Slim Down Lifestyle

[Transcript] – A Deep Dive Into How To Interpret The Results Of Your Blood Testing – Ben Greenfield Reveals & Walks You Through His Laboratory Results From WellnessFX.

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Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/lifestyle-podcasts/deep-dive-blood/

[0:00:00] Disclaimer: I am not a Doctor

[0:02:00] Episode Sponsors

[0:05:00] A Solo-sode

[0:10:00] Where I’m At

[0:13:00] Why Talk About My Blood

[0:16:59] Diving Into My Results

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[0:19:36] Starting with the Basic Lipid Panel / Cardiovascular Profile

[0:27:10] The LDP Particles Section / My ApoB Elevations

[0:36:30] Ben Greenfield Coaching and More Episode Sponsors

[0:40:37] Inflammatory Markers

[0:43:00] Getting Into the Fatty Acids

[0:48:33] My Metabolic Health with Regards to Sugars

[0:51:18] The WellnessFX Panel

[0:53:00] HOMA-IR Score and What Let to Frequent Blood Labs

[0:54:48] Thyroid

[1:02:26] Metabolic Hormones

[1:05:06] My Elephants: Cortisol

[1:10:36] Hormonal Parameters

[1:16:57] The Liver and The Kidneys

[1:26:34] Electrolytes

[1:28:36] Bone Health

[1:29:45] The Blood

[1:35:19] Vitamins and Minerals

[1:40:50] Reaching the End of a Comprehensive Panel

[1:44:31] End of Podcast

Ben:   Hey, it’s Ben Greenfield. I need to give you a medical disclaimer because what you’re about to hear is a pretty deep dive into my own blood work and biomarkers, and I like to reveal these to you so that you can see and understand what happens when you test your blood and what’s going on with my data so that you can learn a little bit more about how to optimize your own blood and biomarkers. But I’m not a doctor. I don’t want you to misconstrue. This is medical advice. I’m not a physician. Well, I’m an exercise physiologist and I’ve got a degree in Human Nutrition, Biomechanics and Exercise Physiology, master’s degree in that.  I’ve got a degree in Nutrition. I have a personal training in Strength and Conditioning Coach Certification. I’ve spent a couple of decades taking deep dives into biology and biomarkers and took a lot of 400 level classes in university on microbiology and biochemistry and everything necessary to kind of interpret what you’re about to hear but I’m not a doctor. So, don’t take anything that you’re about to hear as medical advice because you may die, as they said once when I signed up for a Spartan race. That was what it actually said, “You may die,” and I signed anyways and I did it.

So, anyways, that is all I wanted to tell you before I also give you a couple of other things prior to jumping into today’s show. First of all, I was traveling. I was in California last week and I had alcohol. I didn’t have a lot of alcohol. I had a couple glasses of wine with dinner, but I wasn’t sure of the source of the wine. So, what I did was I ate my toothpaste. I ate my toothpaste. I’m not kidding. I travel with this toothpaste that is comprised of calcium bentonite among other things. It’s calcium bentonite. A little bit of essential oils like peppermint and cacao, some MCT oils, actually, which can do a pretty good job at cleaning your mouth because they’re derived from coconut and then a bit of Stevia for flavoring. I did not have my charcoal coconut capsules with me so I instead ate a dab of my toothpaste, and it works really well. I woke up feeling pretty good. I also dabbed this stuff on insect bites and it sucks the toxins out of insect bites. It’s incredibly versatile. Or you could just freaking brush your teeth with it. It is the MCT oil toothpaste made by my friends over at Onnit. They do a ton of really cool personal care products. They have wonderful supplements. They have functional foods. They have really cool fitness apparel. But the toothpaste, may I recommend, you purchase and travel with primarily to brush your teeth, but secondarily, if you need a desperate detoxification compound. You get a 10% off of anything on it. Just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/onnit. That’s BenGreenfieldFitness.com/O-N-N-I-T.

This podcast is also brought to you by one of the best ways to give the middle finger to aging. I spent two years designing an anti-aging skin serum. A lot of people don’t realize that I actually make beauty products, and this one has aloe vera, amla, Triphala, lavender, oregano, geranium, turmeric, patchouli. Not enough to make you smile like a hippie. Don’t worry. Lemon, which is very interesting. Lemon has some really interesting research behind it for both the hair and also for keeping the skin clear of blemishes.

I have thrown a few other oils in there that have been studied for their ability to be able to reduce wrinkles, to serve as antioxidants for the skin. And what I do is I put a dab of this stuff on my skin in the morning and in the evening, and I also apply it to my hair a few times a week. It is called Kion Serum. It is featured along with all the other supplements and products that I design and feature over at getkion.com. That’s getK-I-O-N.com. The one I just told you about is called the Serum, and it would be a wonderful addition to your shopping cart if you want to battle skin aging and get ahead of the clock. So, check it out, getkion.com, getK-I-O-N.com.

[Introduction]

Ben:  Welcome. This is awkward. This is a solo-sode. I think I just coined that term, a solo-sode. It’s been a very long time since I, and this is Ben Greenfield, by the way, have done an episode all by my lonesome. This is the way that I used to do the podcast every single frigging week. Starting 10 years ago when I was a young personal trainer operating out of a gym in Spokane, Washington, I would sit down at the end of the day and I would go through The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and The Journal of the American Medical Association and research from the institutes of sports nutrition and all of these different scientific articles and research resources and journals that I was going through, along with my own forays into exercise and nutrition and even some of my early fledgling biohacking tactics. I would talk about all this on a podcast, just me, all by my lonesome.

