At-home blood tests

2. May 2009 William Davis (6)
Our at-home blood tests are proving a hit.

So far, vitamin D is the number one most popular test, no surprise.

Second--to my surprise--is DHEA. I would have predicted it would have been thyroid testing.

Our male and female hormone panels are also proving popular.

I've personally been using the thyroid and vitamin D testing to monitor my levels. I increased my Armour thyroid based on a low free T3 value, while my vitamin D was perfect at 77 ng/ml on 8000 units vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) per day.

The process of performing the blood spots is straightforward. The finger pricks are virtually painless using the automatic spring-loaded finger stick devices:





The number of blots to make depends on how many tests you'd like. Just a vitamin D test requires 2 blots. If 6 or more tests are ordered at a time, then all 12 blots should be made. (Two spring-loaded lancets are provided in each kit.)





If you are interested in any of our at-home blood tests, go here.

Our own Heart Hawk has posted an editorial on about blood spot testing on Health Central:

Simple, affordable home blood testing is a real game-changer in the arena of informed, self-directed healthcare. For the first time broad access to home blood testing, on a scale similar to that enjoyed by persons who routinely test their blood sugar, is available to virtually everyone and it removes doctors as the gatekeepers of these tests. Even private insurance companies and Medicare are beginning to understand the potential for improving healthcare and decreasing costs and are slowly beginning to expand coverage of home blood testing much as they do for diabetics or persons taking anti-coagulants.
Tags :

Comments (6) -

  • Anna

    5/2/2009 4:22:00 PM |

    I'm curious about the requirement that California  residents must have a doctor's prescription when sending in the test kit.  I'm a CA resident and I've done home testing a few times with other labs and I never needed an order or Rx from my doctor.  

    Why do these tests have that CA requirement?  I think that policy might need to be reviewed.

    New York State, though, does prohibit home test kits, which really stinks, IMO.  I don't even think one can home test even with a doctor's OK.    I don't know how the state thinks that is protecting their residents.  I had to relay-mail my dad's www.grassrootshealth.net Vit D study test kit to him in NYS to get around this silly prohibition.

  • Big B

    5/3/2009 4:23:00 AM |

    Nice informative blog

    try Heart Health

  • Nick

    5/3/2009 9:25:00 PM |

    I love the idea of at-home blood tests and your April 12 post on self-directed health.  Certainly, websites such as this one, Blood Sugar 101, Whole Health Source, Hyperlipid and Dr Eades blog make it easier to begin to take charge of one's own health (a prediabetes FBS brought me to this world and I am now low-carb and grain free as a result).

    My first experience with a home test was via Grassroots Health's vitamin D test.  One of the things that made it simple and worth doing was all the information on Vitamin D at the usual blogs, including the Vitamin D Council.  I was able to start supplementing immediately once I saw my level.

    But I find that things get more complicated when one tries to interpret the results of the various blood tests offered via TYP.

    For example, I saw an ND who gave me an at home saliva test and an OGTT.  I knew I was prediabetic, but was told I was hypothyroid (very low cortisol), insulin resistant, hypoglycemic and that my serotonin, GABA, and dopamine were very low and nor-epinephrine was too high.  My hsCRP was below 3, but not .5.  Oh, yeah, and something about adrenal fatigue, which I'm not even sure exists.

    I did not follow the advice of the ND because I found so much conflicting information.  My hope is that the Heart Scan Blog will offer much more information about how to interpret the results of the blood tests and what course of action is recommended given various results.

  • PRIDE MAFIA

    5/4/2009 12:28:00 AM |

    I thought that the only testosterone test that mattered was the "free" bio available testosterone level test, which is a saliva test? A man can have "normal" serum T level but none of it is being used which the "free" T test can show

  • Anonymous

    11/22/2009 5:46:39 AM |

    ...please where can I buy a unicorn?

  • buy jeans

    11/3/2010 3:02:55 PM |

    New York State, though, does prohibit home test kits, which really stinks, IMO. I don't even think one can home test even with a doctor's OK. I don't know how the state thinks that is protecting their residents. I had to relay-mail my dad's www.grassrootshealth.net Vit D study test kit to him in NYS to get around this silly prohibition.

Add comment

Loading
Disease engineering

Disease engineering

21. March 2008 William Davis (10)
Imagine you catch pneumonia.

You have a fever of 103, you’re coughing up thick, yellow sputum. Breathing is getting difficult. You hobble to the doctor, who then fails to prescribe you antibiotics. You get some kind of explanation about unnecessary exposure to antibiotics to avoid creating resistant organisms, yadda yadda. So you make do with some Tylenol®, cough syrup, and resign yourself to a few lousy days of suffering.

