I mentioned in another post that I think giving blood, or losing some blood on a regular basis, is probably a good thing. I think it replenishes the system, ridding the body of too much iron or oxidized LDL. One could do this through blood donations, menses, and/or taking regular blood tests.
I decided to take a blood test yesterday to check my bone health, since I have some risk factors for osteoporosis, being "underweight" according to charts, Caucasian, female, and perimenopausal.
It was not possible to order my own DEXA bone scan, but it was possible to order an osteocalcin blood test for myself. A high number on the osteocalcin test has been correlated with high bone turnover, such as in diseases like osteoporosis.
I should get the results within a few days, since they have a really quick turnaround time usually. If my number does indicate some issues, I may just need to bolster my vitamin D. I have recently purchased a larger size narrowband UVB lamp for treating my vitiligo, and have been using it all over as well to help increase my vitamin D levels. This in turn should help for bone health. So if my score is not good, I might try retesting again for osteocalcin after a month or so of regular UVB exposure to see if it is any better.
I have mentioned previously some other blood tests that I like to do regularly, such as checking for inflammation with hsCRP and ESR. General health can be checked with a simple CBC (complete blood count) test. Vitamin D levels are good to check, as well as HDL cholesterol, insulin resistance, hbA1C, homocysteine, and thyroid levels.
There are some other blood tests that I have taken that I found were not really of much value to me, such as NMR cholesterol test (a CT heart scan and trivascular ultrasound test was much more useful), omega 3 tests (my food diary told me the exact same ratio). So I do not personally recommend those ones.
I am curious if regular giving of blood can help me with my FH (aka familial hypercholesterolemia, abnormally high LDL). I know that in some cases of FH, doctors prescribe apheresis, similar to dialysis, where the blood is cleansed of LDL and returned to the body. However, I have my doubts about whether LDL really has a correlation with heart disease since my own heart scan and trivascular scan gave perfect scores despite LDL levels where apheresis would have been prescribed. I wonder if it is actually other factors (such as insulin resistance?) that are the real culprit. At any rate, hopefully soon I will get my home LDL test back and see if having regular blood loss has made any change in my own LDL.
In other news, I picked up about the equivalent of a half calf share yesterday from my local grassfed farmer. I'm excited to try some veal ribeyes! I got quite a lot of ribeyes and ground veal, and a few chops, a tongue, and a heart. There should be very little waste, just a few very small bones in the chops! So that's great! And just in time, as I just ran out of beef this morning!
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Grassfed beef brisket with sea salt
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