It was actually the first two that I did–the first two that I did were video. And then, I realized that I didn’t actually have to put on a shirt or do my hair or look nice for a video. So, I instead began to do audio podcasts. It was one of the only audio podcasts on iTunes at the time and I had to code my own RSS feed and it was just fraught with frustration and errors way back in the Wild Wild West days of podcasting. But, coming full circle, it was just me, all by myself. I eventually picked up a sidekick. I eventually began to interview others on the show rather than just having me talk incessantly into the microphone. And, obviously, if you are a regular podcast listener, as you know, come along ways.

However, today is a solo-sode for a couple of reasons. First of all, the topic of today’s podcasts is my lab results, blood testing, how to interpret your own blood testing, how to go through it intelligently and how to make educated supplementation and diet and fitness and lifestyle decisions based on what you see. And so since I tend to just go through my own labs on my own, by myself, I figured why not to just let you be the fly on the wall who listens in during the process with the hopes that this will help you with your own decisions when you, for example, get a big blood test and you want to maybe look beyond what your doctor or your health practitioner might be telling you and instead be able to intelligently interpret and make sense of some of your own results because I think you’ll learn some things in today’s show that maybe your doctor isn’t telling you when it comes to your blood testing, particularly.

The other reason that I wanted to record this as a solo-sode, and I promise not to use that word too much during today’s show, is because I wanted to feel out whether or not you’re okay with me occasionally doing this, occasionally having a show where it’s just me talking. Why? Well, I want to continue as I have been doing, again, for the better part of the past decade pushing out to you a good two podcast episodes per week that educate and inform you on all things; health fitness, nutrition, longevity, biohacking, et cetera.

Sometimes, it’s difficult from a scheduling and a scalability and sustainability standpoint to do that when you need to schedule another person or two other people and match up schedules and calendars. It’s very simple for me to really, at the drop of a hat, duck away and record a podcast like this in my office, which is where I’m at right now in Spokane, Washington or elsewhere, such as when I’m traveling and I’m in a hotel room and I’ve come across some interesting things that I want to share with you but don’t necessarily have a guest or someone to interview, or even a sidekick lined up per se, like my trusted Q&A podcast sidekick, Brock.

So if you’re okay with me doing a solo-sode every once in a while, it’s not boring for you to listen to one person talking–if it is boring for you, you probably haven’t made it this far into the show anyways, then, let me know in the comments section of this show so that I can kind of give myself permission, so to speak, to record a solo episode for you. I mean, a solo-sode for you, when I have something that I want to tell you that I think is important and contains enough voluminous information where it could actually fill an episode because frankly, we’re probably going to spend about the next hour or so at this podcast geeking out on my blood results.

So, the URL where you can go to comment, and also the URL where you can go to download the actual lab results that I’ll be going through, should you care to print them off or view them in real time, should you care to give them to a close friend at a cocktail party, or perhaps, my health insurance adjuster, God forbid, then, as you’ll learn during this episode, there are some things modern medicine considers to be risk factors that I don’t, and vice versa, then you can access all the shownotes over at the BenGreenfieldFitness.com/deepdiveblood. That’s BenGreenfieldFitness.com/deepdiveblood. And, when you go to that URL, leave a comment if you’re cool with me doing a solo-sode. And if it drives you absolutely crazy to sit there and listen to me talk all by myself, let me know that too. And also, of course, ask any questions that you have about blood testing and any of the things discussed in today’s show. So, again, that URL is BenGreenfieldFitness.com/deepdiveblood.

To paint a visual for you before we jump in, I am at my standup desk. I use this standup desk called a Rebel. It’s a crank desk rather than being a motorized desk because I like to keep anything electronic as much as possible out of my office just so there’s less electrical pollution floating around. So, I’m standing at my glass Rebel desk and I am leaning right now against a stool. I’m not walking on my manual treadmill. I’m instead leaning against a stool, this little two-pound stool that allows you to kind of be in a standing position but rests your tired ass a little bit. It’s called the Mogo Upright Stool or the Mogo Stool made by Focal Upright.  Aside from that, I just had a standing desk with a stool. I haven’t turned on any of my crazy little biohacks because I don’t want to be distracted while I’m recording this episode for you. But I like this one-two combo when I’m just kind of chatting at my desk for a long period of time. This little upright stool combined with the Rebel desk. So, there you have it if you want to upgrade your office in the same fashion as I have.

Okay. So, about three weeks ago, I drove to my local Safeway grocery store and I ducked into the quest laboratories that are located there at the grocery store and I had them draw my blood; 19 tubes of blood, which seems like a lot but it really comes out to about a sixth of the pint of blood that you would give, if you were to say donate blood. It’s really not that much blood because these tubes are incredibly thin. The reason though that it was 19 tubes–and to put that into perspective for you, a typical blood evaluation, a basic blood evaluation that your doctor might do, you might have two to five tubes of blood.  The reason for that is because what I was running on myself and what I’ll be talking about today was a pretty comprehensive panel that I actually advised and worked with WellnessFX to design with the question that I asked in designing this blood testing panel being, what if you wanted to get the same type of blood test that says, would normally cost you tens of thousand dollars as part of a longevity package at a fancy longevity institute like Princeton or Duke or the human longevity project or something like that or even just like an executive CEO health panel and screening?

