 Being on the carnivore diet for six years now, one of the most popular requests I get is for blood work, and that's understandable considering most people have been told that meat is bad for them their entire lives, plus there are plenty of vegans looking to discredit the carnivore diet at any chance they may get. The first thing to consider here is that blood work is supposed to be used as a marker for potential underlying issues in the person's diet and or lifestyle. It's not necessarily an indicator of overall health, as many people want to believe. The second thing is the reference ranges. How can we actually say that these are applicable to every single person in the population if they are based off of conventional wisdom, primarily grain and plant-based diets that are low in animal foods? Not only that, in a lot of cases these numbers tend to be incorrect. The reference range for vitamin D3 on blood work, for example, is 20 nanograms per milliliter to 100 nanograms per milliliter. You couldn't actually get your vitamin D3 to 100. It would be impossible. I think you would have to be in the sun for like 15 hours a day for a month straight, and even then your levels would not be that high. To get your levels below 20, you have to not be in the sun for about 10 years. So the variants in vitamin D3 levels on blood work definitely leave something to be desired. So all of that being said, as much as I don't think blood work is a good indicator for your overall health, there are definite things it can tell us from where your hormone levels are, and there are numbers where your D3 is supposed to be. It just might not be in line with conventional wisdom, and there's things like checking on electrolytes as well that are very important to look at. So if you guys want to follow along, I did post a link to these scan documents in the description. I have blood work from about a month ago, and then I have blood work from a year ago, both in December, and a year ago in December of 2017, I actually got blood work twice. So we're going to see some interesting variation in my cholesterol levels over a two-week period. But we're going to start on the first page with the hematology, and the only real thing to touch on here is the hemoglobin because so many people are concerned about high iron levels on the carnivore diet, but my hemoglobin has been dead in the middle the whole time I've been on this diet, 14.7 on a scale of 12.3 to 16. It's never been low. It's never been high. I'm curious why people get concerned about high iron levels on the carnivore diet. I guess people don't understand that the reason iron doesn't get absorbed in the bloodstream is because of a lack of other vitamins that are usually present in animal foods. But when you get a high iron consumption without a high vitamin A consumption, absorption can definitely be inhibited to some degree. The next page of the chemistry does contain the cholesterol and the triglycerides, but we'll touch on that when we get to the lipid panel. My glucose is good. It's 80 on a scale of 70 to 105. Electrolytes look good. My CO2 content is a bit low, and my bun is also a bit high. And that's because I was dehydrated when I went to get this blood test. If we look at my bun from a year ago, it's perfectly normal. It's 14 on a scale of 6 to 20, so there's nothing irregular here. You guys are concerned about calcium on the carnivore diet. My calcium levels are 9.4 on a scale of 8.6 to 10.2. And according to the calcium RDA, I haven't hit it in about probably 10 years now. So definitely something to be said about the importance of vitamin K2 and vitamin D3 in the diet. On to the lipid panel. So my cholesterol is 319 on a scale of 125 to 240. The reason it's high is because my LDL is 240 when the recommended amount is below 150. Triglycerides are good. HDL is good. So I'm not going to sit here and debate that LDL is not associated with heart disease. There are plenty of studies showing that statin companies and various people have misled data. The whole cholesterol hypothesis in general is based on injecting rabbits with cholesterol. So I'm not going to go into that. There's plenty of research that I will link in the description. And maybe I will do a future video on that. What I want to focus on here is my anecdotal experiences with cholesterol. And my LDL has been high since I was a teenager. I remember when I was like 18, I went to the doctor's office and they literally wanted to put me on statins when I was 18 years old. And my cholesterol wasn't even that high. My LDL is usually around 225. I looked at the doctor like he was crazy. I have no idea how these people can try to sell statins to 20-year-olds with a straight face. I've looked into clinical trials for statins and there is no proof that statins lower rates of heart disease. In older populations, they actually increase heart disease mortality. It's really, really crazy. But a year ago, I had some blood work done and my LDL was 380 on December 9th of 2017. Two weeks later, my LDL dropped 125 points to 255. My triglycerides also went up 60 points. So if there's that much variance in cholesterol and triglycerides over a two-week period, how can we say that this blood work is an indicator of anything? If I just ate oatmeal for two weeks and my cholesterol went down to like 100, would you guys suddenly say I'm perfectly healthy? It doesn't make any sense. Dave Feldman did a ton of research on this. If you haven't checked out his stuff, the cholesterol code, that guy's probably tested his blood I think a thousand times now. He does experiments with fasting, with high fat intake, exercise and how it affects blood cholesterol readings. Really interesting stuff. Overall, anyone with an understanding of cholesterol and nutrition knows that things like triglyceride levels and LDL particle count are much more important indicators. I wish, honestly, I wish I could afford those tests. I don't have good insurance right now and I am trying to get a better full-time job so that I do have better insurance coverage. So maybe in the future, I can get some more extensive testing done. But at the moment, this is what we have. So on to my testosterone. Then Frankie Ferry Boy, what's going on? Your testosterone levels are higher than Gorilla Dr. Sean Baker, deadlifting 800 pounds. I don't think I need to explain why his testosterone levels are so low. But what's interesting for me is back in 2017, my serum testosterone was 142 on a scale of 264 to 916 and my free testosterone was 2.9 on a scale of 9.3 to 26.5, abysmally So now my free testosterone is 10.8 on a scale of 5 to 20 and 538 on a scale of 240 to 950. Now before you say, well, Frank, what did you do to triple your testosterone levels? This might be a flaw in the blood work. I want to get my levels tested again. And if they are high, I can say for sure that the changes I made in my diet as well as my exercise routine contributed to higher testosterone levels is pretty much increasing my zinc content through a lot of shellfish as well as consuming high cholesterol foods. So when I get some more blood work done, maybe I'll do a video in the future on increasing testosterone naturally if it actually works. So overall, I unfortunately do not have a lot of the blood work that I would like to look at. I would have loved to get my vitamin D3 tested, more extensive lipid panels, things like that. But right now I'm pretty happy my testosterone is better, kind of getting to where I want it to be. My cholesterol levels have been the same for like the past 10 years, so don't really care about that. But one thing I want you guys to understand is that I do not give half of a, you know, about blood work. To me, how I feel, the food I put in my body, my exercise, that is all that matters to me. Yes, blood work can tell me if my vitamin D3 levels are where they need to be. It can tell me if my hormones are where they need to be. It can tell me if I'm salting my food too much and my electrolytes are out of balance. There are many indicators that are important in blood work, but for the most part, it's used to sell people drugs, unfortunately. So thank you guys for watching. If you guys would like to support the channel, please subscribe and share the video. If you guys want to check out my Amazon shop, I do have a bunch of products on there. I am also selling some hygiene products. If you guys haven't checked those out, deodorant, toothpaste, lip balm on my website, frank-de-fano.com. In addition to that, if you guys would like to reach out to me for one-on-one health consultations, maybe you do want to know what optimal vitamin D3 levels are, things like that, you can shoot me an email or contact me through the form on my website. Everything is in the description.