There are so many ways to look at yourself and determine how healthy you are. Most of them are subjective (and maybe most important) like how you feel, how you sleep, how you exercise, how your clothes fit, etc… One of the best objective ways to look at your health is to check blood-work or labs and compare the values through time.
Since I started fasting and eating a more keto diet, all of my subjective markers of health have improved: I feel better than I have in as long as I can remember, and I exercise more and am more active than I have been in a long time. However, being a physician, I wanted to know that I wasn’t hurting my body so I looked at my before and after lab values. Luckily, I had a set of labs drawn before I started on this journey (it was actually the A1c value that led me to change my lifestyle and diet); and I just recently had a second set of labs drawn. So here are the highlights from the 2 sets:
|
Lab |
5/2/16 |
8/23/18 |
|
Total Cholesterol |
200 |
189 |
|
LDL |
117 |
112 |
|
HDL |
62 |
64 |
|
Triglycerides |
104 |
65 |
|
Hemoglobin A1c |
5.9 |
5.5 |
|
Avg Blood Glucose |
121 |
111 |
|
Protein Total |
8 |
7.8 |
|
Albumin |
4.8 |
4.9 |
|
Hemoglobin |
17.5 |
17.1 |
|
Hematocrit |
50.7 |
51.3 |
My cholesterol panel is very much improved. The most surprising result was that my triglyceride level went down so much despite eating more steak, eggs, bacon and cheese than ever in my life (yummy!). After looking at the literature, this is actually a common finding on low carb diets. In the absence of excess carbohydrates, the body starts burning more fat and ketones for fuel, and the liver will be focused on forming sugar and ketones for energy rather than triglycerides for storage. As a result, triglyceride levels drop and blood sugar levels to normalize. This fits with my decrease in hemoglobin A1c and average blood sugar as well. My first A1c was pre-diabetic and the most recent was back in the normal range. I included the protein, albumin, hemoglobin and hematocrit because those are markers of nutrition as well as other things. Clearly I am not malnourished, based on my lab values, which are basically the same before and after changing my lifestyle and diet.
The second set of labs was drawn at the end of the summer, when I was less than strict on the keto diet due to big endurance events (the triple bypass bike ride and Denver century bike ride) and vacations and various celebrations over the summer. I did continue my intermittent fasting practice through the summer, however.
All of this is reassuring to me that I am not hurting myself eating keto and fasting, and in fact am healthier (by labs) than I was before. The decrease in A1c alone is enough of a health gain to keep me fasting and eating keto, and the improved cholesterol panel is (excuse the pun) “the icing on the cake”.