What if you wanted to take a look at a whole bunch of different blood variables that the average test that your doctor ran, such as a complete blood count or what’s called a comprehensive metabolic panel is not looking at? And what if you want to be able to advise yourself on what you see on your results with a little bit more precision? Meaning, rather than just looking at–let’s use a very simple example, TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone marker, to see if your thyroid is functioning properly. Actually, looking at some of the upstream and downstream metabolites of that; things like T3, total and free, T4, total and free, reverse T3, thyroxin. I realize a lot of these terms I’m throwing out could be foreign concepts to you. Don’t worry. I will explain during today’s show.

So, what if you could do all that but just do it all in one fell swoop? And so, I designed this package with WellnessFX. I designed one for men and then a separate one for women because there are some things, as you would probably guess specifically in the hormone department, that are different on a women’s test versus a men’s test. So, ultimately, what WellnessFX designed for me was a longevity blood testing panel for men and a longevity blood testing panel for women. I personally do this panel on a quarterly basis. I do not recommend necessarily, just from a pure pocketbook and budgeting standpoint, that you go out unless you just like to do this and have deep pockets. You go and do this on a quarterly basis. But even just once a year, or even really, I mean if you just wanted to at least once in a lifetime take a look at what’s going on with your blood, this is something that I think is prudent to do.

Most of my clients I have complete this blood test along with some type of a gut test, some type of a DNA evaluation, and some type of a 24-hour urine evaluation of hormones when they come to me for coaching or consulting. And typically, I repeat a blood test like this once a year on my clients, repeat a gut test at least once a year, or if any symptoms arise, repeat a hormonal evaluation about once a year. The DNA test is about once in a lifetime. And then, any other tests that I use on myself or that I use on clients or folks who I work with to quantify blood, biomarkers or other variables. It’s on a case by case basis, right? Let’s say that you do everything that has been advised to you on a basic blood panel, gut test, DNA test and hormone panel and you’re still having energy issues or sleep issues or you want to optimize even more just from a, let’s say, a longevity standpoint, then you would do, for example, a micronutrient analysis, like what will be called a Metametrix ION panel. I recently wrote a pretty big article at BenGreenfieldFitness.com that outlines what I just explained to you in much more nitty-gritty detail. And I will be sure to link to that in the shownotes over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/deepdiveblood if you want to go and read that article. It’s kind of long but that’s how I tend to write, so, my apologies in advance. I just know my readers are smart cookies and you can handle it.

Okay. So admittedly, that was a very long intro and I think we should just dive straight into the good stuff. So, like I mentioned, the entire PDF printout of my lab results from WellnessFX to accompany this episode are something that you can grab at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/deepdiveblood. But, I will do my best to explain to you should you be out cycling or hiking or cleaning the garage or at the zoo or whatever else it is that you do when you listen to a podcast.

So, what you’ll see at the very top of a blood panel like this is cardiovascular health. All the parameters that influence cardiovascular health, which would essentially just be your heart, your blood vessels, everything responsible for transporting oxygen, nutrients, hormones and waste products through your body. So, of course, one of the first things that you see associated with cardiovascular health is a basic lipid panel. And you can see there on my lipid panel that there are colors associated that are considered to be risk factors. Red would be–pay attention to this, this is a big deal and this would be the equivalent of like the H or the L that you would see on a typical blood panel from your physician, which would mean respectively high or low. WellnessFX has just color coded their results on this panel.

What I tell people is if your panel is lit up like a Christmas tree with reds, fret not. And you’re going to learn why in this episode. Orange is kind of like a “Pay attention,” this could be a risk factor in the future or is something you should mitigate before it becomes an issue.” And then green is “Hey, you’re just fine.” And, same thing, if you look at your results and they’re all green or you get your blood results from your doctor and there’s no Hs and no Ls and nothing scribbled on there and nothing in bold font, that does not mean everything is good. Remember, we are going after not just the absence of disease but we are going after longevity. And there, I say going from good to great, not from bad to good.

When many of us are looking at these types of panels, I really don’t feel this podcast is necessarily for a predominantly sick and diseased audience but more for healthy people who want to become even healthier. That’s not to say everybody including myself doesn’t have some kind of a health issue they want to take care of, but, it really comes down to the fact that you want to pay attention to optimizing variables and not just fixing stuff that’s really [censored] up, so to speak.

So, let’s start off with the basic lipid panel. You can see the red value there at the top, total cholesterol. My total cholesterol flags as red. It’s at 267. And the low-risk category would be anything below 200. So, my cholesterol is concerningly high. If a health insurance adjuster were to see this cholesterol, they would charge me more for a health insurance premium based on that cholesterol. However, when you actually look at what that cholesterol was made up of, you need to pay close attention because high cholesterol in and of itself is not a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, and study after study has shown us this.

