tried ApoB for 18 weeks. here is what happened.
tried ApoB for 18 weeks. here is what happened, which sounds obvious until you try to state the evidence for it.
To save the first four comments: 18 weeks.
Compared two draws across two labs and spent a week worrying before finding out the assays were different.
Added ApoB to the panel after a thread here. It told me something the standard lipid panel had been hiding.
If somebody has the same thing measured a different way, post it next to mine and we will see whether they agree.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Repeat testing before acting is standard practice for a reason: regression to the mean does a lot of work on single outlying values.
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Brought the whole set to my clinician rather than one flagged value. Completely different conversation.
Same view — ApoB if you add one thing. It answers a question the standard panel only gestures at.
Right, and weight loss itself moves several markers, so attribution is harder than these threads assume.
Did anything else change in that window — training, intake, hydration?
Disagree with reading anything into that. One value, one morning, and you changed two other things in the same window.
Not convinced by the attribution. Weight loss alone moves that marker and you have no way to separate the two.
Not convinced by the attribution.
This is the sentence to read before anybody panics about a single value.
Reference intervals are typically the central 95% of a reference population. By construction one person in twenty falls outside one on any given test without anything being wrong.
Agreed on assay changes. A lab switching platforms between your draws is invisible unless you ask.
The confounding problem, stated plainly, because this board keeps stepping on it.
Substantial weight loss moves lipids, liver enzymes, insulin sensitivity markers and several others in its own right. If you are losing weight while taking something, any change in those markers has at least two candidate explanations and you cannot separate them from your own panel.
What you can do is standardise, take a baseline, keep the series long, and be honest in your posts about what is and is not attributable. The threads that say "this compound did X to my TSH" almost never have the design to support the claim, mine included.
How many weeks between the two measurements?
ApoB counts atherogenic particles rather than the cholesterol they carry, which is why it can diverge from LDL-C and why it is the addition most worth making.
Different laboratories use different assay platforms with different calibration. Comparing across labs adds a systematic offset that is invisible on the report.
ApoB counts atherogenic particles rather than the cholesterol they carry, which is why it can diverge from LDL-C and why it is the addition most worth
Disagreeing with this bit: that change is confounded by the weight loss itself and cannot be attributed.
- 1Repeat testing before acting is standard practice for a reason: regression…10 comments in this branch · started by u/emeka_chowdhury