Blood Test Monitoring: Should you be doing it?

Monitoring blood tests is often thought of as only something necessary for elite athletes. However, the most likely population to suffer from overtraining syndromes, micronutrient deficiencies, anemia, or altered hormones secondary to training are age groupers.

Age groupers are usually juggling a full time job, social life, house chores, and training. The human body responds similarly to emotional and physical stress. Too much stress (either physical or emotional, or a combination) can result in the problems listed above, and consequently decreased performance.

In our clinic, we monitor our world class athletes' blood regularly throughout peak training and race season. For those age groupers training and competing for ultra distance triathlons (140.6), we recommend testing at least once during the peak of training. For those age groupers sticking to long course (70.3) triathlons, we recommend testing only if they are competing in more than one long course event.

The most relevent questions we are trying to answer through blood testing are;
1. Is the athlete training effectively?
2. Are they training too hard, or can they train harder?
3. Are hormones balanced for optimal performance?
4. Is diet enhancing or hindering performance, and are there nutritional considerations that could improve performance?
5. Are their problems arising that we can prevent from turning into something more serious (ex. anemia)?
What Tests Should I Have Done?

I recommend the following battery of tests for endurance athletes:

• Comprehensive Metabolic Panel
• Complete Blood Count
• TSH, T3 free, T4 free (for women especially, but men may benefit as well)
• Testosterone, free and total
• Estradiol
• Sex Hormone Binding Globulin
• Ferritin
• DHEA-S
• Vitamin D 25-OH
• Cortisol
• Progesterone

If your insurance covers it, or you can afford it, I also recommend an intracellular micronutrient panel (Spectracell Labs). This very imformative panel shows us the levels of micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) essential for optimal cellular function within the cell (not floating around the blood). Through this, we are able to see what is crossing the cell wall and being utilized by the cell. It is an impressive piece of information that can directly result in better performance. Nearly all of our world class endurance athletes get this panel, and I think they would all attest to its usefulness. However, if your insurance doesn't cover it, it will likely cost you over $400. In our experience, most insurances cover it.