At Peak, we approach blood labs from a different perspective than most conventional healthcare providers. In the video below, we go through our report section by section. We hope this provides insights to assist you so you can better understand your results. Whether you’ve seen our personal results video before or not, we think going over this material again will help you better comprehend it and feel more in charge of your health.
Blood Glucose In Your FH Labs
Our blood glucose results indicate how our body regulates blood sugar or its ability to regulate it within what we would call an optimal range. Let’s begin with the part on blood glucose control included in the first portion of our report. Here, ideal values fall between 75 and 86. Research indicates that keeping blood glucose levels within this range dramatically lowers the risk of a number of health problems, even if traditional norms may disagree. Blood sugar levels are influenced by a variety of factors, including stress and liver function, and are not necessarily directly correlated with sugar consumption.
A1C Measurement In Your FH Labs
Your average blood sugar levels over a three-month period are reflected in the A1C measurement. Because it gives you information about your long-term blood sugar control, this measurement is very important. While smaller percentages imply better blood sugar management, higher percentages indicate increasing blood sugar levels over time.
Fasting Insulin Levels
Your bloodstream’s insulin levels during a fast provide an indication of how much is circulating at rest. Your blood sugar climbs when you eat sugary meals, which causes your pancreas to produce insulin. Insulin lowers blood sugar levels by signaling cells to absorb sugar. Nonetheless, insulin resistance—a condition that precedes diabetes—may be indicated by consistently elevated fasting insulin levels because your body is trying to overcome your body’s resistance to insulin.
Understanding Insulin Resistance, Insulin Sensitivity, and Beta Cell Activity
We also include information on insulin sensitivity, insulin resistance, and beta cell function in our report. Insulin is released by the pancreatic beta cells. Your cells’ ability to respond to insulin signals is known as insulin sensitivity, whereas insulin resistance denotes a reduction in sensitivity that raises blood sugar levels. Comprehending these variables can aid in detecting pre-diabetes or the advancement of diabetes.
Take Control Of Your Health Through Understanding Your FH Labs
By understanding your FH labs more clearly you may take proactive measures to improve your health by being aware of the factors affecting blood sugar metabolism and your blood test results. Through dietary adjustments, stress reduction techniques, or lifestyle adjustments, you can make a large impact on controlling blood sugar levels and lowering the likelihood of Type 2 diabetes or cardiometabolic health-related problems.
Get In Touch With PEAK Integrative Medicine
At Peak Integrative Medicine, we’re dedicated to giving you the information and resources you need to take charge of your health. You will improve your well-being by making educated decisions based on a greater understanding of your blood test results and the complex processes involved in blood sugar metabolism. Never forget that you are on a unique health journey, and we are here to help you at every turn.
We hope that this blog post has clarified the significance of comprehending blood sugar metabolism and its connection to general wellness. Please get in touch if you need any clarification or if you have any queries. We can work together to help you to reach PEAK health.
Video Script of Dr. Buddy Touchinsky in the above video:
All right, so since we here at Peak look at blood Labs through a slightly different lens than they do in conventional medicine, I thought I’d go through our report section by section to help people understand their numbers a little bit better, perhaps and I know you’ve all received if you’re a member of peak I know you’ve all received the video going through your individual numbers and individual results but it can’t hurt to hear this multiple times because it does get easier the more you hear it and maybe hear it
00:47
from my perspective, if Christin or Dr. Liana did your report, maybe I’ll share something a little bit different than they do so with all that said let’s take a look at what is the first section of our report which is the blood glucose section so in short this is how our body regulates blood sugar or its ability to regulate it within what we would call an optimal range so if you look right up here at the top glucose fasting this represents the amount of glucose that’s floating around in our blood then we
01:19
draw that blood test it and this is the value they get so we know from research that the optimal value for that is between 75 and 86. Now last quote unquote normals might be from anywhere from 70 to 110 or even 120 in some cases, but what research has shown is that when your body is working well enough to maintain it between 75 and 86, it reduces your risk of all sorts of Health rated issues because of course as this goes up we start to see damage to our organs like our eyes the nerve endings in our eyes the nerve endings in our toes and
01:57
feet, we essentially cause our trigger inflammation in our blood vessels can lead to vessel disease and heart disease it can affect the brain can affect multiple things and if it goes down we start to see another set of issues with these blood sugars being too low it usually indicates there’s another problem could be an infection could be excessive stress could be not eating the right Foods could be liver function issues ETC so when it’s high or low it doesn’t always mean that you’re eating
