Tracking bloodwork and other metrics

Thanks to Sean McSmartGuy (it's possible I made up an alternate last name for him) for alerting me to both of these tips:

WellnessFX for (free) bloodwork tracking

Premium "managed bloodwork panels" provider WellnessFX has the most useful bloodwork tracker I've seen, and you don't need to buy anything to use it:

• Open this link and enter your basic information.
• The next step requires some personal details, but I found you can skip the mailing address fields. You do have to provide your phone number, but while I didn't read the fine print, I haven't received any obnoxious phone calls or e-mails.
• The next step will show you an introductory screen with a link for adding your lab records.
• From there you can enter the dates of the bloodwork you'd like to record, filling in the values that were found for each date.
• Then you click the Finished button, to return to the dashboard, presenting you with their incredibly-useful "sparklines" that give you an idea of the trends in your testing.
• You can also compile your results for your healthcare provider with the Print / Fax options, making their life much easier compared to reading through multiple test reports. In my case it reduced a dozen pages of lab reports into 2 simple pages of tables.

General metric tracking (also free)

I don't have a strong opinion on tools for general metrics tracking (like body temperature and pulse), but I like using Google Sheets for a few reasons:

• It's free (I'm a cheapskate).
• It's easily shareable and accessible from any device.
• It lets you create little sparklines to watch for trends. I enter my data in reverse-chronological order, so entering a formula like =SPARKLINE(C3:C500, {"rtl", true}) gives me a nice trend-tracker. I keep each one of those formulas in a frozen row just below the header row, giving me a overview each time I'm entering data.

For Mac users, I find Fluid useful for turning the spreadsheet into an "application" with a permanent dock icon and a dedicated window without all the browser cruft.

On mobile devices, everyone seems to love Nomie, though I've only looked at it long enough to find the mascot cute.

Understanding your bloodwork

If you've enter your labwork into WellnessFX's tracker as I described above, you can click on each value to get a summary of what it means.

From there, I find Healthline useful for a friendly overview of the test, and the AACC's Lab Tests Online useful for moderately in-depth explanations.

For community discussions, Patient.info's blood test discussion forums look active and helpful, though I haven't spent much time there yet.

Influencing your bloodwork

I'm a member of the seemingly-unhinged group of Ray Peat fans who have found his ideas useful in understanding health issues and tweaking things like bloodwork.

He's tough to wrap your mind around at first (I thought he was just some internet crackpot for a long time), but I have a couple of introductory suggestions if you're curious:

• Fans of audio listenin': try Danny Roddy's Generative Energy podcast episodes #9 (discussing weight loss), #16 ("male" hormones), and #17 ("female" hormones).
• Fans of readin': I'd suggest starting with Peat's article on monitoring hypothyroidism, even if you don't suspect you have any issues with that. It's a nice introduction to his way of thinking about biological systems/metrics, and how they interact. From there, see if anything grabs your attention from his articles list.
• Fans of being sociable (behind a screen): try participating in Ray Peat Forum, particularly reading posts by haidut (his supplement company), tyw (his blog), Kyle M (his blog), Koveras, and probably a dozen other people who've slipped my mind.

Other smart people talking about bloodwork:

• I've found Chris Masterjohn's nutritional marker podcast series invaluable, along with his writing in general.
• Michael Lustgarten is a man after my own heart, monitoring his bloodwork and trying different techniques to influence it.