This week I sit down with Kate Knowler to discuss all things Blood Tests. What you might want, what you can and can't get through your GP, and most importantly, how to interpret the results.
Partial Transcript:
Kate: So if you go to your doctor and you say, I feel tired or I'm fatigued, they'll probably tell you to get more sleep. Are you waking up in the night? But what we really need is some blood M testing. We need to look at your thyroid function. If your thyroid is underactive, that will affect your energy, it will affect your metabolism, your body temperature, your hair. So if you've got those kind of feeling dry skin, dry nails, dry hair, if you're very tired, if you're gaining weight, if you feel cold, I'd be suspecting thyroid if you're feeling tired but you're also a bit breathless on stairs, I can't catch my breath on stairs. It's really hard. Not a fitness question here. This is a question of gravity. When you're going upstairs and perhaps, you're a bit forgetful, maybe you get pins and needles in your hands or your feet, maybe you're feeling a bit light headed if you stand up too quickly, if those are the kind of symptoms you're experiencing, then B twelve, Folate and iron would be the markers to get checked. Iron is a difficult one with the NHS. Now, in Scotland it may be different, but I know in England the NHS will mainly only test serum ferritin, which is your iron stores, which is great, but it tells us a little bit of information. But you can get falsely raised iron stores if you've got inflammation or an infections. If you've had COVID, you'll see a ferritin is quite high. What we need to see is your iron level. And the NHS in England certainly won't test iron unless they think you've got an iron overload. If they think you've got too much iron, they might test iron, but otherwise they'll just test your iron stores. So it's not 100% reliable. B twelve, yet relatively easy to get. So if you've been taking any B twelve supplements there, you'll get a falsely raised B twelve and you need to be taking the right form of B Twelve in order to get that nutrient into your cells. If you're taking a cheap form of B twelve, that will just sit in your serum, in your blood and it will cause a, raised reading in your blood results and then folate. So folate comes from foliage. So if you're not eating your leafy greens, then you probably want to get your Folate levels checked. If your folate is low and you've got high cholesterol, it's not a good picture because that means your homocysteine will be raised. It's a very inflammatory picture. so we want to keep that Folate nice and high. And so the more foliage you can eat, the better is what I say to all my clients.
Shelley: Brilliant. So I'm just thinking this is probably quite a lot for a lot of people to take in. I've got potential tests, if you like, in front of me here. Do you mind if I just run through them? And then you could tell me if you think you need to ask for that. Or would that be covered in a basic blood test? The first one is Hba one C.
Kate: So that's a micro type two diabetes. If you're over a certain age, probably over about 30, doctors normally jump on out and do it anyway. If they ask you, do you have a balanced diet? And you say, not really, or if you're a smoker. If you drink alcohol, they'll probably test it for you. You should be able to ask for it as well. Hba one C. It's called glycated hemoglobin. I don't know if you want to know, but essentially it's all the red blood cells that have got glucose up to them. If you've got too much glucose or sugar in your blood, sticks it to the red blood cells and that's the test that they're doing there.
Shelley: Cool. Brilliant. And could be, a sign of prediabetes or even type two diabetes.
Kate: Exactly.
Find Kate at https://kateknowler.co.uk/
