Labs Everyone Over 35 Should Get Annually | Why “Normal” Isn’t Always Optimal | Vitality Unfiltered

Host: David J. Bauder, PA-C
 Co-Host: Stephanie Lattimore
 Guest: Christopher Reeves

In this episode of Vitality Unfiltered, we explore one of the most important—and often overlooked—tools in preventive medicine: lab testing.

Many people only undergo lab work when symptoms arise, but by that point, underlying dysfunction may already be well established. This episode reframes lab testing as a proactive strategy—one that allows for early detection, pattern recognition, and more effective long-term health management.

David J. Bauder, PA-C, founder of Weight Loss & Vitality, along with co-host Stephanie Lattimore and guest Christopher Reeves, explain why lab values must be interpreted within context, and why “normal” does not always mean optimal.

The discussion focuses on key hormonal and metabolic systems that should be monitored after age 35, the importance of establishing a personal baseline, and how tracking trends over time provides more meaningful insight than a single test result.

The episode also addresses why many individuals avoid lab testing—whether due to fear, confusion, or prior experiences—and how a thoughtful, patient-centered approach can transform lab data into a powerful tool for health.

In addition, the conversation introduces genetic testing as a complementary layer of insight, helping to identify long-term risks related to metabolism, inflammation, cognitive health, and nutrient processing. When combined with lab data, genetics provides a more complete picture of both current health and future risk.

In This Episode We Discuss

• Why lab testing is essential for preventive health
 • The difference between reactive and proactive medicine
 • Why “normal” lab values can still miss early dysfunction
 • The importance of tracking trends over time
 • Core hormonal and metabolic systems to monitor after age 35
 • How symptoms relate to lab findings and clinical context
 • Common barriers to lab testing and how to overcome them
 • How to interpret lab data responsibly
 • The role of genetics in long-term health planning
 • How combining labs and genetics supports precision medicine

Key Takeaway

Preventive health begins with understanding your data. Lab testing, when used correctly and tracked over time, provides the insight needed to identify risks early, guide decision-making, and protect long-term health.

Contact Weight Loss & Vitality

📞 Call: 571-550-9000
 🌐 Visit: https://weightlossandvitality.com

About Vitality Unfiltered

Vitality Unfiltered is a medical podcast exploring the science of hormones, longevity, metabolism, weight loss, aesthetics, and precision medicine.

Each episode provides clinical insight from healthcare professionals who treat these conditions every day.

Our goal is simple: to help people better understand the biology of their health so they can make informed decisions about wellness, prevention, and long-term vitality.

Disclaimer

This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Listening to this episode does not establish a provider-patient relationship. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional regarding medical concerns, diagnosis, or treatment.

⚠️ Disclaimer
This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Listening to this episode does not establish a provider-patient relationship. Always consult your qualified healthcare professional regarding medical concerns, diagnosis, or treatment.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Vitality.

SPEAKER_03 0:02

Vitality Unfiltered.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Unfiltered. With David Bowder.

SPEAKER_03 0:10

And we are back for another episode of Vitality Unfiltered. I'm David Bowder, your host. With me today from Weight Loss and Vitality is Dr. Christopher Reeves, Medical Director, and nurse practitioner Stephanie Lattimore from the Washington, D.C. Clinic. Today's conversation will be centered around why lab test or blood work matters after the after the age of 35. Most people don't get labs until something is literally wrong. They go in presenting of a symptom or condition and blood work is done. Our healthcare system currently is completely reactionary, not completely, all right, but it's largely reactionary or reactive to complaints of symptoms rather than more of a proactive, proactive or preventive strategy. Patients really need to think about labs as data. Data is power, and the more data you have, the more value it has over years of looking at it. And that's really what we want to get into is explain this concept and make sure people feel comfortable in searching out, seeking labs, and getting blood work that they can use and leverage later on in life. Ms. Stephanie, how do you use labs kind of like, or what do you use or establish labs as kind of a foundational tool?

