A few more biomarkers if anyone is interested

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apod
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A few more biomarkers if anyone is interested

Post by apod »

I was interested in checking out my iron levels, seeing as I don't eat much red meat, I drink a lot of coffee / tea, and I usually have some cacao or nuts around my meals, often with some supplemental magnesium... all of which should decrease iron intake & absorption. When I've been eating more carbs, I've often been going with legumes / grains higher in phytic acid.

I went with the LEF Anemia Panel (I think it was something like 20-25% off?), which included some basic blood lab work. Everything looked pretty tame here.

Glucose: 81 mg/dL (65-99)
Uric Acid: 4.5 mg/dL (3.7-8.6)
BUN: 14 mg/dL (6-20) -- On Cronometer, I'm seemingly averaging 80-120g/d of protein. I did eat low protein the day or two leading up to the test. It would be interesting to see this around heavier training / higher-protein days.
Creatinine: 0.92 mg/dL (0.76-1.27)
Sodium Serum: 141 mmol/L (134-144)
Potassium Serum: 4.3 mmol/L (3.5-5.3)
Chloride Serum: 98 mmol/L (96-106)
Carbon Dioxide: 23 mmol/L (18-29)
Calcium Serum: 9.8 mg/dL (8.7-10.2) -- kind of high for not much calcium in my diet?
Phosphorus Serum: 3.6 mg/dL (2.5-4.5)
Albumin Serum: 5.2 g/dL (3.5-5.5)
Globulin: 2.0 g/dL (1.5-4.5) -- A/G ratio elevated at 2.6 (I'm currently fighting a cold, having been cold-free for a previous bulletproof ~10yr streak)
AST: 19 IU/L (0-40)
ALT: 14 IU/L (0-44)
Iron Serum: 74 ug/dL (38-169)
Ferritin Serum: 117.4 ng/mL (30-400)
Iron Binding Capacity: 250 ug/dL (250-450) -- borderline low
UIBC: 176 ug/dL (111-343)
Iron Saturation: 30% (15-55)
B12: 1298 (*High) pg/mL (211-946) -- out of range
Folate (Folic Acid) 17.4 ng/mL (>3.0)
Cholesterol Total: 171 mg/dL (100-199)
Triglycerides: 84 mg/dL (0-149) -- highest TGs I've recorded since cleaning up my diet, albeit, still relatively low/normal.
HDL Cholesterol: 73 mg/dL (>39)
VLDL Cholesterol Calc: 17 mg/dL (5-40)
LDL Cholesterol Calc: 81 mg/dL (0-99)
Total Cholesterol / HDL Ratio: 2.3 (0.0-5.0)

I'm currently supplementing 1mg/d of b12, and I skipped my b-complex on the day before my test. I'm surprised this is enough to boost my serum B12 up out of range (?) I've been eating more ad lib lately (eg. snacks, fruit for dessert, and 3-4x meals rather than my usual 2x square 16:8 - 18:6 IF regimen) , which might have boosted TGs and traded some HDL for LDL since the last test. Net carbs are currently around that 40-100g "low-carb limbo range." I've been thinking that I could use more electrolytes in my diet -- these actually look decent in my blood serum. I was reading that a higher Albumin content might hint at slight dehydration, so perhaps I just need more water.

Another interesting data point. :geek:
Last edited by apod on Sat Mar 18, 2017 12:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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KatieS
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Re: A few more biomarkers if anyone is interested

Post by KatieS »

Apod, have you ever had the CardioIQ/advanced lipid panel? I'm just asking if the TG rise might be correlated with LDL-P & smaller LDLs. For years, I had a great basic lipid panel, only to discover discordant values (low LDL/high LDL-P) & high lp(a) on the CardioIQ (Quest Lab). When I'm eating ad lib, my carb gram levels is higher than I would calculate, so maybe sort this out on the CRON-O-meter analysis.

Normally Iron Binding Capacity would lower in response to higher iron levels, but that does not appear to be the case. When we do a full battery of tests, we're bound to get a borderline, so maybe just repeat later.
apod
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Re: A few more biomarkers if anyone is interested

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KatieS wrote:Apod, have you ever had the CardioIQ/advanced lipid panel? I'm just asking if the TG rise might be correlated with LDL-P & smaller LDLs. For years, I had a great basic lipid panel, only to discover discordant values (low LDL/high LDL-P) & high lp(a) on the CardioIQ (Quest Lab). When I'm eating ad lib, my carb gram levels is higher than I would calculate, so maybe sort this out on the CRON-O-meter analysis.

