20 Labs You Should Question
I’ve become deeply concerned about the labs industry. Ever notice how there are more and more of them? And the lab results lead millions of people straight to the pharmacy.
Modern medicine has become obsessed with lab tests—not just for diagnosing disease, but for creating new “conditions” that feed a trillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry.
Some of these tests were developed not because they saved lives—but because they sold drugs. Welcome to the era of disease-mongering by lab work.
It’s a brilliant marketing ploy, because all you have to do is tell someone they have a lab value that is too high or low–and the vast majority of people will sign up for hundreds or thousands of dollars’ worth of further testing or treatment.
Even if it means going into debt. They are quickly and easily convinced that something is “wrong” with them. But your labs can vary widely. Within a day, within a week–and what’s “healthy range” for you might be different for someone else.
For instance, I have had “low iron” my whole life. Randomly, living in Park City (my only theory), my labs for iron were suddenly very high. But just a few times, and then they came down to my normal low-baseline. I did nothing about it, because by then, I’d started to seriously question labs.
Then, recently, I was told I had 20 times higher CRP (an inflammatory lab biomarker) than is normal. So high that only smokers had inflammation that high. This made no sense to me, as I do not smoke, and I play pickleball almost every day, and I don’t even have so much as a joint that hurts.
Got the lab again and–voila!–super low inflammation. Even my nurse practitioner said, “happens all the time.”
Here are 20 of the most controversial or overused lab tests that too often lead healthy people down a path of unnecessary medication, fear, and long-term dependency on some drug, and on getting retested annually or even more often.
So let me run through these 20 labs, and I’ll tell you what the lab is, what it supposedly finds, what class of drugs it pushes, and why this is a red flag at best, and an outright scam at worst.
1. DEXA Bone Scan
What it “finds”: Osteopenia or osteoporosis (until the DEXA scan was invented, just 35 years ago, nobody had ever even heard of osteopenia). But, never fear, there are drugs for it! It may not make sense to you that taking chemical or petrochemical drugs preserve your bone mass, and it doesn’t make sense to me, either, but–well, that’s what we do.
No one has ever even validated if the light refraction technique used in the DEXA scan even actually measures bone density. In fact, strangely, the vast majority of bone fractures occur in the top quartile of DEXA bone scans–so, according to DEXA, the strongest bones.
We don’t prescribe people to eat more leafy greens and do some impact exercise, even walking, for instance, because it works, but what a doctor will usually tell you is, “We tell patients to do it, but they just won’t.” So, drug them instead.
What the DEXA bone scan pushes? Bisphosphonate drugs (Fosamax, Boniva.
Why it’s a red flag: Turns natural bone thinning of aging into a “disease.” Osteopenia isn’t even a real pathology—it’s a made-up label to prescribe drugs that can cause jaw necrosis and femur fractures.
And most doctors don’t know this. They believe the marketing since 1990 just like you probably do. Dentists found out accidentally that jaw necrosis, or a dying jaw BONE, is one of the effects of taking biphosphonate drugs. Let’s think about that for just a few seconds, it won’t take long: an adverse event of taking a drug to strengthen your bones is–that your jaw bone dies, and rots.
2. PSA (Prostate-Specific Antigen) lab test
What it “finds”: Possible prostate cancer
What it pushes: Biopsies, surgery, hormone blockers (often men are not told that when they undergo these procedures, they’ll never have sex again)
Why it’s a red flag: The PSA test has an outrageously high false-positive rate. Many men undergo life-altering procedures for slow-growing cancers they’d never die from. The developer of the PSA test himself tried to walk it back–but, too late, it was already big business, and his test is still used widely, with millions of men chemically castrated, like both my father and father-in-law have been, both in their 80’s, when the prostate cancer is highly unlikely to be the thing that kills them.
3. Total Cholesterol lab test
What it “finds”: “High” cholesterol
What it pushes: Statin drugs
Why it’s a red flag: Oversimplifies a complex system. Statins are often given based on flawed targets, with little benefit in low-risk people, and in fact, potential harm. Because statin drugs simply do not work: they do not reduce the incidence of cardiac events, massive studies show, even though they may create an impression of a benefit, by lowering a biomarker.
4. Hemoglobin A1C (in borderline cases)
What it “finds”: Prediabetes
What it pushes: Metformin, Ozempic, and newer glucose-lowering drugs
Why it’s a red flag: “Prediabetes” is a slippery slope. The fix is in our diet and lifestyle—not lifelong meds. I was told in my 20’s, eating burgers and fries and Diet Coke every day, that I was prediabetic–and changed my diet, and have had optimal blood-sugar labs ever since.
