Weight Loss

Why are lab reports critical for you to lose weight or to manage lifestyle diseases?

For a large part of my life, I have hated lab reports. And my reasons were:

  1. It costs money. Why waste money? I am a Marwari 🙂
  2. If I don’t know my problems, then I have no problem. Ignorance is bliss.
  3. I don’t really need it. The doctor has recommended it to me because he gets a commission.

I am sure, many of you will be able to relate to it. I am curious, so please leave your comments at the bottom of the blog.

But I now realise how wrong I was. A blood report is a magical device to help you lead a healthy life. And it’s actually quite cheap and it will save you a lot more money.

1. It helps you identify the problem at a nascent stage when you can easily rectify it. And save you tons of money and inconvenience.

A regular blood test will help you identify the problems when it’s a very nascent stage and when it does not cause you any symptoms. And it’s always easier to solve any problem when it’s smaller. Eg- it’s easier to reverse diabetes when you are diagnosed with HB1AC of 6.5 rather than 9.5. And it’s also much much much cheaper to cure a problem when you identify it at the initial stage. Hence, now I find lab reports to be very cheap

In fact, it can also predict whether you are going to develop diabetes even if your sugar levels are normal. And it can do by looking at your insulin levels. If your fasting insulin levels are high (>8 or more), you may be developing insulin resistance, which will ultimately lead to Diabetes. By identifying the problem at this stage, you can nip the bud before it develops into a full-fledged disease.

2. It helps you identify the root cause of the problem

The problem with lab reports is that not many people, including conventional doctors, know how to read lab reports to find the root cause of a disease. But a good expert, especially a functional medicine doctor, would help you find the root cause of the problem. E.g With the help of antibody tests, a doctor can help you find whether your thyroid disorder is the result of an autoimmune problem. Unfortunately, over 99% of thyroid patients never get this test done and never get to know why they have thyroid in the first place. Good thing is that such tests are easily available and do not cost much.

3. It can help you to reverse chronic diseases and reduce dependence on lifelong medications

If you know the root cause, you can attach it to overcome the disease. Which cannot happen if you only attack the symptoms. E.g. in the thyroid, if you just take hormone supplements, you are going to be sick all your life, as you are just attacking the symptoms. But by attacking the nutritional deficiency or toxicity or autoimmune problems, you can say bye-bye to the problem forever.

Many times, your root cause can be as simple as Vitamin D deficiency. With just a few hundred Rs, you can overcome this problem and reverse your disease. Instead of spending lakhs on medications all your life and remaining sick always. Which one would you prefer?

4. It can increase your lifespan by predicting the problems like a heart attack in advance

Many young and super-fit people are dying of heart attacks. You might have heard of many movie celebrities’ death in the last 2 years. Do you wonder how come such fit people are becoming victims to heart attacks? What is important to know is that fitness and health are not necessarily the same thing. One can have six-packs and still be very very unhealthy. Blood tests are the right way to find whether you are healthy or not and not your six-packs. Many fit people suffer from massive nutritional deficiencies, as they see food as the enemy and don’t get enough nutrients in their diet. Many of them suffer from chronic inflammation, which is easily measured by a cheap test called HS-CRP. This test is a better indicator of heart attack than any other parameter including cholesterol. Unfortunately, not many people are aware of it. If you don’t know your values, I would strongly recommend you to get yourself tested immediately.

Which tests are a must?

Your blood test should include the following:

  1. All vitamins and minerals profile (especially Vitamin D and B12).
  2. Iron Deficiency.
  3. Thyroid profile (including T3, T4 and if any of the parameters are out of range, then thyroid antibodies test).
  4. Cardiac markets (especially HSCRP, and homocysteine).
  5. Liver profile.
  6. Kidney profile.
  7. Toxicity profile.
  8. Complete Hemogram.
  9. Lipid profile.
  10. Diabetes (especially fasting insulin levels).

Which lab should I test with?

You can go with anyone you feel comfortable with. But I have been personally using Thyrocare because they are the cheapest. And I have never found any issues with reliability. Their basic packages will not include the above. You might have to go with Aarogyam 1.7 or higher to get all the above parameters.

Very important disclaimer: Possible is not a diagnostic company and we are not trying to increase our business by selling diagnostic tests. We are promoting it because we genuinely feel its importance. And to make it more affordable to people, we have tied up with Thyrocare. They give 30-40% commission to their partners and we are passing the entire discount to our clients, without keeping a single penny for ourselves. Our intention is that more people see the value of lab reports and gain their health back. We will also try and tie up with more diagnostic chains and pass the entire benefit to you.

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Vishnu Saraf

Co-founder & CEO Possible. SRCC, IIM-Ahmedabad, McKinsey, Deutsche Bank, 101 Global Healthcare Leader Award from World Health Congress, a certified NLP practitioner, authored 3 books.

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