02:27
too much sugar for instance or if it’s low doesn’t mean you’re not eating enough sugar necessarily it just mean that your body’s having an issue keeping it within the levels where it wants to work at its best so that’s two ways to look at blood work is if it’s high well why is it high maybe there’s something you’re doing or something you’re not doing something you’re missing or is it high or low because you’re something else is going on in your body and it just can’t otherwise keep it within
02:53
those normal ranges or in those optimal ranges in this case, so then more investigation needs to be done so enough on that so glucose fasting, the amount of glucose floating around in your blood the A1C here is an average of about three months of your blood sugar levels so this hemoglobin A1c is a measurement taken on the red blood cell it’s part of its hemoglobin it’s I guess a simple way to look at it is how much sugar gets stuck to that hemoglobin within those red blood cells and it’s expressed as a
03:22
percentage now the higher your blood sugar level is on average over three months, the higher the percentage will be, and the lower it is the lower the percentage will be so why three months how do we know it’s three months it’s just a guess it’s an estimate because a red blood cell lives about three months and then it’s recycled by your body and then new red blood cells are being formed all the time so the red blood cells that are me measured is approximately about three three months old all right so we have estimated
03:51
average glucose that’s just based on this hemoglobin A1c number, and then we have insulin, and this is all done fasting so it’s fasting insulin so this is how much of that hormone is floating around your blood released by the pancreas to keep your blood sugar where it needs to be so when we eat something sweet our blood sugar spikes it goes up our pancreas and our body senses that insulin is released and insulin is a message to the cells open up and let the sugar inside the cells which effectively lowers our blood sugar
04:23
levels C peptide is similar to the insulin it’s just another form of that, so when our pancreas creates insulin it starts off as a molecule that’s insulin and cep tied together then it’s cleaved and each is split we measure C peptide because it’s more stable and it’s so it’s sometimes more accurate especially if there’s a lot of fluctuations then the last three here is we have these Homa calculations so the H with the b b stands for beta cells which are part of the pancreas and that’s what releases
04:55
insulin s means sensitivity so how much how sensitive are all of the cells to the insulin that’s being released if it’s sensitive it will work really well if it’s not very sensitive at all it’s resistant, then it won’t work very well and then we have the IR which is insulin resistant and that’s the degree of insulin resistance so how does this relate to to to the values we see here so this person they are insulin resistant perhaps even pre-diabetic at this point all their numbers are high so their
05:29
sugar is high hemoglobin and A1c is high insulin and C peptides are high so what that means is as we look at it through the lens of this percentage here this H calculation is that the beta cells are working overtime it’s pumping out a ton of insulin so 34.7 we usually want to see it around three or four especially when you’re fasting so here in the optimal range, but in this person’s case they’re really pumping out a ton of insulin so the beta cells are working overtime it’s bad, but it could be worse which
06:02
we’ll talk about it in a second then what we’re seeing down here with the S value sensitivity is it’s really low because presumably if you pump a lot of insulin into the blood it should drop your blood sugar like a rock and it should be you should go hypoglycemic so you take the average person everything’s working right you inject this much insulin their blood sugar is going to drop the 30 that would be a problem but in this person even though there’s lots of insulin floating around their cells are
06:32
not very sensitive to it, so they could care less they’re not functioning, which is allowing the blood sugar to stay high so then, of course, the third value here, the insulin resistance number, is off the charts high, so they’re highly insulin resistant. One could say pre-diabetic for sure and once this gets up above 6.
06:51
7 then we then we classify that as diabetes so that’s what we’re seeing here high blood sugar levels lots of insulin poor sensitivity highly insulin resistance all right the other scenario that could happen here so if this person kept on going the way they are it might get to the point where these beta cells burn out so now we would see insulin and C peptide drop to below optimal ranges blood sugar numbers would stay high and then we would see where this Homa with the B would be low so at that point we’re approaching where
07:29
they would need insulin through medication to help manage their blood sugar levels, so insulin-dependent diabetes at that point all right, I hope that makes sense, and hopefully, it wasn’t too detailed or too complicated, but let me know what you think about that. Let me know if you have any questions if anything comes up, or if that makes sense to everyone.