Baseline Bloodwork: What 44 Looks Like Before I Start

I'm 44. I moved to Guadalajara, I train, I sleep more than I used to, and I want to know exactly where my body is before I change anything. So on August 21 I walked into Laboratorio Schefer and pulled a panel. This post is the whole thing — no filters, no comeback story yet. Just the starting line.

If you want to skip ahead: testosterone is low-normal, HbA1c is in the "at risk" band, IGF-1 is healthy, PSA and liver and kidneys are all fine. Everything below is the long version.

The four cards on the homepage

The panel on the homepage shows four numbers. Here's what each one means and why I picked it.

Total Testosterone — 354 ng/dL

Range for a man my age is roughly 249 to 836. I'm at 354. That's the bottom fifth of the range.

I don't feel bad. Energy is decent, workouts are consistent, libido is present. But bottom-fifth-of-range at 44 isn't where I want to be at 45, 50, or 60. This is the number I care about most, and it's the number I want to move first.

Two things worth naming: I only pulled total testosterone, not free testosterone or SHBG. Total by itself is an incomplete picture — a guy with high SHBG and a good total can still be functionally low. Next draw I'm adding free T, SHBG, sensitive estradiol, and LH/FSH so I actually know what's going on upstream.

IGF-1 — 185 ng/mL

Range is roughly 90 to 218. I'm at 185. Upper-normal.

IGF-1 is the marker most affected by growth hormone secretagogues. Having a healthy baseline here means two things: my pituitary is working fine on its own, and I have a real reference point to measure any GH-adjacent protocol against. This is the number I don't want to overshoot.

HbA1c — 5.94%

The lab flags 4.8–5.9 as optimal, 5.9–6.4 as "at risk," and >6.4 as uncontrolled. I'm at 5.94. Just crossed into "at risk."

Fasting glucose was 100 mg/dL — the top of the normal range. Estimated average glucose off the A1c was 123.78 mg/dL. So the pattern is real: I'm not diabetic, I'm not prediabetic yet by US definition either, but I'm running warmer than I should be for a guy who trains this much.

This is the single most fixable number on the panel and it's the one I'm most annoyed by. It's also the one that responds fastest to changes in food timing, carb quality, walking after meals, and sleep. I'm going to attack it with lifestyle first before I add anything else.

LDL Cholesterol — 120 mg/dL

Optimal is under 100. Near-optimal is 100–129. I'm at 120.

Total cholesterol is 187 (fine), triglycerides 141 (fine), HDL 57.6 (just below optimal 60), atherogenic coefficient flagged slightly high at 2.25. The full lipid picture isn't scary — but LDL is trending the wrong way for someone who wants to be 90 in his own body at 80.

I didn't get ApoB or hs-CRP on this draw. Both are more informative than LDL for actual cardiovascular risk, and both are on the next panel.

The stuff the homepage doesn't show

PSA — 0.644 ng/mL

Range 0.00 to 2.00. This is a clean prostate marker. Nothing to talk about.

Urinalysis — clean

Everything negative. One footnote for "escasos fosfatos amorfos" (a few amorphous phosphates) which is a hydration/diet finding, not a problem. I was slightly dehydrated the morning of the draw. Filed and moving on.

CBC — one flag, everything else fine

Hemoglobin 16.0, hematocrit 47.7%, platelets 329k, white count 6.99k — all inside range.

The one flag: eosinophils elevated at 7.9% (range 0.3–5.5%; absolute 0.55 vs range 0.02–0.32). Elevated eosinophils can mean allergies, a mild inflammatory response, or a parasitic reaction — none of which are dramatic on their own but worth watching. I've been in Mexico for a while and I'm not going to spiral about a single high-eos reading. I'll recheck next panel.

Metabolic and liver — all in range

BUN, creatinine, uric acid — all clean. Liver enzymes (AST 27.6, ALT 37.6, GGT 11), bilirubin, albumin, proteins — all clean. Electrolytes clean. Iron 128 (fine). Nothing to fix here, which is good news for a guy about to introduce new inputs.

What I'm doing between now and the next draw

Three things, in this order:

Fix the HbA1c first. No new molecules. This is a food-timing, walking-after-meals, sleep-consolidation problem. I'll be publishing the exact daily structure I'm using.
Get a real testosterone picture. Next draw: free T, SHBG, sensitive estradiol, LH, FSH. I want to know if this is a primary problem or a signaling problem before I decide on any intervention.
Add ApoB and hs-CRP. LDL alone isn't enough. If ApoB is elevated too, that's a different conversation than if it's not.

I'm publishing a follow-up post the day I add the first molecule to the stack — with the reasoning, the source, and the numbers I'll be watching.

Who should skip this journey

Not everyone should be running personal bloodwork or thinking about peptides.

If your primary care doctor is engaged and you're on top of standard preventive care — you're already ahead of most people. Don't manufacture a project.
If you're under 30 and feel fine, this level of self-quantification is probably overkill.
If reading a lab report makes you anxious, this is a bad hobby. The whole point is that the numbers stop feeling emotional and start feeling like signal.

I'm not a doctor. Nothing here is medical advice. These are my labs, my choices, and my journey — logged in public so I can look at it later, and so the next guy who is 44 and wondering where to start has one honest example to look at.

Next post: the specific daily structure I'm using to move HbA1c before I add anything new.