What is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease is when that cholesterol becomes oxidized, such as can be the case when your inflammation markers are high, or your blood glucose is dysregulated, or even when you have a very high amount of triglycerides or what would be deemed an unfavorable triglyceride to HDL ratio? So, I don’t just look at cholesterol. I look at all the other components that accompany that cholesterol to see whether or not high cholesterol is actually putting me or someone I’m working with at risk for some type of cardiovascular disease or incident in the future.

Now, in this case, you will note that below that total cholesterol number is my LDL. My LDL was at 102, considering that a low risk for LDL is considered by modern medicine to be 100 or below. My LDL was actually not that high. Now, granted, and I’ll get to this in a moment, I’m a bigger fan of looking at proteins associated with LDL, and the LDL particle size rather than the LDL itself. But you’ll note that really, the reason my cholesterol was so high is because my HDL levels are through the freaking roof. They’re at 151.

Now, HDL cholesterol was a scavenger of excess cholesterol. It brings extra cholesterol from arteries and from your body back to your liver to be metabolized. It’s transporting cholesterols. This means that in most cases, a relatively high level of HDL is assisting with cholesterol clearance. And research has shown that an HDL cholesterol greater than 60 will be called milligrams per deciliter, mg per dl, can indeed help to protect against heart disease. Although, I should throw in there the caveat that there is some pretty compelling research that has emerged over the past two years showing that more HDL is not necessarily better.

And the reason for this increased risk of mortality and cardiovascular disease associated with very high HDL levels is because a high level of HDL could mean that your body is having to carry a lot of metabolites back to the liver due to a state of constant inflammation. And so, this leads to one of the rabbit holes that inevitably arise when you’re looking over your labs. And that would be, “Well, my HDL was through the roof. What the heck is going on with my inflammation? Do I need to be concerned from an inflammatory standpoint?” If you scroll down just a little bit, you’ll see on the panel that I ran that I did indeed test all my inflammatory markers, which would be hs-CRP, homocysteine and fibrinogen. I will get to those in a moment, but the long story short is they’re all rock bottom. I have very low levels of inflammation.

So, the next question with the high HDL becomes, are you a lean mass hyper-responder? And this is very fascinating. This is based off of David Feldman’s protocol and writings. David Feldman has a website called the Cholesterol Code. I will link to it in the shownotes. And he has found, after pouring over data from thousands of folks, specifically their cholesterol data, that there is a certain subset of the population, particularly, lean or athletic folks who eat a low carb diet, who tend to have three things in common. They have low adipose stores, they have low glycogen stores because they’re eating a lower carbohydrate diet, and they have high energy demands because they are exercising or moving with frequency intensity or both or volume, frequency intensity and volume or all three. So, what happens is your body seeks to keep your glycogen stores in your liver and your muscles reasonably well stocked, even if you’re on a low carbohydrate diet. The body gets very good at sparing fuel in order to keep glycogen fuel tanks elevated. So, if you think about this, you have a low adipose fuel tank. You have a low glycogen or storage carbohydrate fuel tank and you have high energy demands, it would make perfect sense the body will desire to mobilize more fat-based energy to meet those needs. That will ultimately mean that you’re going to have a few things happen.

First of all, you’re going to have a higher amount of VLDLP. That would be your LDL particle count. It’s going to be higher because your body has to move more triglycerides to the cells. And so, a lean mass hyper-responder could have a higher particle count, specifically a higher LDL-P particle count. So, when I see high HDL and inflammation is low, I’m not necessarily concerned. When I see high HDL and LDL particle count is elevated, I’m often also not concerned if that person is a lean low carb, heavily exercising or moderately exercising athlete.

Now, this explains why both LDL-P and total LDL are higher in lean folks with low glycogen stores who exercise a lot. It also explains why triglyceride levels would be so enormously low because the triglycerides are getting depleted. They’re getting depleted from use. And there are more of these–you could think of them as boats that carry these triglycerides around throughout the ocean that is your bloodstream, these LDL particles. They actually are going to be higher while triglycerides are lower.

So, ultimately, what you see in a lean mass hyper-responder is high LDL, often a high HDL, and then very low triglycerides. And I fall into that category quite nicely. What this all means is that when you’re looking at the basic lipid panel, you don’t necessarily need to be concerned if total cholesterol or LDL cholesterol is high. You also don’t necessarily need to be concerned if the LDL particle count is up if you fall into the category of being a lean mass hyper-responder.

Now, are there certain issues that you do need to pay attention to if cholesterol is high? Sure. If cholesterol is high and inflammation is high, that’s bad news bears. Same goes for if cholesterol was high and blood glucose is high. The same would go for if cholesterol was high–and I’m talking very high in this case, like a case of familial hypercholesterolemia, in which case, a lot of that elevated cholesterol can indeed become inflammatory and that would indicate typically total cholesterol that’s well in excess of 400. You’ll see a very high cholesterol in that case. And so, there are certain subsets of the population for whom high cholesterol would be concerning. But high cholesterol always needs to be considered in the presence of some other factors.

Now, below that basic lipid panel, you will also see the LDL particles. Now, one of the first things that you see, there’s apoB. Now, apoB is the protein in LDL cholesterol that helps these particles bind to or coagulate blood vessels. And because apoB can increase this clogging potential, it is likely a better measure of cardiovascular risk than say LDL cholesterol is. High levels of apoB have been shown in research to potentially increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. And apoB would ideally, according to most research, be lower than 80. You’ll see that my apoB is about 85.