Five days into your illness, you’ve not shown up for work, you’re having trouble breathing, and you’re getting delirious. An emergency trip to the hospital follows, where a bronchoscopy is performed (an imaging scope threaded down your airway) and organisms recovered for diagnosis. You’re put on a ventilator through a tube in your throat to support your breathing and treated with intravenous antibiotics. Delayed treatment permits infection to escape into the fluid around your lungs, creating an “empyema,” an extension of the infection that requires insertion of a tube into your chest through an incision to drain the infection. You require feeding through a tube in your nose, since the ventilator prevents you from eating through your mouth. After 10 days, several healing incisions, and a hospital bill totaling $75,000, you’re discharged only to be face eights weeks of rehabilitation because of the extreme toll your illness extracted. Your doctor also advises you that, given the damage incurred to your lungs and airways, you will be prone to more lung infections in the future, and similar situations could recur whenever a cold or virus comes long.

A disease treatable by taking a 10-day, $20 course of oral antibiotics at home was converted into a lengthy hospital stay that generated extravagant professional fees, testing, and costly supportive care. You’ve lost several weeks of income. You’re weak and demoralized, frightened that the next flu or virus could mean another trip to the hospital. You are susceptible to repeated bouts of such episodes in future.

Such a scenario would be unimaginable with a common infection like pneumonia, or it would be grounds for filing a malpractice lawsuit. But, as horrific as it sounds in another sphere of health care, it is, in effect, analogous to how heart disease is managed in current medical practice.

First, you’re permitted to develop the condition. It may require years of ignoring telltale signs, it may require your unwitting participation in unhealthy lifestyle practices, like low-fat diets, "eat more whole grains," and "know your numbers."

It then eventuates in some catastrophe like heart attack or similar unstable heart situation, at which point you no longer have a choice but to submit to major heart procedures. That’s when you receive your heart catheterization, coronary stents, bypass, defibrillators, etc.

Of course, none of these procedural treatments cures the disease, no more than a Band Aid® heals the gash in your leg. The conditions that were present that created heart disease continue, allowing a progressive disease to worsen. At some point, you will need to return to the hospital for yet more procedures when trouble recurs, which it inevitably does.

A coronary bypass operation costs, on average $67,823. That includes the cost for the heart catheterization performed by a cardiologist to provide the surgical roadmap of your coronary arteries, the surgeon’s fees, the hospital charges. If there are any complications of your procedure, then your hospital bill may total a substantially higher figure.

$67,823 is just the upfront financial pay-off. Over the long run, your life is actually worth far more to the cardiovascular health care system because no heart procedure yields a permanent fix. In fact, repeated reliance on the system is the rule.

In fact, over 90% of people who enter the American cardiovascular health care system do so through a revolving door of multiple procedures over several years. It is truly a rare person, for instance, who undergoes a coronary bypass operation, never to be seen again the wards of the hospital because he remains healthy and free of catastrophe. A much more familiar scenario is the man or woman who undergoes two or three heart catheterizations, receives 3,4, or 6 stents, followed a few years later by a heart bypass, pacemaker, defibrillator, as well as the tests performed for catastrophe management, such as nuclear stress test, echocardiogram, laboratory blood analysis, and consultation with several specialists. The total revenue opportunity is many-fold higher than the initial 60-some thousand dollars, but instead totals hundreds of thousands of dollars per person.

A heart attack alone is a $100,000 revenue opportunity (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2004).

Of all coronary bypass procedures performed, 25% are “re-do’s”, or bypasses in people who’ve had a previous one, two, or three bypass procedures.

Perhaps it's excessively cynical to label it "disease engineering." But, whether from benign neglect or purposeful failure to diagnose, the fact remains: Heart disease is, all too often by the standard path, undiagnosed and neglected for years until the procedural payoff strikes.


Copyright 2008 William Davis, MD
Tags :

Comments (10) -

  • Ketogenic Diet

    3/21/2008 2:44:00 PM |

    This is very well written.  Great perspective.

  • Anonymous

    3/21/2008 4:12:00 PM |

    And how many of these procedures are ABSOLUTELY necessary after they get you into the hospital?  

    I recently changed cardiologists.  The new doctor, after reviewing my history and talking with him (yeah, a dialog!), he made the comment that he wonders why I even had a pacemaker installed (keeps heart rate from dropping below 60)!!  Talk about being left speechless!!  

    You see, I had passed out.  It was discovered that I had severe blockage of the left descending artery.  A stent was inserted.  Then the doctor said that if a pacemaker were not installed I could experience sudden death due to low heart rate.  I can still hear his booming voice that could be heard on the entire floor stressing the words "sudden death."  What would you do?  

