11 Vital Medical and Lab Tests After 40

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Coach Allan is on vacation. We will return to our hello segments in mid-October.

Episode

Today we're going to discuss the eleven vital medical and lab tests that you should do after 40. Or at least have the conversation with your doctor about having, you know, these measurements I'm going to talk about today are really about your health.

This is more than weight. This is going to tell you a lot more. Now, I have to start this out with saying I'm not a doctor. I cannot diagnose or give medical advice. I'm just giving you some basic information to allow you to be ready to go have the conversation with your doctor. All of these are things that will help you identify chronic diseases. And if you know about them early, it's great. Obviously prevention is better, but early detection is very important for most of these issues.

Blood Pressure

Okay, so number one, blood pressure. High blood pressure, also called hypertension, is a huge health issue in this world. And in this country. There's over a billion people in the world that have high blood pressure. So that's like one in eight. So it's a big deal and it's something that's pretty easy to test. You can buy a monitor at a pharmacy or you can get it on Amazon. I'll put a link in the show notes for the one that I use. Your resting blood pressure should be around 120 over 80. You don't want that dropping too low and you don't want it too high. So knowing that and monitoring it can be very important for you.

Lifestyle is really the best way to manage your high blood pressure. There are medications they can give you and most doctors will prescribe the medication and tell you to do the lifestyle changes. If you've been on medication and you decide you want to make some lifestyle changes, it's worth having the conversation with your doctor and monitoring your blood pressure as you go just to make sure that you're not over medicated as you make these lifestyle changes and your blood pressure returns to more to normal. Typically this is one of those things where they stack medications to get you where you need to be until you get your body where it needs to be.

So blood pressure is a killer. You want to make sure that you're monitoring it. Easy test to do. You can buy the monitor and have it available. They're not that expensive. Again, go to the show notes, and I'll have a link to the one that I use.

Blood Glucose

Number two fasting glucose, or A1C. So fasting glucose is your blood sugar level when you haven't eaten anything for about 12 hours, usually you go in the morning, you get the test. They want you fasted, they're going to do a blood glucose test. This is a pretty standard thing. They'll often also do the A1C. The A1C is basically kind of a snapshot of what the last three months of your blood sugar was. So this gives them an idea if it's stayed elevated, and it's not just a one off, but this is something that's going on. If your blood sugar, your fasting blood sugar is above 100 or your A1C is above, say, six, you're pretty much diabetic at that point. The doctor is going to probably diagnose you as pre diabetic or diabetic at that point and want to start getting you on medications and recommending lifestyle changes. I would definitely go with the lifestyle changes. You want to get that blood sugar down. You want to keep it in a constant range. My blood sugar typically goes anywhere from 85 to 65. I like to keep it below 85. Occasionally, if I eat something that's high in sugar, it will pop up above that, but it doesn't stay there very long. My A1 C is typically below five. And that's, again, because I don't eat a lot of sugar, I don't eat a lot of processed foods. So my blood sugar remains fairly constant throughout the day, and I don't have a lot of problems.

Again, something you don't want to get too low, and it's something you don't want to get too high. And if you have some metabolic issues processing the sugar because you're insulin resistance or insulin resistant or something, it is something you just want to make sure that you're monitoring and taking care of. And this is not as easy as just saying, okay, well, I'm going to shoot myself up with insulin, or I'm going to drink some orange juice if I start feeling a little faint. You really do need to watch this. And if you start seeing it slide as you're younger, you're on a bad path, and you need to resolve that.

Calcium Score

Number three calcium score. There's a documentary called The Widowmaker. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/widowmaker. This documentary is on YouTube. It gives a lot of information about what The Widowmaker is, which is basically calcium deposited in the aorta, and it can cause an instant death by heart attack.

It's not one where you have a mild heart attack and they do a little bit of work and you're out and you're working on it. This one will knock you down, and you're done. And it's killed a lot of people, and it kills them without any warning at all. Otherwise, they think they're healthy people. When they get a calcium score, some people realize that they are not in as good a shape as they thought they were. You want a low number, as close to zero as you can get. If you're in the tens of thousands over around 12,000, they're probably going to send you to the emergency room because you're effectively dying on the table right there. So you want to make sure that you're getting this calcium score. Talk to your doctor about it. It's not expensive. I looked it up. It costs about $200. It doesn't take long. It's not invasive. It's just an X ray. It's a pretty intense X ray. So it's not something you do every year unless you know you have a problem. But it is something that you would want to talk to your doctor about and get your calcium score.

