Making sense of your numbers
You already measure. The difficult part is not getting numbers, it is knowing which ones mean something and what to ignore.
01
What a blood panel says
Some of it is a target a guideline set for everybody, and some of it is where the middle of a population sat on one machine. Reading the second as the first is the commonest mistake on a report.
02
Sugar and insulin
Fasting glucose, HbA1c and insulin measure three different things and disagree more often than anybody tells you. When two of them disagree, that disagreement is itself information.
03
What you measure yourself
Grip, waist, VO2max, resting heart rate. These have no useful population range, which is why what counts is your own line rather than where you sit in a crowd.
04
A line, not a dot
One reading is a moment and these numbers move on their own. A value just over a threshold is a reason to measure again, not a reason to conclude anything.
05
What to ignore
Anything with a threshold nobody can point to a guideline for. If the person telling you a number is bad cannot say who decided that and on what evidence, the number is decoration.
Want to know where you stand?
Reading is one half. The other is a number you took yourself, and one measurement today is the start of a line you can actually follow.
Want the whole guide?
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