SPEAKER_00 1:15

So as you mentioned, labs serve as a huge piece of preventative medicine. Establishing this baseline for patients can be very beneficial, not only to look at their health now, but to serve as a baseline for future and to trend this data to tell us a lot about a patient's individual health. When I have a patient come in, I will draw their labs and it will serve as a great data point, but it doesn't really tell the whole picture if I don't know their labs what they were before. So it's really good to trend this data and to track this over the course of a patient's life.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

I couldn't agree more. I mean, if it like all of the patients we see at the clinic, I mean you just nailed it. It's like all of the patients we see. Wouldn't it be nice if we could have seen what their normal blood tests looked like 15, 20 years ago? And we're just it's just a snapshot in time that we get those blood work. And when we think about modern medicine, modern medicine is set up on reference ranges. It's all about reference ranges. Again, we're going to be talking a lot about modern medicine here or or our current healthcare model. Reference ranges. Um Dr. Reeves, why don't you go ahead and kind of like talk through that whole concept of what reference ranges are and how they're interpreted in the use of labs.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Aaron Powell So reference range, oftentimes people can look at them as the normal quote unquote normal ranges. I'm using air quotes, uh normal range for labs. Uh so what that means basically is um it does not necessarily mean normal. It basically is a statistical measure of where your lab, where your lab result value falls within that population from which that lab is drawn. So if you have a population of people who are getting sicker and sicker, um, more and more unhealthy, and there's a shifting of those labs, but as a population gets sicker, that quote unquote normal range shifts along with that population. So it's not a true measure of wellness if you get a normal result. A normal result, um, you need to do a little bit deeper digging and uh more uh um precision testing to find out what is normal for that individual as compared to the standard Lab Core Quest normal reference range.

SPEAKER_03 3:27

How would we ever come up with So we got the reference range, but how could we how could we ever come up with the optimal range? You know, like uh I went uh years ago I went to the A4M conference a while back, and there was one lecture, it just strikes me, and one of the lectures that was being presented, an individual got uh uh got up there and did a whole presentation on optimal hormone levels for women. And they went through, you know, by the numbers, sex hormone, binding globulin, progesterone. But these were somewhere along the line, these numbers, these optimal levels or these optimal blood test levels, they were established. But nobody really uses them other than integrative functional medicine. In Western medicine, it's really all about the reference range. You fall in the reference range, you're good. I mean, what kind of what kind of effort would have to happen to get Western medicine to say, okay, yeah, there that's the reference range, but what's the optimal range?

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Aaron Ross Powell Well, I mean, I think a problem with that would be is if you start testing people for optimal ranges and getting what is actually disease state versus healthy state would require more intervention. Um one of the biggest things I see in the since 2010 is like this term pre-diabetes. It's becoming more and more popularized now. Every patient I see in the morning, you know, I'm an anesthesiologist, I see them, uh, do you have diabetes? Well, I'm pre-diabetic. Well, what does that mean? That means that your labs are, you know, are on a continuum towards diabetes, but you yeah, you know, the switch for diabetes didn't turn on until you hit that one number. And once you hit that number, then you're now diabetic, and now you can get reimbursement for your for your medications. You can get treatment for this, you can get treatment for that. But it's not like diabetes is something that that is a on and off switch. Like it's not like a you know a time at point in time where that disease process uh causes problems or it doesn't. It's a continuum. And so giving optimal ranges, you may have an optimal uh hemoglobin A1C or a fasting glucose level that uh may fall in the quote unquote normal range or this pre-diabetic range or pre-insurance will pay for it range, and you have disease, significant disease going on that should be treated at that point, but it's not going to get reimbursed, it's not going to get looked at, it's not going to be flagged as being abnormal until it crosses that that threshold.

SPEAKER_03 5:44

And the incentive for ever the incentive to ever get that blood test to be the correct blood test is like That's all it's like practically the incentive is zero. Because if it was to if they if they were to open up the door for treatment for prediabetes per se, insurance reimbursed medications.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

Would go away through the roof.

SPEAKER_03 6:04

Go through the roof.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

I'm telling you, like I'd say I'd say at least a good a good 50 to 70 percent of the patients that I see that have that were after the diabetes questions, they say pre-diabetic to it.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Do you know that I had a young patient late 20s who had a A1C of 6.4 and her insurance denied um 6.5 because it has to be. Yeah, because the pr the data, the reference range says it has to be greater than 6.4, and they denied her.

SPEAKER_03 6:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

How close do you want us to get?