Blood Count

Number four is a complete blood count. So a complete blood count is going to talk to you, tell you some things about your red blood cells and white blood cells. Okay? If either of these are high, that could be a problem.

High red blood cells can create some clotting and other issues. High white blood cells typically mean something else is going on in your body, perhaps cancer. And they'll want to know why your white blood cell count is so elevated. This is your immune system. This is your life. It's there.

And these are two tests that you can have done to get a good idea of some things that might be going on in your body that you. Didn't otherwise know about. Okay?

C-Reactive Protein

Number five on the list is C-reactive protein. Now, this is an interesting one, but. This protein helps show how much inflammation you have in your body. So things like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, most of the time, this can be detected, that there's problems because they're stressed out and their immune system is going haywire.

So C-reactive protein is going to tell you if there's some inflammation in your body, you probably already know it because your joints are probably already hurting, and some other things that are going on in your life around inflammation is a problem. But if you stay inflamed all the time, chronic inflammation, you're headed down a bad path. So knowing your C-reactive protein, managing your lifestyle to help manage that down really, really important.

Thyroid

Number six thyroid. Okay, thyroid is basically how our body manages energy. It is our metabolism. And there's about 200 million people globally who have thyroid issues. Some people will have thyroid that's overactive. Some have thyroid that's underactive. And so if you feel fatigued. If you're not recovering very well, you're. Not sleeping very well, it might be worth having your thyroid test. Now, most of the time when they're going to test, they really only just test one of the elements, but there's multiple elements they can test, which is the thyroid stimulating hormone T3 and T4, and there's a few others. If you know you're having a thyroid issue, you might want to go a little deeper into this. But thyroid is something that you can easily manage with medication, and often lifestyle changes will help. But this is a tough one because if it's impacting your causing you fatigue and it's keeping your metabolism from working the way it's supposed to, it becomes very difficult to lose weight or gain weight, and it makes it very difficult to have the energy to do what's necessary to stay healthy. So if you're noticing some fatigue problems, it might be worth just taking a look at your thyroid.

Triglycerides

Number seven is triglycerides. Now, I know a lot of people out there, and your doctor too, will probably say that you should focus on your cholesterol, and I'm not going to go against that. If you want to know your cholesterol numbers, that's important too. But I think triglycerides, in my opinion, again, not a doctor, but this is the one I care about the most. I want my triglycerides to be low, and in fact, if I can get my triglycerides close to what my HDL is, HDL is the good cholesterol, if you will, then you're doing good. Now, most doctors are going to say you should be trying to get your triglycerides should not be more than a ratio of maybe three or four times your HDL.

I like to get mine below two. And often I can have it at one. If I'm eating really clean, doing the right things, I can keep my triglycerides level with or around what my HDL is. And that ratio tells me that I'm doing the right things for my body, I'm eating the right food. So having your triglycerides checked, that's usually a function of the whole lipid panel when they do the cholesterol. But don't just stop with, oh, the HDL is low or the LDL is high, the total is high. Too many times, people get stuck focused there. Triglycerides let you pull back the layer a little bit more and see what's going on.

Kidney Function

Number eight is kidney function tests, and there's a few of them out there, but basically you want to make sure that your kidney functions well, because your kidneys are basically doing a lot of the filtering and the cleaning and removing toxins from your body. And if that isn't working right, you could end up with what they call end stage renal disease. Okay?

And that could mean you're now getting dialysis or you have to have a kidney transplant, both of which are not something you want to do. So there are a few different things they can look for, like crenitine and GFR. A lot of little technical stuff in there that they can look at to get an idea of how well your kidney is functioning. And if you're on certain medications that can impact your kidneys, it's worth occasionally getting that test just to make sure your kidneys are still functioning the way you need them to function.

Liver Function

Number nine on my list is liver function. Now, similar to the kidneys, the kidneys filter blood. Your liver also does a lot of things it filters, but it also manages a lot of different things in our body from how we absorb medications and alcohol and food. Fructose in particular. The liver can help store fat. It's really probably one of the most important organs behind the heart and lungs to keep you alive.

