Your Blood Work Says “Normal,” but what does that actually tell you? Most of us have had the same experience with blood work. You go in for your annual physical, have your blood drawn, and a few days later the results show up in your patient portal. You scan down the page, everything appears to be within the normal range, and you move on with your life. We talk a lot about this in our Health Anxiety post. We wanted to make it easier to get the information and context that you want to track, when you want it. Our à la carte lab options let you start with a broad look at your health, dig a little deeper into specific biomarkers, or take a closer look at your hormones, without signing up for a treatment program just to get blood work.
If you’ve ever been a patient of ours, you’ve probably heard us say this before. We rarely look at a single data point and make much of it without asking what came before it. An HbA1c that falls within the normal range may be reassuring, but we also want to know whether it has been 5.6 for five years or whether it has moved from 5.1 to 5.4 to 5.6. The same is true for cholesterol, thyroid markers, iron stores, blood counts and many of the other numbers we follow.
None of that means a change automatically indicates that something is wrong. Bodies fluctuate, lab values fluctuate, and reference ranges exist for a reason, but having your own baseline makes it possible to notice meaningful changes and have a much more informed conversation about your health. That’s really the idea behind our expanded lab testing: not looking for problems, but giving you more information about your own body.
Our Comprehensive Wellness Panel ($99) is the panel we designed for someone who wants a broader picture of their overall health without ordering dozens of tests they may not need. It includes a CBC, CMP, Lipid Panel with LDL/HDL Ratio, ESR, HbA1c, TSH, Free T4, Ferritin and Vitamin D. Together, those labs give us information across blood counts, metabolic health, blood sugar, cardiovascular markers, thyroid function, iron stores, inflammation and vitamin D status. It’s a lot of information from one blood draw, and more importantly, it gives you a baseline you can come back to later.
Our Advanced Health & Longevity Panel ($129) is available as an add-on to the Comprehensive Wellness Panel and includes some of the biomarkers that aren't always part of routine blood work. This panel includes Cortisol, CRP, Homocysteine, IGF-1, Uric Acid, ESR, Apolipoprotein A and B with Ratio, Lipoprotein(a) and Vitamin B12. We included these intentionally. For example, most people who have had routine cholesterol testing know their LDL and HDL, but far fewer have ever had ApoB or Lipoprotein(a) checked. Those tests can provide additional information about cardiovascular risk that isn't captured in exactly the same way by a traditional lipid panel.
If you're someone who wants a more detailed baseline, has relevant personal or family history, or simply wants to understand more of the data available to you, this gives you that option.
One of the things that can get lost in conversations about hormone health is that hormones don't operate independently from the rest of your body. Fatigue isn't always hormonal. Changes in body composition aren't always hormonal. Neither are changes in mood, energy or libido. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with friends who are convinced they're experiencing symptoms of perimenopause, only to have blood work uncover something else worth paying attention to -- ,low iron is a really common example. That doesn't necessarily mean perimenopause isn't part of the picture, but it does mean there may be more to the story. So many symptoms overlap, which is why we don't love looking at symptoms or hormone levels in isolation.
Our Men's Hormone Panel ($160) includes PSA, Total and Free Testosterone, SHBG, Estradiol, FSH and LH, along with broader testing that looks at blood counts, metabolic and cardiovascular health, thyroid function, blood sugar and inflammation.
Our Women's Hormone Panel ($160) takes the same approach. It includes Estradiol, Progesterone, Total and Free Testosterone, LH and FSH, along with broader testing that looks at blood counts, metabolic and cardiovascular health, thyroid function, blood sugar and inflammation.
The point isn't to look at an estradiol or testosterone result and immediately decide it explains how you feel. It's to have enough information to put that number into context.
We actually love that outcome. Expanded testing isn't valuable because it gives us more opportunities to find something wrong. In fact, one of the downsides of ordering more labs is that the more things you test, the more likely you are to encounter an isolated result outside a reference range that may not be clinically meaningful. That's why we think the healthiest way to approach this information is with curiosity rather than anxiety. A lab result is one piece of information. Your symptoms, medical history, family history, medications, previous results and the rest of your blood work all provide context.
Sometimes the takeaway really is, everything looks great. Now you have a baseline, and that's useful information too.
You don't have to be enrolled in one of our weight-management or hormone programs to want to know your HbA1c. You don't need to be starting testosterone to be curious about your hormone levels. And you certainly don't need to wait until something feels wrong to establish a baseline for your health. That's why we've made these panels available à la carte. You can choose the testing that makes sense for you, learn more about what's happening in your body, and have information you can continue to follow over time.
Because ultimately, that's what we want lab work to do: give you useful information that helps you understand your health a little better than you did before. Book your labs here or email info@theaestheticoncierge.co if you have questions about lab testing or any of the panels.
