If you aren’t regularly paying the best attention to your
health, issues are likely to creep up on you before you know it. Everything
from your diet, exercise routine (or lack thereof), water intake, sleep habits
and stress levels will either positively or negatively affect your state of
well-being. The best way to safeguard your long-term health is to catch
troublesome issues early, so monitoring certain lab values regularly can tell
you whether you are going in the right or wrong direction.
BLOOD SUGAR
Produced primarily from the carbohydrates you eat, blood sugar (a.k.a. glucose) is the primary source of your body's fuel. To use this fuel for energy, your body needs the hormone insulin to take sugar from the bloodstream and produce energy inside the cells. With pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes (the most common form), the cells have decreased their sensitivity to insulin and less gets inside the cells. Glucose then builds up, leading to problems with the heart, kidneys, eyes, nerves, brain, muscles and blood vessels. Early warning signs are you might feel thirstier and hungrier than usual, become tired and cranky, or have to make more trips to the bathroom. In fact, 7 million Americans have diabetes but don't know it.
YOUR TARGET: Hemoglobin A1c below 5.7 (ideally around 5.1), Glucose in the 85-100 mg/dL range.
CHOLESTEROL
Cholesterol is a waxy, fatty substance that is necessary to produce most of your hormones, build healthy cell membranes and protect nerve cells in your brain. But whatever the body doesn't use to perform those vital jobs can cause harm. The "bad" form (LDL) cattaches to the arteries when oxidized or the vessels are damaged due to inflammation, sabotaging blood flow to your heart and triggering more inflammation. The "good" form (HDL) removes excess cholesterol and protects the vessels. Proper lifestyle modification will help keep the numbers in good balance.
YOUR TARGET: Total cholesterol 150-200 mg/dL; LDL below 100 mg/dL; HDL above 60 mg/dL
IRON
Iron is the key ingredient to the production of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen from the lungs to every cell in your body. If hemoglobin is low, you may experience symptoms such as increased fatigue, lack of energy, muscle soreness, achy joints, and sliding performance. Other values like your serum ferritin, which indicates your storage capacity for the iron you absorb, may also be low. Insufficient iron may indicate poor intake, poor absorption or be a result of increased loss, so it is always important to know the cause as supplementation alone may not fix the problem. If iron stores aren't returned to a healthy state, heart problems may arise.
YOUR TARGET: Ideally between 85-135 ug/dL
THYROID-STIMULATING HORMONE
An underactive or overactive thyroid can make major changes to your quality of life. That's because the thyroid hormone regulates how much energy reaches all cells: Too little TSH (hypothyroidism) can leave you feeling weak, foggy, cold and gaining weight while high levels of thyroid hormones (hyperthyroidism) speed up your heartbeat, cause excessive weight loss and can make you jittery. There are many levels to assessing the thyroid, including checking that T4 is being properly converted to the active T3 form and making sure that there isn’t an autoimmune component by checking thyroid antibodies. It’s a good idea to perform a full panel if thyroid complications are suspected.
YOUR TARGET: TSH level are optimal between 1.8 and 3.0 mIU/L
Cholesterol is a waxy, fatty substance that is necessary to produce most of your hormones, build healthy cell membranes and protect nerve cells in your brain. But whatever the body doesn't use to perform those vital jobs can cause harm. The "bad" form (LDL) cattaches to the arteries when oxidized or the vessels are damaged due to inflammation, sabotaging blood flow to your heart and triggering more inflammation. The "good" form (HDL) removes excess cholesterol and protects the vessels. Proper lifestyle modification will help keep the numbers in good balance.
YOUR TARGET: Total cholesterol 150-200 mg/dL; LDL below 100 mg/dL; HDL above 60 mg/dL
IRON
Iron is the key ingredient to the production of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen from the lungs to every cell in your body. If hemoglobin is low, you may experience symptoms such as increased fatigue, lack of energy, muscle soreness, achy joints, and sliding performance. Other values like your serum ferritin, which indicates your storage capacity for the iron you absorb, may also be low. Insufficient iron may indicate poor intake, poor absorption or be a result of increased loss, so it is always important to know the cause as supplementation alone may not fix the problem. If iron stores aren't returned to a healthy state, heart problems may arise.
YOUR TARGET: Ideally between 85-135 ug/dL
THYROID-STIMULATING HORMONE
An underactive or overactive thyroid can make major changes to your quality of life. That's because the thyroid hormone regulates how much energy reaches all cells: Too little TSH (hypothyroidism) can leave you feeling weak, foggy, cold and gaining weight while high levels of thyroid hormones (hyperthyroidism) speed up your heartbeat, cause excessive weight loss and can make you jittery. There are many levels to assessing the thyroid, including checking that T4 is being properly converted to the active T3 form and making sure that there isn’t an autoimmune component by checking thyroid antibodies. It’s a good idea to perform a full panel if thyroid complications are suspected.
YOUR TARGET: TSH level are optimal between 1.8 and 3.0 mIU/L
In Health,
Dr. Brad Niewierowski
No comments:
Post a Comment