Test, Don’t Guess!

Hey, this is Robin Nielsen and I’m really, really happy to be here with you today. We had an incredible training, menstrual regularity, the menstrual regularity training, and it was fantastic. So many of you participated and got some great information on how you think you can get your menstrual cycle so much more regular. So today I’m going to actually kind of tag on to that and give you some information about the most important lab tests for you to monitor. And many of these lab tests are actually not run very commonly anymore. There are lab tests that were part of a much bigger panel that your doctor used to run all the time. And for some reason with the insurance companies and diagnosing patients and all of that, they actually don’t run many of these tests anymore because the doctors have been, guided to only order tests based on a diagnosis.

So, if you don’t have a diagnosis for some of these tests, then they’re probably not going to run them. So test, don’t guess. I’m going to share with you 16 main tests for lab work that you can run and then keep track of. You’re becoming the CEO of your own health and this is a great way to take charge and see how you’re doing. So you’re going to get your lab test results, just regular blood work and then wherever you’re starting from, there is no judgment around it. It’s whatever your number is and then you’re going to start taking those actions that I talked about in the menstrual regularity training, the PCOS training, the menopause training and the hormone rockstar training.

All of them, you’re going to start taking those actions to just pivot your health in a really powerful way. Then you’ll start to see those numbers improve slowly over time. It’s really great. It’s very inspiring and very motivating when you see that the work you’re doing to feel so much better actually shows up on blood test results. It’s fantastic. So let’s go over my 16 favorites. When I do lab work with my private clients, it’s actually a very long list. It’s over 45 blood test markers, but these are the ones that you can easily do and keep track of and you’ll know if they’re improving and if you’re doing everything right. If they’re not improving, then you need to make some adjustments. So it’s a great way to figure out if what you’re doing is really supporting you and of course how you feel is just as important. So keep track of that too.

Ask any questions around lab tests here. Oftentimes when we think of lab work and we are focused on our hormones, so estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, FSH, LSH and sometimes prolactin, those are not very helpful when you’re first starting out. Especially if you’re just trying to feel a little bit better. You don’t want to look at your sex hormones yet because they’re definitely going to be out of balance and depleted if you haven’t been taking care of your major hormones, insulin and cortisol. So our fight or flight hormone, our get stuff done hormone is cortisol and insulin is our blood sugar hormone.

That’s what gets sugar into the cell so that you can burn it for fuel and have great energy. So a lot of times when we become more insulin resistant, we start actually storing that sugar that’s in our bloodstream around our middle as fat. And if we do that, then of course what’s going to happen is we’re just going to gain weight around and become more tired and we’re not going to be using insulin effectively. So if you measure it, then you can see how you’re coming along that insulin resistance spectrum.

So let me just run through those 16 different lab tests and then the optimal reference ranges for them. We don’t really care about a bunch of sick people. Those laboratory reference ranges are not very helpful. And that’s often times why your doctor looks at your labs and says, you’re fine. Right? And you say, “But I don’t feel fine.” It’s because your lab tests are not outside of laboratory reference ranges yet, which means that you don’t have disease yet. But we don’t care about getting disease. We care about feeling well, of course we don’t want to get disease.

We want to compare our numbers to optimal reference ranges. Optimal because people who have their blood work markers in optimal reference ranges just feel better. And that’s what want, we want to feel great. We don’t want to get disease. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re in the natural solutions for Hormone Balance Group, because we want to feel awesome, right? We want a good energy. We want to feel confident and we want to feel sexy. Okay, so blood work marker number one is fasting glucose. Whenever you go to do your blood work, make sure you haven;t eaten for at least 12 hours. So stop eating by 7:00 PM the night before and then go do your blood work first thing in the morning and don’t eat before you go. But make sure that you drink plenty of water because you don’t want to be dehydrated when you do your blood work.

