Doctors no longer have sole control over lab work. These days, more and more people are ordering their own.
This, however, can be both a good thing and a bad thing. If you don’t have a medical background, the ranges and numbers could be overwhelming.
But the basics don’t have to be difficult, and many self-ordered tests are fairly simple to read (especially these days).
This guide breaks down essential details so you can easily read your lab work at home.
But first: where do you order lab work?
Maybe your doctor refuses to order you labwork, or maybe you want to order speciality tests and interpret the results yourself.
Either way, you have a few options:
- In the US, there are several online providers where you can purchase lab tests online. This allows you to visit a local lab, submit samples for testing, and get your results in the mail (physical or online).
- Not every state will allow you to do this, though. You’ll need to search for state or local laws that might prevent you from doing this.
- If you’re outside of the US, it might be harder to order lab work on your own. You may be able to order labs through a health coach or naturopath, but the legality of this depends on your area.
Just keep in mind you’ll likely need to pay out of pocket — insurance rarely covers without a doctor’s orders. With that said, lab work is inexpensive compared to healthcare emergencies. Better to spend a few hundred dollars on preventative labs than a few thousand on hospital bills.
Interpreting your lab results
Let’s start by selecting the most impactful labs.
Picking the right tests
There are plenty of lab tests available to buy. The trick is knowing which ones are worth buying.
Obesity testing and standard lipid testing, for example, aren’t particularly useful to your metabolic health. They can also be expensive and difficult to interpret, which isn’t ideal if you’re reading lab work on your own.
In contrast, a complete metabolic panel (CMP) and complete blood count (CBC) are exceedingly common and incredibly insightful. They not only cover all the basics of your health, but they can also help you interpret your risks for metabolic syndrome (especially combined with at-home measurements).
In addition to CBC and CMP panels, I recommend getting tests for:
- Vitamin B12
- Vitamin D
- C Reactive Proteins
- Insulin
- Advanced Lipid Testing (for cholesterol and triglycerides)
Most people should order basic blood work at least one time per year. If you’re recovering from a metabolic health disorder, you may want to test more frequently than this (every four to six months).
Common acronyms
You’ll find plenty of acronyms on your blood work results. They may or may not be helpful depending on what you’re testing for. That said, they’re helpful to know.
These are the most common ones you’ll find on a CMP and CBC:
- fL (femtoliter): A fraction of one-millionth of a liter. Not to be confused with ‘fluid’ or ‘fluid ounces.’
- g/dL: Grams per deciliter. Usually measures blood glucose, protein, sodium, creatinine, and similar compounds in your blood.
- IU/L: international units per liter
- mg/dL: Milligrams per deciliter. Typically used for showing fasting blood sugar levels. But again, the actual unit of measurement depends on the lab and type of test you order.
- mL: Milliliter. You probably won’t see this directly on your lab results, but you might see it listed under total sample size (the average blood sample for a CBC is ~30 milliliters).
Limits and ranges
Most ordered labs come with reference ranges that compare your results to average, below average, and above average scores. They might highlight abnormalities or flag high-risk results to quickly pull out important information.
Reference ranges sound helpful on the surface, but they’re not always that useful. They might even make things confusing depending on the situation.
For example:
- Every laboratory uses a different set of ranges. There’s no standardized set of metrics, which could get confusing if you order from different locations.
- Some limits and ranges can be misleading. For example, a ‘high’ cholesterol reading could seem like a problem at first glance. But if you break down your lipid panel and see a high HDL, you can safely bet that you’re in a healthy range (and not at-risk for an imminent heart attack).
- Being in a ‘normal’ range does not necessarily mean you’re healthy. Case in point: an HbA1C of 5.7% is technically considered a ‘normal’ blood sugar. But any number between 5.7% and 6.2% could be considered prediabetes — which means even if you don’t see a flag on the metric, you still need to consider yourself at high-risk for diabetes.
- Perhaps most compelling, the ‘normal’ ranges that come back from bloodwork comes from a population with a large number of metabolic health issues.
The good news is that this is changing: some labs will compare your test results to your own stable values for greater accuracy.
But this isn’t yet the norm, so for the most part, you’ll need to rely on reference ranges.
If you’re really concerned about falling outside a range, you should bring your results to a trained metabolic health coach.
Getting guidance from a metabolic health coach
I always recommend knowing the basics of reading regular lab work. But if you have a complex medical history, or if you’re still having trouble understanding your results, you may want to rely on the support of a trained metabolic health professional.
Do your best to find a good healthcare practitioner who understands the importance of monitoring routine blood work. This could be a coach, naturopath, PCP, or specialist doctor — whoever you find that’s truly invested in your outcomes.
If you don’t currently feel you can trust your primary care provider, you might want to fire your doctor and get a better metabolic coach.
And if you just want to learn more about the nuts and bolts of lab work, you can take my course covering an Introduction to Lab Work.