So you want to make sure that your liver is functioning well. Because of our diet and lifestyle, many folks are dealing with fatty liver disease, even when it doesn't relate to alcohol. And hepatitis, which you can get in a lot of different ways, can adversely affect the liver. And when the liver is not working, you're not living. You're not going to be alive long if your liver is not functioning. So it is worth taking a look at how well your liver is functioning, particularly if you've been on different medications. If at any point in your time you took steroids or something like that, you may have damaged your liver, or if you eat a lot of sugar, particularly fructose, or drink a lot of alcohol, you've probably damaged your liver a bit and it's not going to function as well. And these tests will help you see how well your liver is functioning.

Vitamin D and B12

Number ten on my list is vitamin D and B12. A lot of people, like about a billion people in the United States, have vitamin D deficiency, and millions have vitamin B12. Now, vitamin D is really important for nerve health, for bone health, your immune system, all of it. If you live in a northern climate. You don't get sun on your skin regularly, or you wear a lot of sunscreen when you do, your body might not be absorbing and creating vitamin D the way it needs to, and you might be deficient. So you may need to supplement if you're low, but you don't know you're low unless you test.

So I don't recommend just taking a supplement for the sake of taking a supplement. But it is one of those things where so many people are deficient in vitamin D, there's not a ton of downside.

Now, vitamin B12 is important because our body uses it for metabolism, for the formation of red blood cells, nerve function and DNA synthesis. That's where our bodies are able to repair our genetic material. That's kind of important. If you are vegan or vegetarian, you might not be getting enough B12. And so you want to make sure that if you are not eating a lot of animal products, you should probably have your B12 tested occasionally just to see where you stand with that and whether you need to supplement.

So again, vitamin D and vitamin B12 are two of the most important vitamins that you need to be eating regularly or getting regularly through sunshine for vitamin D. And if you're not, you should test yourself occasionally just to see if there might be a deficiency there.

Colonoscopy

Number eleven is a colonoscopy. Everybody's favorite. Colorectal cancer affects over 1.8 million people worldwide every single year. So you start thinking about that. It's not maybe the most common cancer. It's one that we can find pretty easily with a colonoscopy.

Now, this is not a pleasant experience. You've got to go through a process of cleansing yourself. Hey, you're going to weigh five pounds less after you get done with this because you cleared out your colon and your intestines. But you want to be able to detect colon cancer early, and this is a test that will help you do that.

Honorable Mentions – Mammograms and PSA Test

Now, I do have two honorable mentions on here, and that's if you're a woman, I strongly recommend that you get your mammograms done regularly. You can talk to your doctor about your risk for breast cancer. You can look at your genome if you went and got the test, the DNA test, to see if you have the types of SNPs and whatnot, that make you more susceptible to breast cancer. If you took birth control pills for a long period of time, again, that's a risk factor. And there's some others around age. And so if you know you're in a higher risk group, make sure you're talking to your doctor about getting mammograms on a regular basis when they believe that that's the best cycle for you to do.

And then for men on our side, we can get breast cancer too. So checking yourself is obviously a good idea, but it's worth getting a PSA test every once in a while just to make sure, because PSA is basically going to tell you if there's some issues with prostate. Just because it's an elevated test doesn't mean you have prostate cancer. But it's the first indicator that they usually look for when they suspect that someone might have prostate cancer. Elevated PSA test is going to be like the first thing that they're looking for.

And it's real easy. It's blood test. You just go and get a regular blood test, but ask it's going to be for a PSA, talk to your doctor about it. Similar to the way I just discussed with the mammograms, the frequency that you would do this test really depends on the conversation you have with your doctor based on your risk factors and things. If men in your life have had prostate cancer before, your risk is higher.

Certain race things like black men, African American men are more likely to have prostate cancer than Caucasian men. So just know your risk factors. Have a conversation with your doctor. There's not expensive tests. I think I got one not long ago. It cost like $75. But hey, that included the blood drawn, the whole bit. And that's all I went in for, was that PSA test.

I could have stacked it with some other tests, probably, and it would have even been cheaper. But these tests are readily available, easy to get, and some of them you can even do at home.

Summary

So I want to go over these one more time in summary, just these are things to just think about. So you can scratch this down on paper and you got to talk to your doctor or you're thinking about how you're going to manage your health better. These are much better measurements than weight. I can tell you right now, if you got these things in line, your weight is not going to be a problem.

So we've got blood pressure, fasting glucose, or A1C, calcium score, complete blood count, c reactive, protein, thyroid, triglycerides, kidney function, liver function, vitamin D and B12, colonoscopy, and then, of course the honorable mentions of mammograms or PSA tests as appropriate.

