AMA #14: What lab tests can (and cannot) inform us about our overall objective of longevity

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
Hey everyone, welcome to a sneak peek, Ask Me Anything or AMA episode of the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. At the end of this short episode, I'll explain how you can access the AMA episodes in full, along with a ton of other membership benefits we've created. Or you can learn more now by going to peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe. So without further delay, here's today's sneak peek of the Ask Me Anything episode.
Hey, everyone, welcome to another Ask Me Anything or AMA episode. This is number 14 In one of our previous AMAs, I mentioned how I like to think about lab ranges, and I might look at them in a way that's not necessarily congruent with the way the labs themselves talk about them. And I talked about doing potentially an episode about looking at labs and such. So this is that episode. So this is a pretty big topic, and we actually didn't cover as much as I thought we would before we ran out of time on this episode. So in this episode, I talk very broadly, but I think comprehensively and in a manner that's helpful to think about labs, about my framework for what labs can inform and what they can't inform.
And again, even though that took longer than I thought it would take, I don't think it makes sense to get into this discussion without starting with a foundation. And so I think you'll find that interesting and hopefully, it's the type of thing you don't have to go back and revisit over and over again. But sitting through it once is a really good way to say, okay, if I'm going to go to the trouble of doing advanced testing, what am I learning? And just as importantly, what am I not learning?
We then go into a couple of cases around cardiovascular disease.
And that's pretty much where we run out of time on this episode. It goes by really quick. And what we're going to do is come back and just pick it up on the same thread going into other sorts of cases. So at the end of this episode, I talk about what we're going to come back and visit. And of course, if based on this episode, you have specific types of lab questions or scenarios, maybe as a more important way to think about it that you want to dive into, please let us know. And we can obviously add that to subsequent episodes. So before I start, I have to obviously give the obligatory disclaimer, which is that this podcast is for general informational purposes only. It does not constitute the practice of medicine, including the giving of medical advice. The use of this information and the materials linked to it in the podcast are at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they have.
So with that said, and without further delay, I hope you enjoy AMA number 14

**Bob Kaplan** (2:54)
Hello, podcasters. Welcome to another Ask Me Anything with Peter Attia. This is your host, Bob Kaplan, asking your burning questions.
This time around, we've compiled the many questions you have on the topic of lab tests. I know Peter has answered a few questions here and there, and actually on her first AMA, he discussed some of the best lab tests for assessing overall longevity.
We can possibly revisit some of those, but either way we'll be sure to include that information in the show notes.
Peter has also left a lot of breadcrumbs in podcasts and interviews where he'll discuss ranges and cutoffs he likes to see on a given test. And those values might not always reflect the ones you might see on the report that you get back from a lab. So I've actually gathered a bunch of those ranges. So one thing we can do is throw those into the show notes of the episodes, so they're all in one place. If you put those two topics together, many people essentially want to know what are the tests that I should be getting and what do the specific results of those tests tell me. A number of the questions we've received really feed into the broader question of, how does Peter think about labs, both as a patient himself and as a doctor who treats patients? What does a lab test actually tell you? What does it not tell you? Where can you be fooled? How often should I get a particular test? How can one lab test inform another lab test? What's the difference between normal and optimal? What tests are most useful? What tests are useless? Why are we doing these tests in the first place? So those are all listener questions.