Now, like I mentioned, my body is going to need a higher number of particles to carry triglycerides to cells. But, when the apoB is elevated, sometimes that can be concerning and it’s certainly something that I pay attention to because apoB is a protein involved in the metabolism of lipids, particularly LDL. Now, here’s the deal though. My LDL is elevated for the reasons I described earlier, me being a lean mass hyper-responder. And a mildly elevated apoB and a lean mass hyper-responder is once again not a huge cause for concern to me.

Now, would there be ways that one could naturally lower apoB if it were high? Yes. There are certain supplements and lifestyle parameters that have been shown to safely lower apoB. For example, exercise training is one of the biggest factors that–just frequent physical activity. And especially, in what I found to be the most significant study when it came to apoB, folks are doing endurance exercise three times a week and they had also increased their fish intake. And it’s true that fish and/or fish oil can do a good job at lowering apoB.

There are some other things too that can lower apoB that are quite interesting. One is called pantethine. Pantethine is just a derivative of vitamin B5. Consuming just for general mitochondrial health, a full vitamin B complex is a very good idea. I like, for example, the Thorne brand multivitamin due to its pretty high levels of vitamin B from a high-quality standpoint. That’s a perfect example of–well, that’s the multi that I use when I travel. I don’t use it when I’m at home because I had a very nutrient-dense diet when I’m at home. I just don’t consume a multivitamin when I’m at home. But when I travel, I use this Thorne multivitamin. And, one of the reasons for that is it has this really good B complex in it.

But there are a couple other things that could be helpful as well for apoB in addition to endurance exercise, in moderation of course, and pantethine. And one, in particular, that’s quite interesting is the chlorogenic acid that you find in artichoke leaf extract. Consumption of artichokes or consumption of some type of supplement that contains artichoke extract appears to have a beneficial effect on apoB. So, that’s another one that you should pay attention to. That would be some type of artichoke leaf extract for lowering apoB. That seemed to have a pretty good effect as well in addition to that vitamin B complex.

And the last one that I would look into that’s just fantastic in general for mitochondrial health and also for cardiovascular health, particularly on people who are on statins but in the general population as a whole, I’m a fan of this, and that would be Coenzyme Q10. Currently, myself and my children all take Coenzyme Q10. We get it from a supplement called Almsbio, which is the glutathione that we use. And I will certainly, anytime I mention something like the Thorne multivitamin or the Almsbio Glutathione with the Co-Q10, I’ll link to these things in the shownotes over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/deepdiveblood. So, that’s the deal with the apoB on the lipid panel.

A couple of other things that you’ll see on there, LDL size. So, LDL particles tend to vary in size and density. So, the smaller LDL particles have been shown to cause a higher risk of heart disease. And that’s because those smaller size particles can more easily penetrate blood vessels and leave deposits that could contribute to atherosclerosis, which would lead to heart attack or stroke. And the peak size of your LDL particles, in most cases, should be larger. They should be of, as you’ll hear many physicians or health practitioners refer to them too, they should be the large, fluffy variety of LDL.

You can see that WellnessFX gives me a running tally of all of my lab results over the past several years. I’ve been running tests like this for the past six years and you’ll see many of the results for the past two years, particularly on the screen that you’re looking at. I switched accounts about halfway through testing and never actually updated and transferred over all my old data into my new account, but you can see at least the past two years’ worth of data. And you can see that my LDL particles have been getting larger and larger, oddly enough and I’ll allude to this later on. Trust me.

Since I began to live a more natural lifestyle, pay attention to air, light, water and electricity, do less chronic cardio, engage in less inflammatory activities and just live more naturally as a whole; my peak LDL size has simply been climbing since that point. It started off at 210. Now it’s at 213. It’s at 220. I’d like to get it above at least 222 and a half, which is considered to be getting up into the very large and fluffy variety. And it appears that my body is responding quite well to what I’ve been doing to increase the size of my LDL particles. So, that’s great.

Another couple of things that you’ll see on here are the number of the LDL particles. Not only is the size important but the number is important because the more LDL particles that you have, the more there are to potentially contribute to plaques on blood vessels that cause cardiovascular disease. It’s quite interesting that even though my LDL is very high, and it’s likely due to my high levels of physical activity, my attention to things like fasting and some amount of carbohydrate restriction, my LDL particle count is pretty low and it’s in a very low-risk category. So, LDL is high, right? And all the health care practitioners and the health insurance adjusters and everybody freaks out, but LDL particle count is low, HDL is high, triglycerides are low, inflammation is low, blood glucose is low. And so, when you begin to look at cholesterol in light of all these other parameters, you’re far more well-informed about what is going on.

One of the last things I wanted to mention when it comes to cardiovascular health is the small low-density lipoprotein. And again, LDL particles come in a variety of sizes and densities. You want these smaller denser particles to preferably be minimized. And you’ll note that my small LDL is also pretty low in addition to my total LDL count and my peak LDL size. So ultimately, I’m pretty dang happy from a cardiovascular risk disease standpoint about the only thing that I would like to see is continued increases in the size of my LDL particles. And aside from that, I simply kind of keep my eye on inflammation.