    Hey, is the thinking that if it is not really necessary it is at least innocuous, then cha-cling . . . $65,000?  Scary.    

    Anyway, my new doctor said that it is something that needs more study, etc.   I know the "control unit" can be changed out for new batteries but I've never heard of the wiring being removed from the heart muscles.  Geeez.

  • Anonymous

    3/21/2008 6:07:00 PM |

    Ignatius Semmelweiss had the same problem;  He railed against the conventional wisdom that 'knew' there was no reason for handwashing before surgeries.

  • Anne

    3/22/2008 1:33:00 AM |

    "A much more familiar scenario is the man or woman who undergoes two or three heart catheterizations, receives 3,4, or 6 stents, followed a few years later by a heart bypass, pacemaker, defibrillator, as well as the tests performed for catastrophe management, such as nuclear stress test, echocardiogram, laboratory blood analysis, and consultation with several specialists. "

    I think you have been following me around. I am glad to say that I did not go on to pacemaker/defibrillator, but I had all the rest. The day I got my first stent, my doctor told my husband "I fixed her" and proudly handed us a before and after picture. Funny, I did not get any pictures when I had more angioplasies.

    I am so tired of band-aid medicine. Finally, I think that I am on the right track of lifestyle changes, thanks to information here and other forward thinking websites.

  • LJ

    3/22/2008 2:08:00 PM |

    Agreed, great perspective... but my goodness! Pardon this slightly off topic comment, but you just described word for word what a good friend of mine is going through with pneumonia -  except she was sent home from a doctor's office twice. By the time she was admitted to hospital, her blood pressure was about 60/40 and she was in agony from a collapsed lung.

  • Rich

    3/24/2008 5:12:00 AM |

    Brilliant. Where is your monthly column in the Wall Street Journal?

  • Carrie Tucker

    9/15/2008 2:44:00 AM |

    "Perhaps it's excessively cynical to label it "disease engineering." But, whether from benign neglect or purposeful failure to diagnose, the fact remains: Heart disease is, all too often by the standard path, undiagnosed and neglected for years until the procedural payoff strikes."

    What an incredibly ballsy statement!  My hat is off to you.  

    I have been a Respiratory Therapist for 23 years.  To hear a cardiologist make such a statement is the most validating thing I have heard in all these years.

    I have almost been fired more times than I can count, for trying to address a low oxygen level.

    Shoot some docs take everything personally!  I'm not trying to save anyone, just make them feel better while they're on the planet.

    You and I both know that they can save themselves.  It is just a matter of education.

    Many blessings

  • Jenny

    10/20/2008 2:58:00 PM |

    Dr. Davis,

    What makes you think that people who show up with all the symptoms of serious infection get antibiotics?

    One of my kids is permanently deaf in one ear because the pediatrician gave us that speech about how antibiotics just cause bacterial resistance and refused treatment.

    And there have been quite a few stories in the press recently of young people dying of pulmonary MRSA because their initial symptoms were ignored.

    You're a cardiologist so you see this problem in the context of heart disease. But the problem of only treating complications is widespread through all medical specialties.

    Years ago when my blood sugars were routinely going into the 200s after every meal I visited the guy who was supposed to be the "best" endo in our area, who offered me no treatment and told not to come back to see him until I'd spent a year with an A1c over 8%--an A1c high enough to guarantee complications. He told me he didn't bother treating people whose blood sugar wasn't that bad.

    My guess is that this attitude grows out of the way physicians are trained with hospital-based residencies that concentrate on heroic medicine.

    This makes people who are not in the throes of a massive complication look "fine" and keeps them from getting proper preventative treatment.

  • Anna

    10/20/2008 5:02:00 PM |

    Your post and Jenny's comment make the point that people can't be lax about their own care; they need to be willing to learn, be informed, get second and third (or even 4th) opinions sometimes, and to be assertive when the recommended care doesn't seem to match with their intuition or condition.

    There's a continuum between throwing all the available treatments at a condition and waiting to let nature take care of it, and there are cases to be made for approaches on either end and those in between, but it takes good judgement to know when and how to apply the appropriate approach.  Too many people have abdicated their own responsibility in the decision and judgement process.

  • Anonymous

    10/20/2008 5:43:00 PM |

    You could also include thyroid disease in there as a problem that doctors routinely ignore, until it gets to the state where the patient has major problems (full blown hypo/nodules, etc).

    And prevention, for many health problems, seems to be a dirty word to doctors. The system is very flawed across all specialties.

Add comment

Loading