SPEAKER_03 6:36

And then um this is exactly right. So I don't know. He I think Dr. Reeves was telling you about uh recently he was working and I got him on the phone. Oh, yes, the opportunity. I got him on the phone and and he's talking. He they're admitting a patient, they're gonna do surgery, right? And in that uh in the background, I hear it's like, okay, this patient's got pressure ulcers, bed sores, right? And I I mean it's just going down the checklist, right? And I'm just like, oh my God. Right. And this is exactly what we're talking about here. Prevent reaction. That patient at one point in time had a hemoglobin A1C of six or five point nine or five point eight or six point one.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

And that patient wasn't treated, was denied treatment because it did not reach that point. So now look at now we're dealing with things at the at a much later stage with you know with where the you know the insulin resistance is through the roof to the point to where she's not healing, she has wound healing, she had this dislocated hip, you know, um pressure source because she can't move, you know, and you know, all of this is a is a metabolic syndrome. Nightmare. Nightmare. Absolute nightmare. But this is what we see every single day is the end result of all these things, and not, you know, um something that has been dealt with and prevented. So optimal labs, if that was the the norm, that lady maybe would still be in the hospital from a dislocated hip, but maybe she wouldn't have the diabetic metabolic syndrome, and she maybe would heal faster and get out of the hospital faster and lower the total cost of care. But that's something that I think is a you know, we have a little bit more work to do to get to that point.

SPEAKER_03 8:06

Aaron Powell Right. Wow. Well it's a lot to think about. Um Steph, when we think about working up patients, what kind of labs are we talking about when we think about that that plus that 35 plus patient? What labs we're going after?

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Aaron Powell So in addition to the baseline C B C, the blood count, the metabolic panel, the A1C, when I think about more metabolic picture, big picture, absolutely a thyroid panel for those patients and the sex hormones. I love to establish a baseline kind of sex hormone panel on a patient 35 or older. We don't know when men are going to enter andropause. We don't know when women are gonna enter perimenopause into menopause. If we had their baseline levels where they were feeling good and asymptomatic, what a great tool that would be to target those numbers when they do go into natural menopause and andropause. Other labs that I would recommend, anyone over 35 to establish more of an adrenal picture, you could draw a DHEA, uh pregnolone level. Those would be kind of telling. We talked about cortisol a little bit, but it's it's not on my the top of my list, but it is definitely worth the conversation with the patient. And some baseline inflammatory markers like uh high sensitivity um high sensitivity CRP, C reactive protein. That'd be great to just establish a baseline.

SPEAKER_03 9:25

Even the regular CRP, I love to use that as a tool just to see what kind of inflammation is in general body. You know, again, the reference range on a C reactive protein, which is an inflammatory blood test, uh the ESR and the CRP are standard inflammatory blood tests. And you know, I think the range on a CRP is like one, the reference range is like one to four or one to five. It should be 0.5. You know what I'm saying? It's like if you're doing things right, it should be 0.5 or 1 or below. I mean, it's just how it should be. And if it's if it's a three or if it's a four, something's going on. It's normal, but something is going on. And likewise with the sex hormone binding globulin that you talked about, if a person's doing pretty well and and their hormones are balanced, they're going to have a low sex hormone binding globulin. But if you've got a really high sex hormone binding globulin, I don't look at it as the lab. I look at it more as that's a symptom of something else is going on. You know, it's almost like a telltale sign that there's something else. Either you're not eating right, um, there there's some type of metabolic disturbance, you're on some type of medication, uh, something like that. I mean, how do you see labs like trending over time? Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

So the actually there's studies that show that um, you know, the typical model of snapshot in time doesn't really give you much. It tells you where the patient is at this particular day, this particular time, but it does not give you the full picture of what is going on with this patient, whether or not they're moving up the healthy curve or down the healthy curve. There's studies that show that doing longitudinal labs and studies uh to see exactly where the patient is over time can increase predictability uh for uh conditions and and diseases up to 50% better than uh snapshot. So the you know, there's evidence there that shows that uh getting trend data is much more superior to uh just a snapshot or single single shot. And you know, um then when you combine that, as we I think we're gonna get into with uh genetic screening and testing, you have a powerful combination there of sequential longitudinal trend uh lab data associated with predictability of potential future uh metabolic or uh medical problems from the genetic screening.