A couple of other things you’ll see on this panel that are interesting that I didn’t refer to yet. One would be the apoA-1. It’s similar to apoB being the protein that’s associated with LDL particles. apoA-1 helps HDL particles bind to blood vessels and carry material away from your arteries. And so apoA-1 helps HDL clear blood vessels. So, you wouldn’t want low levels of apoA-1, you would want high levels of apoA-1. And as you would expect, due to my through the roof HDL levels, my apoA-1 lipoprotein particles are very high. In addition, the actual size of those particles, because very similar to LDL particles, large HDL particles are known to be more protective than small HDL particles. The size of my HDL particles is also very high as well. So, I am quite happy with my cardiovascular risk disease results.

Now, I did mention inflammation, and it does appear underneath my cardiovascular health values here on the WellnessFX panel. hsCRP is a general inflammatory marker. I did exercise pretty hard the day prior to this test and I actually expected it to be more elevated than it actually is. It’s at 0.5. Technically, all things being perfect, I like it to be below or at 0.2. But even 0.5 is considered very low risk for hsCRP. This high-sensitivity C-reactive protein or hsCRP measures inflammation, the body’s response to internal damage. And again, if you’ve exercised prior to your test, and this is something important to know, a doc might tell you, “Hey, your hsCRP is high. We need to look at whether or not you’re about to have a heart attack or you’ve got too much inflammation going on.” But it tends to be mildly elevated if you had exercised in the 24 to 48 hours leading up to that test, especially eccentric exercise like a run or weight training versus say swimming or riding a bike and that’s just a little tip for you. I didn’t take my own advice, obviously, but if you’re going to exercise the day prior to a blood panel, try and choose something lower intensity; yoga, sauna, biking, swimming, et cetera, or just that lovely full body elliptical trainer at the gym. I like to work out on that one and drink my Jamba Juice then go stand in a vibration platform for a little while. That’s my idea of a perfect workout.

But we digress. Hey, by the way, I wanted to mention as you’re listening in to all of this blood work and biomarker data and you just want somebody to interpret your own genetic data or blood work or saliva, stool, urine, anything like that, again I am not a doctor but I do go through this stuff for people and go through your results with you on the phone. Sometimes I’ll do pre-recorded screenshots for you if you don’t want to wait to schedule with me and you just want me to go over any PDFs or labs that you send me. Very simple. You just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/coaching. That’s BenGreenfieldFitness.com/coaching. It usually takes me about an hour to go over someone’s results with them. So, get an hour long consult over there. I’m happy to help you out.

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The other thing that I wanted to mention to you is icing your balls. Yes, icing your balls. You can get cold packs for your nutsocks now. Here’s why you may be interested in that. Your body is adapted to deal with the cold, but modern comforts like heated buildings and layers of clothing and underwear that keep your balls from getting as cold as they actually need to get to produce adequate testosterone. So, what they found is that when you chill your balls, you can actually amp up your testosterone production. This is a very simple way to do it. They’ve actually designed a special nontoxic FDA registered gel pack, handmade in North America. It’s important to put anything on your balls or to avoid putting anything on your balls that’s not handmade. These are handmade and it’s called the Jet Pack. You can ice your balls with this thing. I have one up in my freezer. I have used it. It’s a little bit invigorating too. It’s kind of like a cup of coffee for your crotch.

Anyways, I guess I would warn you. Don’t do it right before sex because we all know what happens. There’s shrinkage in blood flow. But you do it in the morning before like a hot date night or before you plan on having sex and it amps up your performance in the bedroom, as well as increasing your testosterone. Cool little biohack. So, if you want to use this little cold secret weapon, go to primalcold.com, just like it sounds; primalcold.com. Enter code Ben and check out. That will get you a 15% off. So primalcold.com; code, Ben.

So, homocysteine is another inflammatory marker that was tested. Unlike CRP, homocysteine is more associated with inflammatory changes to cells or to blood vessels. And so, a high homocysteine can be present even if CRP, a marker more of general inflammatory damage or muscle damage, is low. Homocysteine, in my case, is low. That marker of vascular inflammation is low and CRP is also low. I would want homocysteine to be at least below 11, and it actually is, and that’s a picomole per liter, I believe is the value for homocysteine even though, honestly, its units are not that important. To me, at least, I just like to look at the numbers because units just make you sound smart. Maybe it’s a form of mental masturbation to feel as though you know every single unit out there. But I don’t pay attention to units as much because like Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s books, I like to keep my head clear of any data that’s going to clutter it up that might not be beneficial. I’m more interested again in numbers and values than I am in actual units, in most cases, unless someone asks me how far away my hometown is from the, say, airport, in which case, 20 miles would be a better way to say things than say 20 inches or 20 milliliters or just 20. Okay, another pretty intense digression there.

The last inflammatory marker is fibrinogen. Fibrinogen is a protein that’s important in clot formation. An elevated fibrinogen has been associated with inflammation. Elevated levels are risk factor for cardiovascular disease. My fibrinogen is very low, despite the fact that I worked out the day prior. Well, shameless plug, I consume a pretty large amount of what are called proteolytic enzymes to keep inflammation at bay. And I consume those along with things like turmeric and glucosamine/chondroitin and cetyl myristoleate, and a whole host of different nutrients that have been shown to really control inflammation levels extremely significantly. My company actually produces a supplement for this, like a shotgun supplement for inflammation called Kion Flex. I take eight of those per day. I take 12 if I’m injured. And it’s obviously doing something to keep my inflammation low. Obviously, my lifestyle is helping out with that as well. But fibrinogen, which I would have expected to be elevated the day after I worked out is pretty rock bottom. And so, I’m happy with my inflammatory markers as well.