5. Vitamin D Testing
What it “finds”: “Deficiency”
What it pushes: High-dose D3 supplements or prescriptions
Why it’s a red flag: Labs vary wildly. Deficiency cutoffs are hotly debated—and synthetic D without magnesium or K2 can create new problems. Since cholecalciferol isn’t actually the secosteroid hormone the body makes, and K2 is made from coal tar, only similar to the nutrient in the body due to some molecules in common.
I’ve written extensively about the fraud that is “Vitamin D” supplementation, so I’ll leave this longer topic, but link you to my most important articles down below, so you can go deeper, if you’ve been taking cholecalciferol, believing that you have a “deficiency.”
6. TSH Only (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone)
What it “finds”: Hypothyroidism
What it pushes: Levothyroxine
Why it’s a red flag: TSH alone is a narrow lens. Millions are over- or under-medicated because full thyroid panels aren’t run. To actually ascertain if you aren’t making an adequate amount of thyroid hormone, more tests are needed, as there are downstream and upstream precursor hormones, which all play a role.
I’ve found, in going to now 9 bioidentical hormone practitioners over the last 25 years, also called “natural hormone replacement practitioners,” so you can Google them in your area, that they’re all kind of winging it; there’s very little “standard of care” nailed down; it’s a young art and science; and so they’re just kind of “all over the map.” That said, I’d still choose one of them, versus regular M.D.’s who will mostly just take the TSH test alone, and potentially prescribe inaccurately a drug that isn’t molecularly the same that your body makes. I’ve found the best ones among nurse practitioners who focus entirely on bioidentical hormone replacement. And, I don’t take the “vitamin D” or fish oil they try to sell you.
7. Mammograms (this is a screening test, not a lab technically, but I’m including it here anyway)
What it “finds”: DCIS, benign masses
What it pushes: Surgery, radiation, fear
Why it’s a red flag: High false-positives and overdiagnosis of “cancer” that may never become dangerous. Most functional and integrative doctors will tell you that your body produces aberrant growths many times during your life, the vast majority of the time also metabolizing it effectively so you never knew it was even there.
So, mammograms both cause breast cancer with their radioactive waves, and also diagnose SO early, that stage 0 and stage 1 breast cancers your body would have just resolved on its own get overtreated. Also putting women into a state of panic, destroying their quality of life.
8. LDL Particle Size Testing
What it “finds”: “Pattern B” LDL
What it pushes: Cholesterol meds even beyond statins
Why it’s a red flag: Often this is a cherry-picked lab in boutique clinics and used to over-treat marginal risk.
9. MTHFR & Genetic SNP Panels
What it “finds”: Genetic variants (of a gene we all have, but they don’t tell you that)
What it pushes: Special supplements or meds
Why it’s a red flag: Associations ≠ causation. You’re not broken just because your genes aren’t “ideal” according to very incipient awareness of the human genome.
10. “Low T” Hormone Panels
What it “finds”: Slight testosterone drops (which are often just normal aging)
What it pushes: Testosterone replacement–pellets, oral, creams, various delivery methods
Why it’s a red flag: Used to sell expensive therapies with risks of stroke, infertility, prostate issues. And patients are usually not told of these risks, and men often think taking testosterone will make them an animal at the gym, or better in the sack, and generally neither is true–plus, excessive testosterone has caused many problems, not least of which is road rage and divorce.
11. Adrenal Fatigue Panels
What it “finds”: Cortisol dysregulation
What it pushes: Hormones or supplements
Why it’s a red flag: The condition is not even recognized by conventional medicine. Often used as a catch-all to sell supplement protocols, particularly petrochemical-based “Vitamin B Complex.” And more awareness is growing that there’s an interaction of the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal gland, rather than this myth about “adrenal fatigue” there is no strong evidence of.
12. C-Reactive Protein (CRP)
What it “finds”: Inflammation
What it pushes: Statins or anti-inflammatory drugs
Why it’s a red flag: Extremely nonspecific. Elevated CRP can mean you exercised yesterday or have a cold. I recently had 20x higher CRP than I’d ever had before, or that is considered normal, and when I asked my practitioner if he thought I had cancer or something, because I wasn’t puffy anywhere, no joints hurt, I felt fine–his response was,
“No, this is a biomarker that I see a lot of fluctuations in, so I’d rather you just get another test in a few months.” So that’s another $65 and drive across town, and taking a whole vial of blood when they just need a drop. And I’ve seen so much in my research, that I’m not losing any sleep over it.