SPEAKER_03 11:40

And and then it comes into the oversight of the labs too, your data, marching it out, looking at the whole thing, but a lot of this is looped into the patient's symptom. What are they originally coming in for? What is their original complaint or the symptom? You know, like two people can have the identity uh uh exact same lab value, but a different symptom. And that triggers like, okay, that lab is associated with that. It's like it can't labs by themselves can't be in a silo either. Right. You know, it's just it's another piece of the data that matches up overall with matches up overall with what you're evaluating what what you know, what's the intake, what's the past medical history, what are the patient's symptoms, what are the other lab presentations show? It's all of these things collectively that matters. You know, when when you have patients that come in, I don't really have patients that are avoiding labs, but I think that you know, we would if if patients are avoiding labs, we would never see the patients. So why do you think patients like patients out there that don't get labs? What do you think what do you think causes it?

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Aaron Powell There's a lot of reasons a patient would defer labs or and and avoid labs. Uh there's a fear, right? Some people have a fear, sure, a fear of needles, it's valid, a fear of what they don't know, they don't want to know what they don't know. But data is power, knowledge is power. I think there's a fear of being overwhelmed by the data. They uh primary care will draw your labs and then they'll never explain them to the patient. They'll say you look good, see you next year, and things are just minutely off by point one or point two. And I've seen patients go down a Google MD search of why is my neutrophil one, you know, one point off, and then it says something crazy like you have cancer. So I think it's they don't know, they're they're afraid of what they don't know. Um, they don't know what they don't know, and no one's there to explain to them what the labs mean. I have another group of patients who don't know how important labs are. This is a minimally invasive, you know, phlebotomy is pretty easy, pretty quick, safe, and it can tell us so much about a patient's underlying and overall health. So I think they don't realize the importance of our labs of labs and how how crucial they are and how much information they can tell us.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

There are some studies out there that show that like patients who are informed about their labs and have this longitudinal uh kind of follow-up, they have better compliance and better adherence and better uh outcomes. Um, you know, because they kind of especially if you, like you said, you know, primary care, traditional primary care doesn't explain what these labs mean. But if sitting down with a patient, taking, you know, when you have the time to be able to explain why this CRP level is this and what it should be. And you know, they understand a little bit. They don't have to understand it at the clinical level, but they understand it in kind of a broader layman's terms. You know, they understand why uh going to the gym three instead of, you know, uh, you know, two days a week is going to be better because I'm looking for these numbers to come down or these numbers to come up. It helps to increase the compliance.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

I can totally see that. Yeah. Like even with patients with elevated hemoglobin A1C and um marginally elevated, even if it's like a six, and you really spend the time and you explain to them what that hemoglobin A1C blood test is and how it's associated with your red blood cells and what it's linked to and the risk of diabetes, and you you stretch the stress the importance to the patient as far as what exercise will do to lower that, eating less carbs and sugars will do. And and if you don't embrace this, this will happen. A lot of patients they'll use that as a tool and they'll be like, and they want to know every 90 days, they want to know what their A1C is.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

And they're Well, you can tell those patients that know, that follow it. And I see it on the other end where they say, oh, my A1C was eight, but it's it's it's down to 6.2 now, or it's down to 5.8. You know, they know their numbers. And it's because it's almost like a like a Hawthorne effect. Like you know, they know that that they're gonna come see you in in three months, and they know that you're gonna be looking at your A1C, and they know that these are the things that Stephanie explained to me that are gonna raise my A1C. I better not, I I don't want to have to face Stephanie with my numbers. So there's a little bit of that game theory competitive stuff in there as well that uh can can assist.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

I definitely use that as the education tool, you know, to show and show them this is pre, this is full-blown diabetes, this is where you could be if you continue your lifestyle. And this is where we want to get you with lifestyle changes. It's very easy for a patient to kind of say, okay, these are the changes I this is what I'm doing, and this is what I need to change. Cholesterol, too. I have that conversation. This is your cholesterol, good versus bad. And then I'll get down to the LDL and I'll say, so how's your diet? I don't want to speculate, but um, they'll say, Well, I do enjoy my ice cream or my cheese. And I'll say those are some, you know, lifestyle modification we can changes that we can make.