After the cardiovascular health section of the blood panel, you’ll then see that we get into fatty acids, which are the oily substances that primarily help to build cell membranes, but an excess can increase deposition of fatty acids in blood vessels, particularly, certain forms of fatty acids.

The first number there you see is just the amount of free fatty acids. Free fatty acids or fatty acids that get released in the bloodstream and fat tissue breaks down. But they don’t circulate independently, which is ironic because they’re called free fatty acids. They tend to be bound to a protein called albumin. A high amount of free fatty acids has been associated with diabetes and heart disease. My free fatty acids are rock bottom, but it’s certainly something to pay attention to as part of that cardiovascular index, in my opinion. I didn’t mention it earlier, but again, if cholesterol is high and free fatty acids are very high, I get concerned. You would tend to see that in someone who is simply overeating, for example, or under-moving.

The next thing you see is the omega index. The omega-3 index is an indicator of the amount of two different fatty acids in your red blood cells, EPA and DHA. So, a lower index means you have a less EPA and DHA in your red blood cells compared to other fatty acids. And lower omega-3 index values based on studies can be linked to a higher risk of sudden cardiac death. My omega index is through the roof. I’m very happy about my omega index. It means that I have a large amount of DHA and EPA. And, underneath that value, you can actually see the amount of EPA and DHA that I have, and the ratio between those.

So, EPA, that first one, that’s an essential omega-3 fatty acid. And high EPA is associated with decreased risk for cardiovascular disease. This is one reason why fish and fish oil are something that can be protective from a cardiovascular standpoint. The same goes for DHA. That’s an essential omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid. And high levels of DHA in research had been shown to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and other chronic diseases. Both my DHA and my EPA are high. As a matter of fact, my EPA is so high that it flags as high risk. I’m not concerned that I have high levels of omega-3 fatty acids. I need those for my joints. I need those for my cell membranes. I would expect for my fatty acids to be high based on what my cholesterol count is and just based on the fact overall that I eat a relatively high intake of Mediterranean style fats. I go through bottles of extra virgin olive oil, like most rednecks around my section of the woods go through beer.

But, anyways, the EPA and the DHA is high, and that’s a good thing. The arachidonic acid below that is a measurement of the omega-6 fatty acids, which are also essential fatty acids. I mean, your body needs them but it can’t make them. Anytime you see that word essential turnaround, that’s what that means. So, omega-6 fatty acids come from the diet. And when eating in moderation, they can actually control LDL particle count and you need a certain amount for, example, the cardiolipin in mitochondrial membranes. There are a lot of really good functions of omega-6 fatty acids. There was actually a really good new book out; mild segue here, mild rabbit hole. I don’t know why I get those two phrases mixed.  Ann Louise Gittleman just wrote a book called, “Radical Metabolism.” I’m going to have her on the show, but I’ll link to the book over on the shownotes for today’s show in which she outlines how we may be doing ourselves a disservice by throwing omega-6 fatty acids like arachidonic acid under the bus too much, getting to the point where a lot of these oils, which are also called parent essential oils are too low in the body. Meaning that you do need a certain amount of seeds and nuts and some of these seed and nut-based oils and some of these non-omega-3 fatty acids, omega-6 fatty acids, which sometimes we are told to completely avoid in order to have normal cellular metabolism.

So, my arachidonic acid levels are just fine. You can see if you’re looking at the panel, I’m in a very low risk category. I have enough of them to go around but I’m definitely not into the high-risk category or anywhere near it when it comes to my arachidonic acid levels. If anything, one could argue that I could probably step up my seed and nut consumption because there’s a little bit borderline low, my omega-6, my essential omega-6 six fatty acid levels leading me to have an extremely low omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio.

One of the things that I would like to do in addition to getting larger, fluffy LDL particles is I want to get a better omega-6 through omega-3 fatty acid ratio, not by lowering my omega-3s because I’m very happy with my omega-3 values, but by possibly increasing my omega-6s. For example, one of the very simple ways to do that that Dr. Gittleman talks about in her book is the consumption of borage oil, flax oil or flaxseeds, and hemp seeds or hemp oil. I actually have all three of those in the pantry upstairs and I’ve been beginning to sprinkle more hemp seeds, in particular, on my salads. So, I’m getting a little bit more of this omega-6, these healthy omega-6 fatty acids.

Okay. Then we get down, after the omega fatty acids and after the cardiovascular health parameters, to metabolic health. And this refers to anything that’s involved with chemically processing sugar and fat for use throughout the body as energy. You’ll see there that we begin with risk factors for diabetes and insulin resistance. The first being insulin, which is the blood sugar hormone that pushes blood sugar or glucose from your blood into your cells. We know that the most common form of diabetes, Type 2 diabetes, as to the insulin resistance, which forces the body to make higher insulin levels, then insulin levels decline as insulin-producing cells begin to burn out. These changes are seen as the development of diabetes. And high insulin levels can be a warning sign for the eventual development of diabetes.