Normally Iron Binding Capacity would lower in response to higher iron levels, but that does not appear to be the case. When we do a full battery of tests, we're bound to get a borderline, so maybe just repeat later.
I've done 2 NMR Lipoprofiles & 1 SpectraCell CardioMetabolic Panel. Usually, my LDLP / sdLDL generally looks decent. Here's the context so far (I've posted these in other threads):

April 2015 -- (High SFA, Caloric Surplus, Lots of great tasting paleo food and marbled meats / cheese):
high-SFA.jpg
After some diet mods ~Oct 2015 -- (Very Low SFA < 15g/d, High-Protein, Overall caloric deficit, a startling amount of dietary sugar & fructose at a caloric surplus 2-3x a week on training days -- occasionally up over 400g of CHO and 200g of sugar with carb/calorie cycling doing a slight deficit on rest days with low-carbs. I weighed 136lb at the lowest point during this time):
low-SFA.jpg
And here's a more sensible HFLC diet (albeit with a high amount of SFA from cacao, and a high amount of omega-6 from nuts / avocado / olive oil) from around June 2016:
metabolic.jpg
I would be curious what had the largest effect on TGs -- its doesn't necessarily seem to be sugar-intake / caloric-surplus related (Unless timing & meal composition plays a much larger role -- maybe some of the "low-fat diet / PWO-window magic") Or, TGs could be higher just transiently (I had gone around 20-24hrs fasted before the test, maybe I was just liberating some stored fat?) Right now, I'm up around 150-155lb (It'd be nice to get up into the 165-175lb range.) Hmm.
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Hepoberman
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Re: A few more biomarkers if anyone is interested

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Thanks for sharing apo. FWIW, I target Ferritin 50-100. As a meat eater, my Ferritin tends to climb over time. I had to donate blood once about five years ago and it has been under 100 ever since. In your mind, what is your optimal ferritin?

Now that I am plant based, I keep an eye on ferritin for the opposite reason. It tends to decrease over time. My last assay was 58 so we added a vitamin C supplement with breakfast (C increases iron absorption). For health reasons, lower is generally better but It makes my doc a little nervous, he says if I were to ever get an ulcer, I could be in trouble.

If you really had to gain ten pounds, you'd have to eat like a pig for a long time, your blood work would go to hell in a hurry! (this is how the majority of USA lives now...)
apod
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Re: A few more biomarkers if anyone is interested

Post by apod »

Hepoberman wrote:Thanks for sharing apo. FWIW, I target Ferritin 50-100. As a meat eater, my Ferritin tends to climb over time. I had to donate blood once about five years ago and it has been under 100 ever since. In your mind, what is your optimal ferritin?

Now that I am plant based, I keep an eye on ferritin for the opposite reason. It tends to decrease over time. My last assay was 58 so we added a vitamin C supplement with breakfast (C increases iron absorption). For health reasons, lower is generally better but It makes my doc a little nervous, he says if I were to ever get an ulcer, I could be in trouble.

If you really had to gain ten pounds, you'd have to eat like a pig for a long time, your blood work would go to hell in a hurry! (this is how the majority of USA lives now...)
I'm not sure -- from what I understand, iron absorption should regulate well on a normal omnivorous diet (particularly one rich in plant polyphenols / tannins and natural chelators?) I'm actually kind of surprised mine wasn't lower. So, I feel like I'm all good there and can carry on as usual. I plotted my numbers in a Google Sheets doc with gauges just to wrap my head around the numbers (it'd be nice if there was an inner age/gender matched "Optimal Green" range):
iron_gauges.jpg
TIBC is the only iron-related biomarker that is looking somewhat interesting to me, at just 1 microgram away from being off the bottom range -- I would think that as I move lower down the average reference iron saturation interval ranges, the higher my capacity would be for binding iron. In reading more, it sounds like this might be low in the case of hereditary hemochromatosis (I do have a C/G @ rs1799945 as a heterozygous H63D carrier? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl ... #Sec4title)

Thinking more about TIBC, I believe transferrin also binds to manganese (along with chromium and cobalt?) -- with lots of nuts, berries, shellfish, tea, etc., I would imagine my manganese intake is quite high. (This doesn't seem to be the case.) More likely, I've read TIBC can increase with inflammation -- I am fighting a cold. At least I'm in the reference range, I guess.

It's a tricky thing trying to gain a little weight. I see 3-4 different paths (caloric surplus via carbohydrates, caloric surplus via fatty acids, caloric surplus via carbs + fats, macro + calorie cycling.) I find the last option most interesting, but there are quite a few different paths there, and it's an overall slower approach (I think you can pull off something like 10lb/yr fairly safely with some portion of that as fat gain?) I figure I'll have the easiest time gaining muscle mass now in my 30s than any time later in life, so I might as well make the investment.
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progranulindefect
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Re: A few more biomarkers if anyone is interested

Post by progranulindefect »

has anyone noticed lymphocytes on the low side chronically?
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