SPEAKER_03 16:18

I I'll I'll I'll on the cholesterol piece, I'll actually throw on the other side is like sometimes patients are too concerned about the cholesterol. Yeah. You know, and they're the liper stuff. That's right. You know, and they they're they're not informed about the you know, cholesterol is needed in the body.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Cholesterol is a lot of precursor for all these hormones we are talking about. Trevor Burrus, Jr. That's right. Right. Cholesterol comes in, it becomes cortisol, testosterone, estrogen, it's not all bad.

SPEAKER_03 16:41

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It isn't. And they're sometimes just so concerned about that total number. Oh, it's it's it's it's above 200. I'm like, no, it's it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: But the healthy HDL is the high-density lipoprotein is high. It's good. Your healthy fat is is high. That's a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 16:54

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: You know where that but the you know where that came from was that that um study that they did that started the whole, you know, the whole market for the war on cholesterol. I mean, at that time they were you know, because of that study that was done, I think it was done in the U.K. I think it was a study out of the U.K. and they again put everybody in the study, smokers in everything, all age groups, everything, botch study. And they anything over 200 is bad. If you have a high cholesterol over 200, put on lipitor.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

And I can't tell you every patient I see is on lipidor. And they might don't maybe not don't need it.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

But how is their blood pressure? Because if it's pretty good, I'm not as concerned about that cholesterol, to be honest.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

Aaron Powell So when you work a patient up, like what um like if you ran through the labs and you're working a patient up, what are the um what are overall the preventive preventive lab tests that you are ordering them to patients?

SPEAKER_00 17:42

So preventative CBC complete blood count is gonna look at your white blood cells, your red blood cells, and a break and your platelets and a breakdown of all the different types of white blood cells in the body. Very helpful for underlying inflammation and um infections if there are any, if a patient was just getting over something. So that's very valuable insight. Sometimes I can even suspect an underlying anemia or like deficiency if some of the blood, the blood counts are off the size, shape, and color of the red blood cells are indicated or in the CBC. Comprehensive metabolic panel, liver function, kidney function, and the electrolytes. So that's a big one too. That's very good to know. And there is a correlation between the liver enzymes and the cholesterol and that that diet and nutrition piece too. So that absolutely ties into lifestyle changes and modification. TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone, thyroid panel, huge everyone should get that drawn. Absolutely. The A1C. And I'll have a lot of patients come in younger clients, and I'll be the first provider to ever discuss and draw their hemoglobin A1C. So it's it's unfortunate when I have to tell a young client they have prediabetes or diabetes.

SPEAKER_03 18:50

Yeah. That's a lot it's real. It's real. It's it happens.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Um I'm and like the client I mentioned earlier was in her late 20s. So it's not unheard of. I think those are pretty much the big the big ones.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And probably drop the hormones and then add some hormone. If if you know, like if I think it's just always a good idea to add the hormone panels in there. So they have a hormone test when they're younger, so you can always go back and reference it. And even with the estrogen and progesterone, I you know, like I love to tell the patients to draw it on day 21 of the menstrual cycle. It's just a really nice set point that you can kind of like validate that.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Um and you mentioned context is everything. So not every patient needs every lab drawn. We're really looking at um the context of concerns, symptoms. Establishing a baseline is huge, but I'm not going to draw an anemia panel on everybody if they don't have concerns, and especially if their CBC is normal.

SPEAKER_03 19:43

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

So I'm really paying attention to how they present. I thought of another reason why sometimes patients are kind of deterred from lab draws. It's we our culture and our society puts a lot of pressure on patients to advocate for themselves. And it's hard if you're not medical, it's hard to say, I want you to check my vitamin D level. I want you to check this. So, for example, my husband has been going to our GP every year, and I say, You got to get your thyroid checked. You know, we have a, he has a family history of Hashimoto's hypothyroidism. And every year they check his TSH and it's normal. He didn't know he had to state that his mother had Hashimoto's and they have to actually check that thyroid peroxidase antibody. It's very nuanced. So to walk out of there and say, Yep, my thyroid's good, it's really not they didn't really check what we were kind of targeting. So puts a lot of pressure on the patient to advocate for themselves. Um and it's it's a lot more nuanced than than that.

