Lab tests

I'm 28 and decided it was time to "take care of my health."

Being a product person, I approached it systematically. Opened the lab's website, selected the "Complete Body Checkup" package. 47 markers, tumor markers, hormones, vitamins. $500. Health is important, right?

Got the results. 3 markers outside reference range. 1 tumor marker slightly elevated.

First reaction: panic. 2 weeks talking to ChatGPT. 4 doctors. An extra ultrasound for $170. Exhale.

I was healthy. Every "abnormality" was a normal variant or measurement error — classic false positives.

Afterward I went to a real doctor. She looked at my stack of results and asked: "Why did you get all of this?"

"Prevention. Early detection."

"You're 28 and you're healthy. You needed your blood pressure checked and maybe 2 doctors. That's it."

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Turns out evidence-based medicine has had clear answers on this for a long time. Here's what a healthy person actually needs before 30:

Blood pressure: from age 18, once a year. Hypertension is silent for years, then causes a heart attack. The cheapest and most important test that exists.

Hepatitis B and C: if your lifestyle warrants it.

That's genuinely it.

What comes later: blood glucose from 35 (if overweight or family history of diabetes), lipid panel from 35 (earlier if you smoke or have hypertension), colorectal cancer screening from 45, PSA from 55 after talking with a urologist.

What healthy people don't need:

Complete blood count, urinalysis, and metabolic panels don't screen for hidden disease in asymptomatic people. Tumor markers produce enormous numbers of false positives, generate panic, and lead to unnecessary follow-up procedures. MRI/CT almost always finds incidental "findings" that don't need treatment. DNA predisposition tests are clinically useless for most practical purposes.

TL;DR

I spent $500 on a data-driven approach to my health. Garbage in, panic out. In product terms: I tracked every metric instead of the ones that actually affect the outcome. 🤡