13. IgG Food Sensitivity Panels
What it “finds”: Dozens of “reactive” foods
What it pushes: Elimination diets, supplements
Why it’s a red flag: IgG reflects exposure, not intolerance. As in, it’s telling you what you ate yesterday or two days ago–it’s not telling you what you shouldn’t eat. So it often leads to unnecessary restriction and fear. One year, just for the sake of science, I got three different food sensitivity tests done, and each of them told me completely different foods I was supposedly sensitive to. There wasn’t a single overlapping food. Leading me to not value these tests much at all. And they aren’t cheap!
14. Antinuclear Antibodies (ANA)
What it “finds”: Autoimmune warning flags
What it pushes: Immunosuppressant drugs
Why it’s a red flag: Positive ANA is common in healthy people—especially women. Context is everything. This lab test is the perfect example of how lab tests are proliferating and the people doing the blood draws and evaluations really don’t know much of anything about the validity of the test, so they scare people for no reason.
15. Homocysteine
What it “finds”: Cardiovascular risk
What it pushes: High-dose B vitamins (which are generally made of tar and other petrochemicals, acids and other chemicals, and lab-grown bacteria)--no food at all is involved in 99% of the products sold as Vitamin B.
Why it’s a red flag: The fix isn’t always necessary, and its role in actual disease is still unclear.
16. Insulin Resistance Panels (in non-diabetics)
What it “finds”: Mild insulin resistance
What it pushes: Metformin, GLP-1 drugs
Why it’s a red flag: Medicalizes lifestyle issues. Diet and exercise are more effective and more sustainable, to fix the problem rather than put duct tape over the warning light in the dash.
17. Celiac Antibodies Without Symptoms
What it “finds”: Possible celiac
What it pushes: Gluten-free diets, sometimes colon biopsies
Why it’s a red flag: Many positives are false or irrelevant; gluten avoidance isn’t always helpful, as processed gluten-free cookies, for instance, might be made of high-arsenic rice flour.
18. Bone Turnover Markers (NTX/CTX)
What it “finds”: Bone metabolism speed
What it pushes: Stronger osteoporosis meds
Why it’s a red flag: Not standardized and highly variable—and labs are often overinterpreted.
19. Lipoprotein(a)
What it “finds”: Cardiovascular risk
What it pushes: PCSK9 inhibitor drugs, niacin (supposedly a B vitamin, that makes your face turn red and makes some people throw up, due to the so-called vitamin being so toxic)
Why it’s a red flag: Genetic and not well modifiable. No drug has been proven to reduce events just by lowering Lp(a).
20. Perimenopause Hormone Panels in Women
What it “finds”: Fluctuating estrogen, progesterone
What it pushes: HRT, antidepressants
Why it’s a red flag: Hormones naturally fluctuate daily. One-time testing often leads to misdiagnosis and overtreatment.
To sum up what we learned from a quick run-through of 20 labs, in an environment where doctors love to prescribe labs and patients love to get them, because they think it tells them the status of their health: you deserve informed consent.
Lab tests should inform—not scare you into dependency. If your lab work comes with a prescription but no lifestyle discussion, that’s a big red flag.
If you’d like to see this article in video form, here it is:
Thank you for supporting my blog. Today I used chatGPT extensively, and wanted to disclose that. Please be aware you have lots of information available to you now that you never did before, and so it’s completely unnecessary that we rely on nothing more than a doctor’s prescription or recommendation after spending all of 7 minutes with you. You shouldn’t be mocked for learning more online about diagnoses, prescriptions, and drug adverse events! Sometimes artificial intelligence knows things your own doctor may not.
References
Vitamin D Supplements Are Rat Poison
“Vitamin D’ Pills Deplete Your Minerals
I'm so unbelievably confused. I'm seeing a functional medicine doctor in Florida who's helping me resolve my life long gut issues and heart palpitations due to hiatal hernia syndrome that he says I have. My blood panels showed very low D, magnesium, and B, so naturally, he's got me taking all of them in supplements.
Should I stop taking them? Should I send him this article? Please, I'm kindly asking for help. Thanks!
Are you still taking Ultimate Minerals?