How Blood Tests Are Conducted

Where the samples are taken

Blood panels are drawn by a phlebotomist and processed by an accredited laboratory. Nothing on this site is a home blood test beyond the finger-prick ketone meter. The laboratory's own reference ranges are reported alongside the results.

Conditions

Samples are taken fasted, in the morning, before anything other than water. Because a fasting day changes glucose, insulin, electrolytes and liver markers within hours, the fasting state at the time of the draw is part of the result and is recorded with it.

What is tracked

• Glucose and insulin, and the derived insulin-sensitivity markers
• Full lipid panel
• Liver and kidney function
• Full blood count
• Electrolytes
• Inflammatory and hormonal markers where the panel includes them

The baseline

Laboratory panels from the five years before the project began are published alongside the new ones. That pre-project series is the most useful thing in the dataset: it shows what this body's normal variation looked like before any fasting days existed, which is the only honest way to judge whether a change during the year is unusual.

What this measurement cannot tell you

A single reading is close to meaningless on its own. What matters is the shape of the series across a year, read alongside the fasting schedule, sleep, training and the notes for that week. Nothing on this site is presented as evidence that fasting caused a change: this is one person, with no control condition, and many things change over a year besides the fasting days.