of measuring the amount of food you eat but it’s really only necessary if you’re consuming carbs. Hormones dictate hunger and typically if you’re carnivore you can just listen to your hunger signals not worrying about being specific about how much you eat. Eating carbs you’re going to be hungry constantly so you need to track how much you’re eating because it’ll be easy to overeat. It obviously has some utility because bodybuilders use it and have it down to a science. But they are living a highly contraindicated lifestyle and are typically metabolically diseased.

There’s a quote from Edwin H Friedman that I think applies here and I need to be reminded of this for myself CONSTANTLY: “The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choicest words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.“ So in other words, don’t get in their face about it. If they come to you asking for help or advice, humbly offer it to them. And make sure you know your stuff. Because there’ are legions of “authoritative” imbeciles out there who, despite their ignorance and stupidity have accreditation and unfortunately most people are indoctrinated to think this is necessary to have an opinion. So if you’re going to tell them that their cardiologist or whoever is a quack, you’d better be able to back it up.