So what this is, is if you were to go through this and talk to your doctor about it, understanding your risks, these are the ones that I think will give you kind of really good overall big picture of where you stand from a health perspective as someone over the age of 40.

So think about these tests the next time you go in. Talk to your doctor about what's on the test, what he's looking for, why he's looking for that. This is a good opportunity for you to be very proactive, to be an advocate for yourself, to ask the right questions.

Post Show/Recap

[00:18:33.170] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:18:34.780] – Rachel

Hey, Allan.

[00:18:36.040] – Rachel

This is the best. This is a really good list of lab tests to have done. And the reason why this makes me really happy to talk about this is that there's still a lot of people in my age bracket that don't go and get their annual physical every year. To me, this is just something that I do automatically. It's my time to even though it might not be the longest appointment of the year with my doctor, I get the few minutes to talk about what I'm feeling, my family history. We get to do all this blood work and compare them from years past. I mean, having trending data is so important, but still, people don't go, and this is why they should. These eleven tests are why you should go at least once a year to your doctor.

[00:19:22.440] – Allan

Yeah, your doctor probably won't initially want you to do all of these tests, and that can be okay. That can be okay. But I would say, yeah, if you're over 40, particularly if you're over 50.

[00:19:35.260] – Allan

These tests are going to tell you a lot about yourself and about what your status is. And so if you have family members that have diabetes or high blood sugar or hypertension or they've had cancers, or you just know that you're at higher risk because of who you are, then you should be probably testing this more often than once per year, at least some of them. When I was working with a health doctor, and that was quite literally it, he was not a healthcare doctor where I go in for sick care. He was a doctor that I went into for health. And so we were talking about how I could be as healthy as I can possibly be. We got these tests, all of these tests done every quarter.

[00:20:17.750] – Allan

That's really expensive. So I don't encourage everybody to run that out there, because I think if you got a full scan, if you got a full blood test, they can run you over $1,400. I think mine were running me around 1400 when I was doing them, but it was really cool because the phlebotomist would come to me, they would come to my office, or they'd come to my house and take the blood so I didn't have to worry about it. They just came in, they took the blood, put it in a little box, and shipped it off FedEx to whomever.

[00:20:46.150] – Allan

And I would get all these answers. Except for the calcium score, that one's separate because that's actually done somewhere else. But all these others that are blood tests, I literally got a comprehensive report back so I could see if my kidney numbers, my liver numbers were all in sync, where they're supposed to be, what my vitamins were.

[00:21:05.600] – Allan

And it went a lot deeper than just vitamin D and vitamin B12. But those are two of the most important ones, I think. Again, not a doctor. So beyond the calcium score and the colonoscopy, of course, the mammogram, those are tests you have to actually go in for physical. All the others are basically blood tests. Well, I guess blood pressure isn't, but you can easily test that at home or anywhere. These blood tests here, those are the ones that yeah, you're going to see them.

[00:21:33.230] – Allan

So if you're not feeling well, your doctor might not even think to test. Your thyroid initially, not even be on the list, because that could be a wasted test. But if you tell them you're just feeling out of sorts and fatigued, they might throw the thyroid test in there just to make sure that you're aware of what your status is. And the hard part with fatigue, I just want to put this out there, is fatigue is not something that just sort of happens one day. It's like one day you wake up and your body and you're fatigued. For the most part, it comes in really slow.

[00:22:06.970] – Rachel

It does.

[00:22:07.860] – Allan

And so if you're comparing today to how you feel yesterday or felt yesterday, there might not be a big difference. And you might not even feel it or see it. It's sort of the deal where you don't necessarily see yourself losing weight even though you are. It's just coming off slow and steady, but you're just not seeing it because, okay, I'm losing a pound a week. But there's no visual.

[00:22:29.880] – Allan

What does a pound of fat look like coming off of my body? Kind of thing. This is kind of the same thing. It can kind of come in and then there's just a point where you're just not capable of doing things. You get winded walking up the stairs. Well, that might not be because you're not cardiovascular fit. That could be a symptom of thyroid.

[00:22:51.180] – Rachel

Actually I'm on thyroid medicine now. I just went hypo earlier this year and as a runner, I'm fatigued a lot, Allan. And then there's times in your life where maybe you've got stresses with work or your kids are sick and you're up late at night, and there's a lot of reasons why you could be fatigued. But you're right, it is kind of one of those, again, insidious things that you just don't pick up right away. And doctors don't I don't know why, but they don't always do the thorough panel like you had suggested. They just do the basic thyroid, not necessarily to the T3 and T4, which is unfortunate because that's where the good data is usually.