SPEAKER_03 20:39

And nowadays, uh nowadays, you know, we have the obviously the the traditional lab testing that we're talking about, but the next step, what we're gonna see in the future, and we and we do some of this at our clinic is the genetic aspect of testing. And I think that that's and we alluded this to this a little bit in some other episodes, but that's gonna be the game changer in long-term medicine. You know, nowadays we use um we use an organization to test genetic testing um through uh an organization called uh Extending Me. And quite honestly, for the listeners out there, ExtendingMe.com, any of you could go on there and order your own genetic testing if you wanted any type of specific blueprint of the future. And they do everything from brain health, looking at the potential and risk factors for Alzheimer's. They have two different ones for that. Um looking at dementia, longevity aspects, a psychological panel that can look if you're taking certain medications with medications would work best for your certain psychological diagnosis, perhaps depression or anxiety. They also have a lot of food intolerance ones, would look at how you digest macronutrients, um, whether you can handle it. I've learned when I did my food tolerance test, I learned that uh I don't process uh multigrain carbohydrates very well. I had no idea. I mean, I would have never you know, you walk around thinking multigrains are healthy. But um my genome type just doesn't do very well on multi-grain products. So there's a lot of value in that thinking like long term. I I love the um they also have the uh really great genetic testing now that does the um the biological aging aspect, chronological versus biological aging, the epigenetic test. It's kind of interesting because if you have this done, you can kind of see the rate at which your genome type. I hope I'm saying this correct. This is but uh it's kind of what it does is it looks at the methylation of your genome type at the rate of which you're methylating your genomes. And by doing that, you can kind of measure like, are you aging faster than your genetic says you should be aging? Um it's kind of useful. I mean, you have anything to add on that?

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Well, no, I think that that's uh it's it's a new insight in terms of um what we're able to see in terms of very nuanced things. For example, like we talked about like uh the hormone replacement you know, categories. There's some genetic variable variants that certain types of medications will work better than others. Like you said, about the in food intolerance things. So a lot of things that we can get, insight that we can get from these genetic tests that can allow us to make these more precise changes in terms of uh treatment or um or um uh lifestyle changes that can dramatically improve uh the longevity of our life. And it's relatively new now, it's kind of getting more popularized. And the more popularized it gets, the cost for doing these tests are coming down. Um just a year ago, I you know, the costs were probably about 50-60% higher than they are now. So it's gradually coming, excuse me, coming down more and more and making it more affordable. And you know, like I said, we're doing it here to be able to be more proactive uh with patients. But I think this is a good opportunity in the future to where we can actually do even better than uh what we're doing. And I think that the functional um and precision medicine clinics are be the ones at the forefront of this, and it's gonna create that gap between traditional medicine and uh clinics like this, you know, even wider in the coming years.

SPEAKER_03 24:03

Aaron Powell Yeah, I like to say like uh regular biomarker lab tests like hormones, CBC, A1C, that's here and now current with trending potential. So you can see where you're going. But then the genetic piece is the blueprint for the future. So you can, if you put those two things together, you piece current labs with trending trending and the genetic component, that is precision medicine. That is when you're bringing everything to the front. And that when you think about the genetic aspect of this, you can you want to do it as young as you can. You want to do the genetic testing early on in life that you can turn the ship. So if there's some things you can do at an early age, you should get the genetic testing done as soon. Because if you wait till you're 70 years old to do genetic testing, you have a limited, limited shot group here to uh try to try to turn the ship and influence where you're headed anyway. So do you guys have anything else?

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Aaron Powell No, I completely agree that data is knowledge and knowledge is power.

SPEAKER_03 24:56

Aaron Powell That's right. Yeah. So um I just would like to encourage everyone out there, don't wait till you're sick to get labs. Okay. Don't be intimidated by them. It's not that big a deal. Be an advocate for blood testing, request labs. Keep in mind a lot of times your insurance carriers will not pay for the blood work that you actually want to get. Uh but if you're informed and educated, there are a lot of clinics out there that will get you the blood test that you want to. And it's not uh it's not an affordability problem. A lot of these lab tests can be done at a very, very reasonable level. And um I want to thank each and every one of you from for attending and listening to our show today. And if you enjoyed the show, make sure you click the subscribe button below, and we'll see you on the next episode.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Thanks for joining us on Vitality Unfiltered with David Powder. Addressing norms, busting myths, and uncovering health realities for a more vibrant life today. For more expert insights and real talk, make sure to subscribe and join us next time.