Just drink plenty of water, but don’t eat anything. Go first thing in the morning and then eat right after. Okay? So you want to do your fasting glucose. That’s your first blood work marker. So write it down. Fasting Glucose, you want yours to be under 90, that’s optimal. Blood test number two is hemoglobin a-one-C so h-a-1-c. Hemoglobin-a-1-C is a fantastic marker for getting the average of where your blood sugar has been over the last three months and you want that ideally below 5.4 so the optimal range is below 5.1, which is even better. That’s just where your blood sugar has been over the last three months. It’s measuring something called glycosylated hemoglobin. It’s a fantastic marker for just making sure that you’re not headed towards diabetes and that your blood sugar is being regulated because elevated blood sugar causes inflammation.

The next lab work marker number three is fasting insulin. So you want to make sure that you get your fasting insulin done. It used to be a regular marker that got done on blood work, but it’s not anymore. So how do we know if we’re insulin resistant? We have to test. So you want your fasting insulin to be below 5.4, between three and five is better. So insulin fasting, the best range is three to five, but below 5.4 is okay. That’s where you want your numbers to be and remember, wherever you are right now is just your starting place. Then you’re going to make some changes. You’re going to retest in three to six months. Three months is better, like once a quarter until your numbers are really starting to get in range.

Then you can go every six months or so. Blood work marker number four is ferritin. So ferritin, that’s your stored iron. Ferritin levels are very important to know. Women tend to feel better when they’re between, I would say 70 and a hundred. You don’t want your Ferritin to be too high or too low because then you don’t feel well. So, if you’re post-menopause, you definitely want to check it at least twice a year. Maybe a little bit more often if you’re taking an iron supplement. But if you’re having a regular menstrual cycle, and you’re pre-menopause, then you’re okay to take extra iron all the time. Make sure that you’re measuring it because iron can be very toxic at higher levels. In fact, if the levels are too high, it can cause death.

It’s a very happy balance. But if you’re having a regular menstrual cycle, you’re purging iron every month. If you’re Pellis Menopausal, you just want to check because you want to make sure that you do need iron. And oftentimes when our digestion isn’t strong and we’re not absorbing our nutrients well, we’re going to be deficient in iron and B12. So it’s good to test. It’s good to supplement and get those ranges. 80 to 170 to a hundred, and you’re going to feel so much better. Iron carries oxygen and oxygen gives us energies that we need. You’re going to have to ask for these tests. You’re going to have to push for them because your doctor’s gonna say, why do you need this?

You’re going to say, because I’m working with a healthcare practitioner and these are the numbers that she wants. You could also say, I’m becoming the CEO of my own health and these are the numbers that I’m watching, so please run this for me. So actually number five’s a six, seven, eight, nine, ten. We’re going to go through six markers right now for your thyroid. Thyroid is super important. Most of us with hormonal issues definitely have thyroid challenges. I want you to run a complete thyroid panel and monitor it because as you make changes to your diet, as you start to eat better, as you start to take a bunch of nutrients and replace what’s missing in your body, as you start to get better sleep and move better, your thyroid is going to function better.

If you’re on the five element Insulite system for hormone balance, you’re going to be replacing a lot of missing nutrients. That’s going to help a lot with thyroid function. The first number you want to test for is called t-s-h as in thyroid stimulating hormone. It’s a rental hormone that your pituitary gland actually produces to tell your thyroid whether stop or to go. And so your TSH needs to be between 0.4 and 1.4. If it starts to creep up over two, it’s definitely getting too high and you really want to make some powerful changes. What’s going on with your body causes your metabolism to slow down, which means your thyroid is going to slow down if there is any hiccup in the systems in your body.

You want to make sure that everything is functioning really well. Your TSH is optimally between 0.4 1.4. Again, if you’re above 2.0 you really want to get serious about taking care of yourself, then you wanna test free-t4 and that’s the hormone that your thyroid actually produces. It’s not an active form of thyroid hormone, it’s the inactive form. So you want to test your free-t4 and you want that to be between 0.8 and 1.7, but optimally you want it to be at 1.25 to 1.7. You want enough free-t4 for your body to convert it to two-three which is the active form. And then the next marker you want to test for is free-t3. You want that to be between like 3.25 and 4.4. That’s the optimal range. The bigger range is 2.0 to 4.4, but you want it mid range to the higher end of range so that your metabolism is really functioning properly.

