Why Knowing These Values Can Help You Stay Younger and Stronger Longer
You know your phone number, your passwords, even the mileage on your car. But do you know the most important numbers for your health?
When it comes to your health, standard lab tests often leave crucial insights hidden. Are we really looking at the right markers and are the lab ranges truly reflective of health? I don’t think so. If this were true we won’t have the highest rates of chronic disease ever.
Even if your results fall within “normal” ranges, you might still feel less than your best—fatigue, aches and pains, skin troubles, digestive discomfort, headaches, sleep issues, or other chronic symptoms that just won’t go away. Sound familiar? The conventional model may shrug it off as “just getting older,” but a functional approach knows there might be chronic inflammation at play.
A functional approach focuses on optimal ranges to identify inflammation and imbalances early, helping prevent disease and promoting vitality—not just diagnosing illness once it’s advanced.
What Is Inflammaging?
Inflammaging is the slow-burning fire that accelerates the aging process. Unlike the helpful inflammation your body uses to heal cuts or fight infections, inflammaging works silently, wearing you down over time. It’s the sneaky culprit behind wrinkles, brain fog, heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, mood swings, skin issues, and even cognitive decline.
The good news? You don’t have to accept inflammaging as inevitable. By keeping an eye on the right health markers, you can spot inflammation early and prevent lasting damage.
How Does Inflammaging Develop?
Your lifestyle plays a starring role in inflammaging. Here’s how:
- Poor Diet: Processed foods, sugar, fructose overload, and unhealthy fats fuel the fire of inflammation.
- Chronic Stress: An overactive nervous system and cortisol imbalances keep your body on high alert, disrupting immune balance and inviting inflammation to stick around.
- Environmental Toxins: Pollution, chemicals, and heavy metals create oxidative stress, accelerating cellular aging.
- Gut Health Issues: When you lose the ability to digest and absorb your food well you create dysbiosis and/or leaky gut lowering your nutrient status, increasing your toxic burden which then sends inflammatory molecules throughout your body.
- Lack of Exercise: Movement plays a vital role in flushing out toxins and muscle mass is important for cellular energy production, both are critical for keep inflammation at bay.
Listening to your body’s symptoms is key. However, our healthcare system hasn’t done a great job of educating us about these signals look like. This is why getting these labs checked at least once a year is important.
A Root Cause Functional Solution
Functional medicine targets the root causes of inflammaging through personalized interventions, including anti-inflammatory nutrition, nervous system regulation, and toxin elimination. Regular monitoring of these markers ensures your body stays in an optimal state of health as you age.
Let’s explore nine key markers that could hold the secret to resolving your symptoms and supporting a healthier, younger you.
1. High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (hsCRP)
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- What It Is: A substance made by the liver in response to inflammation.
- Why It Matters: While many doctors focus on cholesterol for heart disease risk, research shows that measuring inflammation is a better predictor. hsCRP is more sensitive than CRP in spotting low-grade inflammation.
- Functional Range: <1.0 mg/L (even 1-3 mg/L suggests low-grade inflammation). Levels above 3.0 mg/L indicate significant inflammation, often linked to sugar, bad fats, leaky gut, or toxins.
2. Uric Acid
- What It Is: A breakdown product of purines (from DNA/RNA), found in cells and certain foods like red meat, seafood, and alcohol.
- Why It Matters: Though commonly associated with gout, elevated uric acid levels also correlate with cardiovascular risks, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes.
- Functional Range: Women: 3–4.7 mg/dL; Men: 3.5–5.4 mg/dL. Levels above 6.0 mg/dL suggest metabolic dysfunction.
3. Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR)
- What It Is: A measure of how quickly red blood cells settle in a test tube, indicating inflammation.
- Why It Matters: Elevated ESR provides a general picture of inflammation or infection, though it doesn’t specify the source.
- Functional Range: <5 mm/hr for men; <10 mm/hr for women.
4. Vitamin D (25-Hydroxy Vitamin D)
- What It Is: Vitamin D is a hormone precursor that pretty much everyone I see is deficient in. Many doctors overlook this critical immune modulator even in people with chronic conditions.
- Why It Matters: low levels can indicate inflammation. A systemic review of the effects of Vitamin D supplementation on hospitalized Covid-19 patients found that vitamin D supplementation is effective in reducing COVID-19 severity(R).
- Functional Range: 50–80 ng/mL
5. Homocysteine
- What It Is: An amino acid linked to B-vitamin deficiencies when elevated. (B12, B9, B6, methyl donors)
- Why It Matters: High levels promote inflammation, damage blood vessels, and increase cardiovascular risk.
- Optimal Range: 4–7.2 µmol/L.
6. LDH (Lactate Dehydrogenase)
- What It Is: An enzyme found in all living cells and it’s job is to help support energy production especially when oxygen is limited.
- Why It Matters: Elevated levels may indicate inflammation.
- Optimal Range: 140-200 IU/L
7. Ferritin
- What It Is: An iron storage protein and the most reliable indicator of iron status in the body.
- Why It Matters: When elevated it can be indicative of inflammation, liver disease, autoimmune and cancer.
- Optimal Range: 45-79 ug/L
8. Fasting Insulin
- What It Is: Insulin is the hormone released by the pancreas in response to rising blood glucose levels and decreases blood glucose by transporting glucose into the cells.
- Why It Matters: High fasting insulin is your earliest indicator of metabolic dysfunction. When people lose their ability to utilize insulin to drive blood glucose into cells, their insulin levels increase. This is known as insulin resistance. The excess insulin and excess blood glucose are associated with greater risk of heart attack, stroke, metabolic syndrome and diabetes.
- Optimal Range: 2- 5 uIU/ml
9. HbA1C (Glycated Hemoglobin)
- What It Is: A three-month average of blood sugar levels.
- Why It Matters: High A1C reflects poor glucose control. Chronic high blood sugar impairs oxygen transport and accelerates aging.
- Optimal Range: 4.6–5.3%.
Where to Order These Labs:
To be clear, I’m recommending these in addition to your normal routine labs which ideally would include:
- Comprehensive metabolic panel
- Complete Blood Count w/ Differential (CBC w/Diff)
- NMR Lipid panel (Total Cholesterol, LDL, HDL, Triglycerides, LDL-p, small LDL, medium LDL, large LDL, Lp (a), Apo B )
- Complete Thyroid Panel (TSH, Free T3, Free T4, Total T4, Total T3, rT3, T3 Uptake, TPO Antibiodies, TG Antibodies)
- Full Iron Panel (iron, ferritin, TIBC, UIBC, % Saturation)
If your doctor will not order them for you or you’d just like to order them on your own CLICK HERE . If you haven’t had your labs done in a while and are interested in a comprehensive suite of lab markers for heart, liver, kidneys, electrolytes, and immune regulation click here for men and here for women.
By identifying and addressing these markers early, you can stay younger and stronger longer. Functional Health is about optimizing health—not just treating disease.
