If you want to know how you are doing health-wise, one of the best ways is to do a blood test. There’s so much information in our blood.
I was happy to do a collaboration with Puhti, a Finnish company offering laboratory tests without a doctor’s referral.
In this blogpost, I touch following topics:
1. Why should you do a blood test?
2. Puhti as a service (All my Finnish readers can use a 10% discount with code PUHTIA10)
3. Key points from my blood test results
1. Why should you do a blood test?
If you are not sick, why bother with a blood test? We can look at this from a preventative- or an optimizing angle.
I’m physically in good shape, and I have visible abs, still in 2020 my:
Total cholesterol was 5,1 mmol/l (optimal range is 3,5 – 5,0 mmol/l)
LDL-cholesterol was 3,0 mmol/l (optimal range is under 3,0 mmol/l)
There are no symptoms with these values, so I would not have to know the situation without a blood test. Obviously, I want to have optimal values to minimize the health risk. Find out in the last section about my cholesterol results for 2021!
Another good argument is Vitamin D: an essential organic molecule that’s been somewhat in the spotlight thanks to COVID. One interesting study with over 190 000 patients found out that low vitamin D levels were strongly associated with higher positive COVID tests, despite other factors like age, sex, and race [1]. More importantly, severe vitamin D deficiency increased the risk of death in COVID patients [2].
These are just two examples, but the key message is:
Then there’s the question: how often should you do a blood test, and what should be the scope? General advice is to do it once a year. Past 7 years, I have done it 5 times.
The blood test scope should be aligned with the person’s needs and lifestyle. I like to check essential nutrients like D-vitamin, Iron, Magnesium, B12, complete blood count, and metabolic markers. Testosterone is something that I check every few years.
2. Puhti as a service
Puhti is a young Finnish company providing different blood test packages without doctors’ referral. There’s also an option to purchase a doctor’s consultant to interpret results.
The key thing that I like about Puhti is the effortless customer experience. I can buy a blood test package, go to the laboratory and get results the same day.
Puhti blood test report is easily understandable and visually eye-pleasing. Different test categories can be confusing, but Puhti does a great job of explaining them. There’s also well built content library for different subjects to get more information.
Here is an example of the level of magnesium in my blood. The picture is in Finnish, but we can see that I’m inside the reference range (upper right), and my values have improved from the last measurement (middle graph).
If the user wants to read more about Magnesium, he can go to the report’s linked page.
Currently, Puhti offers 13 different blood test packages, but you can also choose individual tests. I prefer the athlete’s package, which covers all the necessary areas for someone who exercises a lot. It has 37 different measurements, and the price for that is 149 euros; that’s 4 euros per measurement.
3. Key points from my blood test results
I did the athletes package in august 2020 and now again in march 2021.
What surprised me in august results was cholesterol levels, which was my focus in this 6 month period. Here are results from the last 3 measurements (2018, 2020, and 2021)
Before we go into details, I want to remind you that I’m not a doctor, so I’m not providing medical advice here.
As total cholesterol includes HDL and LDL, it’s more interesting to look at HDL and LDL separately.
Let’s start with HDL (“Good cholesterol”) – You may wonder why I have green arrows (positive); shouldn’t a bigger number be better? Well, not exactly if we believe the largest study in terms of sample size published on HDL (December 2020) [3]. Interestingly, there was seen a U-curve association of HDL with mortality, meaning there are optimal values, and after some point, mortality risk increases.
Lowest mortality were on 1,03 – 1,54 mmol/l in men aged < 65. Based on this, I’m happy that my values decreased near to the optimal level.
Decrease in LDL was also good news, from 3,0 to 2,6.
How did I improve my values? It comes from the diet, as physical activity is pretty much on the same level. I tried to avoid trans fats as much as possible and put more focus on healthy meals.
What about Vitamin D levels? It’s exciting to compare summer 2020 values to winter 2021 values.
It was good to see that I could even raise my Vitamin D levels in wintertime from 86,3 to 102. I have been supplementing 25 to 50 micrograms depending on the day (1000 IU to 2000 IU).
The biggest surprise in the newest blood test result was my hemoglobin value:
It went from 142 to 135, barely inside the reference range. This got me wondering, what’s happening here? I realized that I ran 20 kilometers and fast-walked 10 kilometers the previous day, probably something that could affect my hemoglobin values. I found one news article supporting this theory but didn’t find scientific studies on this exact topic. For the next blood test, I will definitely take it easy on the previous day.
Thank you for reading and see you next time!