[00:23:32.770] – Allan

Well, if they see a drop or they see an increase, then they know there's something going on, and then they'll probably ask for a second test to go in and look for those things.

[00:23:41.580] – Allan

But if you think you're feeling fatigued. Bring it up to your doctor before you go to get your panel done. And they may even say, okay, well, I'm going to throw B12 in there in thyroid just to see what your status is. And most of the time there's not going to be a problem. But thyroid does affect a lot of people, and if you don't eat animal products so you're like, your cholesterol is high, so you've cut out all animal products and you're like, okay, I'm losing weight, but my blood pressure is still kind of high and my cholesterol is coming down, but I feel like crap.

[00:24:19.710] – Allan

Yeah, well, maybe your B12 is getting low and you need a supplement. But don't just do something because you think, yes, this is not a great chemistry experiment for you to just say, I'm going to start throwing supplements at this and see what happens. You want to know? Because some vitamins, kind of the oil soluble ones, so this is going to be like A-E-D. They're going to stay in your body when you take them. They're not going to wash out like b and C vitamins do. And so you can actually overdose on those things.

[00:24:52.320] – Rachel

Yeah, definitely be tested first.

[00:24:54.860] – Allan

You don't want to just start taking a bunch of vitamin D. You might make it a cyclical thing where you say, okay, because I know it's getting cooler months and I'm not getting the sunshine. I was I might go ahead and just add a little bit of vitamin D. You might do that, but then cycle back off once the summer rolls around and you're outdoors a lot, doing yard work or fishing or hiking or whatever, getting sun on your skin, say, okay, I probably don't need the vitamin D right now. I live in a climate that's basically summer all year round.

[00:25:26.570] – Allan

So I get out and my skin gets exposed to sun almost every single day. And so I wouldn't even think that I had a vitamin D problem, but if I went and got a panel and it said I was deficient, that would surprise me. But I'd go take some because I got to get it in there. It's important for bone health and nerve health, and it's a pro hormone, so it literally helps with just about everything else in your body. Very important. So I put this list together. As you can imagine, it took a lot of research to put this list together, but this is what as I was thinking through, how would I know I was sick?

[00:26:09.350] – Allan

I want to put together the test and say, how would I know I was sick?

[00:26:13.750] – Allan

These are the tests that I would want. I'm not a doctor, but I would talk to my doctor and I'd say okay, I'm 57 year old man who's spent a good part of his adult life overweight. I can tell you right now, when you see my cholesterol numbers, you're going to freak out because according to some of my doctors, I was dead years ago. But I'm just someone who has very high cholesterol and I could stop eating everything. I could just start eating lettuce or I guess broccoli. How about broccoli?

[00:26:50.370] – Allan

I could just eat broccoli and my cholesterol would still be high. I've taken statins and my cholesterol wouldn't go down. My HDL went down. It went down, but my LDL didn't. It was still exceptionally high. And so I can't get my cholesterol down no matter what I do food or medications. But what I can tell you is my HDL when I'm eating the way my body feels good serving my body, my HDL is off the charts. They want yours around 50. Mine's usually floating somewhere around 90.

[00:27:26.940] – Rachel

Oh, gosh.

[00:27:27.690] – Allan

And I can get my triglycerides down to about 90. The number they want there is 150. You want you below 150. They want your HDL above 50 and your triglycerides below 150. So that's a three to one ratio. If you're doing that, you're at a three to one ratio. The doctors are going to say you're. Doing golden again as long as your HDL is not.

[00:27:48.330] – Allan

Above 200, your total cholesterol is not above total 200, never going to get there. If my HDL is 90, I'm not going to get my total down below 200. Just mathematically impossible.

[00:28:02.510] – Allan

Because LDL is a calculated number. It's not an actual count. They count the HDL and they count the total. They don't count the LDL. It's a calculated number. If my HDL is over 90, I can't get my LDL. I mean, I can't get my total below 200,

[00:28:19.470] – Rachel

but if it's not impacting you, otherwise, if you don't have any other risk factors, your calcium score and your blood

[00:28:26.200] – Allan

and that's all fine. Yeah, look at my blood pressure, look at my calcium score, things like that. And my ratio almost one to one. Versus the three to one being standard. So I got stuff in there cleaning me up.

[00:28:43.610] – Rachel

That's good.

