A PhD's Secret Weapon: The Four Biomarkers Every Expert Should, But Doesn’t, Analyze
The most useful tests are the ones no one ever orders.
Everyone in the health space says they want to get to the root cause, then they order lab tests that barely scratch the surface.
Everyone in the health space says they want to support mitochondrial function, but they ignore the main fuels of the mitochondria when running labs.
Measuring the markers discussed in this article can help uncover whether you are taking too many supplements, overdosing on the wrong one, eating the wrong diet, or whether you are succeeding or failing at addressing your own idiosyncratic bottlenecks in energy metabolism that limit your wellness, performance, and longevity.
Everyone in the health space wants to optimize blood glucose, but no one is putting glucose into context.
No one is looking at what the glucose is turned into, and no one is looking at what it is competing with as a fuel.
When people do look at the other fuels, they do so with false assumptions. For example, lactate is for exercise. Ketones are for keto diets.
And the poor victim that always gets ignored is the redox status of these molecules, which may sound like a super-nerdy concept but is actually the single most important thing you can understand if you want to get to the heart of why your mitochondria aren’t performing at their best.
I have a client whose practitioner put her on keto and high-dose thiamin to solve dysautonomia, which made her five times worse and bedridden. Had anyone tested whether thiamin raised or lowered her lactate this never would have happened.
And yet, if anyone looked at the ratio of lactate to pyruvate and the ratio of the two major ketone bodies, beta-hydroxybutyrate and acetoacetate, one could quickly determine whether the most important mitochondrial fix would be thiamin, B6 or biotin, on the one hand, or riboflavin, CoQ10, or copper, on the other.
The craziest thing is sometimes these nutrients are needed in isolated megadoses to address an otherwise extremely-difficult-to-find genetic idiosyncrasy in a manner where traditional measures of nutrient status — even the panels I prefer as markers of nutritional status — would never help you because everything looks normal.
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Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice. Please consult with a caring health care professional before attempting to use any information herein.
In this Article:
When to Narrow In On Nutrition-Responsive Idiosyncrasies of Energy Metabolism
The Normal Biochemistry and Physiology of Lactate, Pyruvate, and Ketones
Stability of Lactate, Pyruvate, and Ketones in Blood and Urine
How To Interpret the Results: Potential uses of use thiamin, riboflavin, B6, biotin, copper, CoQ10, low-fat diets, ketogenic diets, near-infrared, fasting-feeding resets, methylene blue, PQQ, acetyl-L-carnitine, creatine, high-dose vitamin C and MK-4.