In most cases, you want your insulin levels relatively low. You could argue that if they’re too low, you could be suppressing anabolism. So, if you’re, say a football player trying to put on 30 pounds or you’re a bodybuilder, you may want your insulin to be a little bit more elevated than mine is. My insulin is rock bottom. It has for the past several years, as you can see, Ben at two and a half or lower. I’m quite happy with the levels of insulin, but I’m more interested in what’s called the HOMA-IR score, which I’ll get to in a moment.

But before I do, the other factors you’ll see there are hemoglobin A1c, which is often abbreviated HbA1c. That measures the average blood sugar level over the last few months, and it examines the part of your red blood cells where excess sugar can attach. And, a higher average blood sugar of course indicates, in many cases, that you’re forcing your body to make more insulin, which increases your risk factor for insulin resistance and diabetes. It’s very interesting because sometimes people will do a test and their blood glucose will be high. Maybe they’ve had a cup of coffee, which would mobilize liver glycogen stores and cause blood glucose to be elevated before they went into their blood lab. Maybe they got stuck in traffic so their cortisol went up.  So, again, they engage in some glycogenolysis before that test and their blood glucose is high, but their hemoglobin A1c is low. Well, in that case, I’m not too worried because for the past three months, their blood glucose has been pretty low, and the only issue is that glucose as a one-time snapshot measurement happens to be high. Same reason that even though I like to do blood test for hormones, a urinary evaluation of what’s happening in the hormones all day long can be a little bit more eye-opening than a single snapshot.

Now, anytime that you’re on a WellnessFX panel, this is something that you’re not able to see if you’re listening, and something that you can’t even see from the PDF because if you click on any of these values, what WellnessFX does is they give you a whole bunch of suggestions on how to lower that or raise it. They also have videos that show you how to learn more about that particular value. And they even have genes that are related to that particular value. Meaning, for example, there’s a gene related to blood glucose that it tells me about that I could go test if I wanted to take a deeper dive, so to speak. And then, there are also a bunch of lab notes on there that if I were working with my own practitioner on my WellnessFX results would be left by that practitioner’s notes for me. So, it’s pretty dang robust, this whole ability to be able to use an online dashboard like this to look at your labs. And if you were to go through all your labs and just click at all the videos and watch all the videos and read all the materials, you would be a freaking blood working ninja by the time you get through your own results.

So, anyways, as you will be after listening to this podcast as well, you’ll see that blood glucose. Mine was slightly higher than it tends to be. I’m wearing a continuous blood glucose monitor now, and my blood glucose tends to be between about 70 and 85. You’ll see on the morning of this test, it was at about 90, which isn’t concerningly high. I like to, in an ideal scenario, see it below 90. It’s at 90. My hemoglobin A1c at 5.2 is pretty low. Hemoglobin A1c would ideally be below at least 5.7. I’m not that concerned about my blood glucose values. I see them throughout the day. I know that they’re low. That morning, they were mildly elevated but not anywhere near what I would consider to be a risk factor or even an issue.

Now, this HOMA-IR score, this is very interesting. HOMA stands for homeostatic model assessment. That’s a mathematical model that’s used to quantify your levels of insulin resistance, which we’d call IR, hence, the term HOMA-IR. And this calculation takes both your glucose and your insulin levels into account. So, what it looks at is essentially almost like a ratio of the glucose to the insulin. It’s a mathematical equation that–I forget what the actual calculation is. It’s like a ratio that you multiply by a certain number. It’s something like your insulin multiplied by your blood glucose. And then, there are calculators online that can help you out a little bit with this.

But essentially, your HOMA-IR score is a version of your insulin multiplied by your blood glucose, and it gives you a pretty good value of the ratio between insulin and glucose. You would ideally like for that ratio to be very low, below two. Mine is at 0.6. So, I’m quite happy when it comes to my diabetic and insulin resistance risk, especially when you consider that I carry the gene that puts me at a much higher risk for type 2 diabetes. So, what I’m doing is working, chewing my meals thoroughly and limiting the amount of carbohydrate and starch consumption and taking bitters and digestifs before meals and frequently moving, just everything, intermittent fasting. Everything I’m doing is working.

One of the first things that led me to begin testing my blood and biomarkers was back when I was an Ironman Triathlete and I was healthy on the outside and I was an aerobic monster but my blood sugar levels were through the roof, my inflammation levels were through the roof, my insulin was through the roof. I was literally dying on the inside. And that’s honestly when I really started to take a deeper dive into health and longevity and biohacking. That would have been about eight years ago or so that I really began to pay attention to a lot of these variables more closely and learn about them more.

Okay. So next, we get to thyroid. For thyroid, you will see that, as I mentioned in the beginning of this show, there are a lot of things measured. On a typical blood panel, you would just see TSH. Now, on my panel, you’ll see TSH; total T3, free T3, T-uptake, total T4, free T4, thyroid peroxidase, free thyroxine index, reverse T3, and antibodies to thyroid protein. Well, the first thing you’ll see is that my antibodies to thyroid protein are pretty low. I don’t seem to have any type of autoimmune disease. My antibodies are very low. Thyroid antibodies a]]>

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