[00:28:47.110] – Allan

I'm not saying that everybody's going to we're all different. And all these reference numbers that are out there, you may hit some of those reference numbers perfect. There are people out there just perfect. All the reference numbers, they're right in there. Other people are one or two of them is going to be just completely out of whack. And it doesn't mean you're broken.

[00:29:04.890] – Allan

It just means, guess what? You're a little different.

[00:29:08.750] – Rachel

But this is why you go every year to get your physical, at least, because then you have trending data. So when these numbers get all out of whack, they're not trending in the same direction or they're not staying the same, then there's an indication there that something could be maybe reevaluated. But it's good to have that data. And I don't want to end our discussion until I really highlight the cancer screenings. You mentioned colonoscopy. I believe the age for colonoscopy is 45 now. There might be some changes to that, but it's gone down in age because the incidence of colon rectal cancer has increased so greatly lately. And for the ladies, the mammograms, the guys, the prostate checks, super important. And the only test I wanted to mention, Allan, that is the annual visit to your dermatologist for a skin cancer screening. Melanoma rates are increasing, and it's not only because of exposure to the sun. Melanoma is also a genetic trait that people don't usually know that they have. So all of these cancer screenings, as soon as you are of age and or your doctor approves it, because I've been having mammograms since I was 29, it's important to have the screenings done because you don't feel cancer, you don't feel well.

[00:30:24.650] – Allan

By the time you feel cancer,

[00:30:26.610] – Rachel

it could be a problem.

[00:30:28.410] – Allan

it's too late. Most of them, they're not symptomatic until they start spreading. Exactly. Talking to Dr. Baum and I think that episode is going to come up in a week or so, a couple of weeks maybe.

[00:30:41.340] – Allan

But we're talking about prostate cancer and he'S like, you'll never know. You have prostate cancer. What you're going to know is that you have bone cancer, and it's because it'S already spread to the bones. And so by the time it spreads to the bones, now you got a problem. And that's the cancer that kills you. It's not the prostate cancer that kills you, but you started with prostate cancer. And it spread to your bones, and you didn't do anything because you didn't know it. You had no symptoms and then till it was in the bones.

[00:31:08.800] – Allan

And now you got symptoms, but it's way past what they can probably cure. And so that's just the concept of be proactive here. Work with your doctor. He's on your team. We're going to talk about that a good bit with Dr. Baum, how you do that, and some of the cool things that have happened in the last few years with the way medicine works, that it didn't necessarily work that way before. And so this is really good opportunities here for you to have conversations with doctors, get these tests when they're appropriate.

[00:31:41.720] – Allan

Have data, make the right decisions, and understand, okay, if this, then that the information is there, you have to go get it for yourself, because you don't know what your numbers are until you go get your numbers. And the doctor is going to want to know a lot about you to know if it makes sense for you to get a thyroid test or to go out and get some of these other screenings because they're not appropriate for everybody. But there are times when you just get your doctors and say, hey, I want to know this number. Most of them are not just going to flat out say no.

[00:32:18.280] – Allan

If you say you want to basically have your hormones checked, the doctor is not necessarily just going to say no. They may say there's reasons to not test and tell you those reasons, but you're the coach, you're the CEO, you make the final decision. If you get a doctor, it's like, well, we're not going to do anything. Even if your testosterone is low, you might want to talk to a different doctor.

[00:32:43.020] – Rachel

Yeah, time for a new doctor.

[00:32:44.830] – Allan

But again, that's the conversation. He's an advisor. You're paying him. Whether it's your insurance company making the payment or not.

[00:32:52.500] – Allan

You're the customer. You're the one making this happen. So talk to your doctor, find out about these tests and get the ones that make the most sense for you and get them regularly so you do have trending data to know, okay, this is good. And over here, I might need to do some work on lifestyle to fix this. I might need to be on medication for blood pressure for a short period of time until I can get my body weight down and then maybe I can get off of it. I may need to do that to get my blood sugar down, metformin or something like that. Until my diet stabilizes my blood sugar below these reference numbers. And so you got to have the data to know what you don't know.

[00:33:31.680] – Rachel

That's absolutely right. So, yeah, do that physical. Get that scheduled ASAP.

[00:33:36.320] – Allan

ASAP.

[00:33:37.910] – Allan

All right, I'll talk to you next week.

[00:33:39.900] – Rachel

Take care, Allan.

[00:33:40.990] – Allan

You too.

[00:33:41.960] – Rachel

Bye. Bye.

[00:33:42.810] – Allan

Bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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