What does lockdown look like for you? More time spent…
A) Learning or
B) Losing sleep over things outside of our control or
C) Losing days just watching Tik Tok
I’m choosing ‘A’ and I know I’m keeping good company because last week many of my ‘nearest and dearest’ gathered on 2 occasions for some serious extra brain gym. The first was the ACNEM Fellowship Community of Practice that I had the privilege to co-chair with Dr. William Ferguson. A fantastic new initiative by @ACNEM to offer more hands-on mentoring and support to their doctors.
The second, our own Give-back-Gratitude Live Q & A for our Update in Under 30 Subscribers where I used the time to check-in and see if we could further the learning offered by our monthly audios and clinical tools.
Having all of those who attended, in my ‘home’ was a fabulous contrast to our social distancing ‘new norm’, and seeing all those lovely faces and buzzing brains behind them, warmed the cockles of my cortex!
For those of you that couldn’t make our UU30 date, I wanted to share a few things we learned in lockdown this week:
- Copper can be absorbed through the skin and penetrate to deeper layers potentially increasing serum levels but the degree of uptake is highly variable and more likely with prolonged contact e.g. jewellery and pastes not showers etc
- Just like the Zn:Cu, when reviewing patients’ albumin:globulin, we must first look at each value individually and consider causes and consequences of low or high values, otherwise we can ‘miss the message’
- When understanding labs of anybody who is not a couch potato we need to ditch reference ranges based on the general population because they essentially are…couch potatoes and ask ourselves 3 questions: 1) Who is this person outside of being ‘sporty’ 2) What is the nature of their sportiness because exercise ain’t exercise in terms of physiological effects and 3) When are the tests being done in relation to any exercise
On that last note, I am so thrilled to be able to share my brand spanking new presentation The Impact of Exercise on Pathology Tests – Beyond Artefact to Understanding which I put together B.C. (Before COVID19) for a NZ speaking engagement. This actually has been one of the most satisfying areas of research to expand my own knowledge in…explained a LOT about what labs go whacky (and why and how to navigate around and through this) not just in what you might call ‘real athletes’ but in weekend warriors, crossfit crazies, MIL (men in Lycra) and the increasing number of middle-aged or older women who just love pounding the pavement. Know the types? Our clinics are full of them…it is time to learn their labs properly.
The Impact of Exercise on Pathology Tests – Beyond Artefacts to an Understanding
Overwhelmingly when we look at our patients’ labs we compare their results with a reference range derived from ‘the general population’ aka couch potatoes! Therein lies our first problem. Exercise is recommended for health but we don’t know what this ‘looks like’ in terms of labs. The reference ranges reflect and assume ‘average’ muscle mass & haemodynamics & ‘average’ nutritional requirements in people consuming the SAD (standard Australian diet) none of which apply to the exercise enthusiast, weekend warrior, least of all the professional athlete! Given an increasing number of our patients are embracing exercise, this is an important instruction in what healthy looks like, how to make meaning of otherwise meaningless comparisons and ultimately enable you to distinguish between what is healthy exercise-induced adaptation, an artefact and an actual aberration that flags possible negative impact of emerging pathology for other reasons.
Click here to add The Impact of Exercise on Pathology Tests to your online RAN Library.
For all UU30 Subscribers
the full Live Q&A Recording is now available in your ‘active content’ of your online account.