We Don’t Need More Blood Tests
I strongly disagree. We need more blood tests, and we need them badly. We need them in forms which people can self administer, outside of the prescription-and-professional-blood-draw model.<p>The history of blood glucose testing is informative here. It used to be a hospital lab test, like most other tests: done fasting, infrequently, to diagnose diabetes. Today, that test is done with an over-the-counter test kit, and diabetics do it multiple times per day. This provides information that the infrequent, hospital version couldn&#x27;t provide at all: how blood glucose responds to meals.<p>There are many other tests which, if they could be frequent and self-administered, would enable people to make new discoveries. The common metabolic tests, for example - HDL, LDL, etc - are very closely analogous to glucose tests, in that they respond to meals and that response is probably more informative than the fasting test. But there&#x27;s nothing analogous to a glucose tolerance test for cholesterol, because that requires ten tests in a row and that&#x27;s too expensive.<p>One of the more common complaints I hear from friends is about migraines. Blood tests are worthless there because it&#x27;s impossible to get a blood draw during an actual migraine. Same for most mental illnesses; comparing blood tests between a bipolar person&#x27;s manic and depressive phases would be <i>fascinating</i>, but no one does it.<p>And that&#x27;s not even mentioning micronutrient status screening. The rates of micronutrient deficiencies in the United States found by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) are shocking; it&#x27;s the twenty-first century and the rate of iodine deficiency is 9%.