The next marker you want to run is called reversed-t3. So what happens is if you are stressed out all the time, you’re actually goning to convert your active thyroid hormone free-T3 to reversed-t3, which is an inactive form of T3. Cortisol can do this if we have chronically elevated levels of cortisol. It’s going to convert your active thyroid hormone into inactive, so it’s kind of nice to know if you’re doing that. You can take some stress out of your life, figure out what those hormone deal breakers are and start checking them off. The next few markers, the last two thyroid markers are your thyroid antibodies. One is called thyroid peroxidase or TPO, and the other is called t-a-a or anti-thyroglobulin antibodies and there are other abbreviations for it.

You don’t want any thyroid antibodies because what that means is if your thyroid antibodies are elevated, your body is attacking your thyroid. So it’s called Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. It’s very common in women with pcos and symptoms of hormone imbalance to have hypothyroidism or a more sluggish thyroid. I think 80, 85% of those women actually have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, meaning your body is attacking your own thyroid. That’s due to inflammation and due to gut health, which is due to eating foods that don’t work for you. You’ve got to really improve your gut health and dim the light on that autoimmune condition and you can totally do it. You can totally do it.

All right, the next marker that I want you to test for is a liver marker. It’s called a-l-t or s-g-p-t. You want that to be below 19 for women. It’s different for women and men. For Women, you want it below 19. Many of us have non alcoholic fatty liver disease. Even though we don’t drink, our livers are really compromised and that can keep us stuck in hormonal imbalance big time. So we’ve got to make sure our liver is so happy because it metabolizes all of our hormones. It’s what helps to keep us balanced, so your liver has to be happy. Make sure that your a-l-t is below 19 at your liver enzyme marker.

Okay, the next marker is alkaline phosphatase. Alkaline phosphatase, alk phos for short has healthy ranges between 60 to 90. If you are below 60, you need more zinc. Zinc is so, so important for so many different hormonal issues in the body. It also is important for immune function and for brain health and so many different things. Zinc is critical. If your alkaline phosphatase is below 60 you need more zinc. You know, women with hormonal imbalance issues, we just need more zinc anyway because it helps to make our sex hormones. The next one is total proteins. That’s really, really, really important that you get enough protein in, but not only that, that you are digesting it well, your thyroid, your metabolism needs those amino acids, which are the breakdown from protein to really thrive.

Your protein needs to be between 6.9 and 7.4. If it’s too high or too low, you need to increase your stomach acid and you might need to take some digestive enzymes in the form of proteases to help you break down your protein. So if your protein is too low, it could also be that you’re just not eating enough, so you’ll have to figure that out for yourself. Check your total protein and they can use apple cider vinegar to boost your stomach acid so it’s strong and helps you digest your protein. All right, so now we are on to marker 14. 14 is gonna be magnesium RBC. RBC stands for red blood cells and magnesium as we learned in the menstrual regularity training is critical just like zinc and magnesium for hormone balance.

Testing your magnesium RBC is incredibly important and you want optimally your reference range to be anywhere from 4.0 to 6.4. But ideally you want it towards the 6.4. So 5.5 to 6.4 is even better. Magnesium RBC can be supplemented with magnesium. It’s even in the five element nutrients. If you’re supplementing separately, just make sure that you take a glycinated or curated form so it doesn’t give you diarrhea, cause we don’t store magnesium. The last few markers, one is called Vitamin d25 hydroxy and that’s testing your vitamin D three levels. You want your vitamin D three to be anywhere from 60 to 80 or so I think is best. There’s a lot of different research now coming out about what levels are optimal, but those are good ranges.

Your HSE RP is the final marker. It stands for highly sensitive c reactive protein. So it’s h-s-c-r-p, and it’s just a general inflammatory marker. It’s a good marker to tell how you’re doing and if the changes that you’re making are helping you to reduce inflammation. It is really important for that marker to be below one.

So you have these 16 key markers that would be fantastic for you to run and pay attention to and to track. Put them in a spreadsheet and track them and see if you can’t make some profound changes in your blood work. That will translate into profound changes in how you feel. If you have any questions, please post them here. You can do this, you can totally do this.

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