Understanding blood tests

There are many tests that are possible to monitor our health - indeed this blog has covered a fair few in terms of my own treatment. However a lot of those specialist tests are too expensive for many and not available on the NHS. For example my own health service has stopped doing Vitamin D for people with cancer despite it being an important part of the picture; indeed the health team now recommend Vit D supplementation.

Of course it depends lots on the type of cancer you have, but I heard recently Jo Gamble, Functional Medicine practitioner and nutritionist say if you were going for one test then go for a genomics test as that gives a great starting point. More of that in another blog post.

This blog is a bit of a cheat as it is not my blog but rather it links to Chris Woollams' Canceractive website - there in a blog from earlier this month, he does a great simple guide of those blood tests we get from our GPs - sometimes it can be a challenge to get these tests but they can often give a great overview of our health. See it at:

https://www.canceractive.com/article/understanding-your%20blood%20test%20results%20when%20you%20have%20cancer

However we should remember blood tests are only part of the picture - and it can be dangerous to try and self-diagnose from results - talk to your health team. Nevertheless it can be useful to do your own research - see for example my previous blog on low white blood cells: https://myunexpectedguide.blogspot.com/2019/09/low-white-blood-cell-count.html