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How your annual blood test may be distorted

D

desidiabulum

Well-Known Member
Messages
706
Hi all.
I had a bit of a shock at my annual review. Cholesterol was Ok at 4.3, but triglycerides had shot up from 1.7 to 4.3. Several people suggested that I should ask for a recount. Luckily I had some other blood tests due at the GP shortly after my annual review, so they did the cholesterol test again, but this time the GP told me to do it as a fasting test, and to have no alcohol for 24 hours beforehand. Triglycerides on this test (2 weeks after the first test) were 1.5!
So either the first figure was simply wrong, or food and alcohol can seriously distort the reading for trigs. Might be worth remembering this if you ever find odd results in your annual blood tests - has anyone else had a similar experience?
 
For a full lipid breakdown of cholesterol you should always fast for the previous 12 hours.
 
Yes, I am told not to drink alcohol the night before a lipid test; mine are all fasting. Maybe it's because I'm in France where most people are expected to drink wine with the evening meal.

Excess use of alcohol does have an enduring effect on trigs but what various sources claim to be excess, particularly as regards to wine seems to vary a lot (bluntly US sources seem more anti alcohol than European ones)

Then again some researchers are looking at whether non fasting trigs as being a better indicator than fasting trigs, especially in women
http://www.hearthealthywomen.org/news-c ... s/tcg.html
 
My Practice has a strict no fasting tests rule for diabetics. Even when the dr ordered a fasing test because of some concern over my cholesterol -she was overruled and had to back down.
 
Thanks for your responses. Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't it rather a big issue if surgeries are following complete different practice over whether or not lipid tests should be fasting for diabetics? What are the NHS and NICE guidelines on this?
 
I have always fasted prior to a full cholesterol lipid panel test but never knew to avoid alcohol, I shall log that away for future reference :thumbup:

Although for some reason I only seem to get total cholesterol tests done nowadays.
 
Unbeliever said:
My Practice has a strict no fasting tests rule for diabetics. Even when the dr ordered a fasing test because of some concern over my cholesterol -she was overruled and had to back down.
Click to expand...

How can that be? If the guidelines for testing state that you need to fast for an accurate result I can't understand how one practice changes the rules. It would certainly makes life easier for most if they didn't have to fast too.
All these inconsistencies are starting to freak me out :crazy:
 
I don't do a fasting test because the one time I tried it I went hypo as I hadn't eaten my breakfast. So my surgery do a non fasting one.


Sent from the Diabetes Forum App
 
"Cholesterol levels are fairly constant, but triglyceride levels fluctuate considerably from day to day and are highest 1 to 4 hours after meals.

Collection of blood for triglyceride testing should be done after a 12-hour fasting period, when chylomicrons have ordinarily been cleared from the circulation."

Cholesterol, Triglycerides, and Associated Lipoproteins
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK351

I was asked each and every time I had the results of a blood test, 'how much alcohol do you drink?' I always told then that I didn't drink much at all, maybe 3 units one week and maybe nothing for a couple of weeks. I always got that "yeah sure, like I'm going to believe you" type look.

When I investigated it myself and discovered that sugar can raise trig levels, I cut out sugar and my trig levels dropped to a third of what it had been.

"I see you've stopped drinking" was the response.
 
I read an article somewhere that said that patients always halved the amount of alcohol that they said they drank ,so the GP doubled the numbers !!
CAROL
 
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