The Bloodwork Confession: Why I Publish My Labs and Why the Enhanced Industry Won’t

I’ve spent the last decade in a position most fitness influencers refuse to occupy: I publish my bloodwork. Quarterly. With dates. With the lab name. Without cropping out the values that look bad.

The number of enhanced athletes — pro bodybuilders, biohackers, “natty” influencers, TRT clinic owners — who do the same is a rounding error. And that’s the problem.

This isn’t a finger-wag at the industry from a moral high ground. I’ve made the same mistakes. I’ve run cycles I’m not proud of. I’ve had hematocrit climb past 55%. I’ve had ApoB readings that should have humbled anyone holding them. The reason I publish anyway is because the only way this industry gets honest is if the people with audiences accept the cost of transparency.

Here’s what I mean by all of this — and what your own bloodwork should actually look like if you’re running anything more interesting than a multivitamin.

The Information Asymmetry That Built the Modern Influencer Economy

You watch a 41-year-old shirtless on Instagram with vascularity through the roof, sub-10% body fat, full hair, no gut. The caption says “natural” or “TRT only” or “my supplement protocol.” Maybe there’s a YouTube video on his daily routine. Maybe there’s a course.

What you don’t see: his testosterone levels, his ApoB, his hematocrit, his liver values, his estradiol, his IGF-1, his thyroid panel, his HbA1c. The single dataset that would actually let you evaluate whether his story is internally consistent is the one piece of information that never appears.

This is the information asymmetry that built the modern enhancement-adjacent influencer economy. The audience is being asked to evaluate physique outcomes without access to the inputs. It is the equivalent of being told “this stock is great” by someone who refuses to show you the company’s balance sheet.

Per the Tony huge laws of Biochemistry Physics, this is Law 3 in action — Chain Bottleneck. The body’s biochemistry is a chain of linked processes, and the weakest link controls the entire system. The only way to find the bottleneck is to measure every link. Skin photos don’t measure links. Lifts don’t measure links. Bloodwork measures links. Refusing to share bloodwork while making claims about your health is refusing to show your work.

Why Most Enhanced Athletes Won’t Show You Their Labs

The industry-side reasons are pretty mundane.

Legal exposure. Many trt and enhanced protocols are technically off-label or unprescribed. Publishing labs that show supraphysiologic testosterone or chronic elevated hematocrit is creating a paper trail.

Brand vulnerability. An influencer whose audience knows their hematocrit is 56% can’t credibly sell “natural longevity supplements” while their oxygen-carrying capacity is at hyperviscosity threshold.

Compound exposure. Bloodwork tells stories. Suppressed natural testosterone with elevated estradiol points to anabolics. Elevated hematocrit with normal testosterone points to EPO or oxygen-loading compounds. Elevated GH-stimulated IGF-1 in someone claiming to “just lift hard” points to peptide use. The labs don’t lie. The narratives do.

Ego. This is the underrated one. people are afraid their bloodwork will be embarrassing. They have ApoB at 130, fasting glucose at 105, and they don’t want to admit they’ve been ignoring it. Showing labs requires either fixing your numbers or admitting you have a problem.

None of these reasons are good ones. They’re just real.

The Markers That Actually Matter (And the Ones Everyone Tracks Wrong)

If you’re going to run anything — TRT, peptides, SARMs, GLP-1s, supplements that move biochemistry — these are the panels I run quarterly and the values I actually care about.

Cardiovascular — the system that kills enhanced athletes:

• ApoB — This is the marker most fitness culture ignores and the one that actually predicts cardiovascular events. ApoB measures the number of atherogenic particles in your blood. Under 80 mg/dL is the target if you’re running anything that stresses the system. Under 60 if you have other risk factors. LDL-C — the value most people obsess over — can be misleading because particle number and particle cholesterol content aren’t always correlated.
• Lp(a) — Genetic, but you should know it. If it’s elevated, your ApoB threshold drops dramatically.
• hsCRP — Inflammation. Under 1.0 is what you want. Over 2.0 means something is on fire.
• Homocysteine — Methylation status, vascular inflammation marker. Under 8 is the target.

Hematology — the part TRT users hide:

• Hematocrit — the most commonly out-of-range value in TRT users. Above 52% you’re in hyperviscosity territory. Above 54% you’re at meaningful stroke risk. Donate blood, drop the dose, or both. There is no third option.
• Ferritin — Iron stores. Often runs low in regular donors. Track alongside hematocrit.

Hormones — what the natural claimers won’t show:

• Total testosterone — Where you sit relative to the reference range and where you sit relative to your historical baseline are both useful. Cycles produce trough/peak patterns that show up if you draw at consistent timing.
• Free testosterone — Often more informative than total.
• SHBG — The carrier protein that controls free fraction. Modulated by thyroid, insulin, and oral 17-alpha alkylated compounds.
• Estradiol (sensitive assay) — Standard assay gives garbage values in men. Only sensitive assay (LC-MS/MS) is meaningful.
• LH and FSH — Will be suppressed if running exogenous androgens. The pattern of suppression tells you the story.
• IGF-1 — Drives anabolic activity and tells you whether GH-axis compounds are doing anything.
• TSH, free T3, free T4, reverse T3 — Thyroid. Modulated by stress, training volume, and many compounds.

Liver and kidney — the organs that fail first:

• ALT, AST, GGT — Liver enzymes. Trained athletes run higher AST due to muscle damage; GGT is more specific for hepatobiliary stress.
• Creatinine and cystatin C — Kidney. Creatinine is muscle-mass-confounded; cystatin C is cleaner in lifters.
• eGFR — Estimated glomerular filtration. Trend matters more than absolute value.

Metabolic — the slow killers:

• Fasting glucose and HbA1c — Glycemic control. Many enhanced protocols push insulin resistance; track both.
• Fasting insulin and HOMA-IR — More sensitive than fasting glucose alone.
• Triglycerides — Movement here predicts metabolic trouble before glucose does.

What My Last Panel Actually Looks Like

For full transparency — and because this article is about transparency — here are the values from my most recent quarterly panel, drawn at Bumrungrad in Bangkok in early May:

• ApoB: 64 mg/dL
• LDL-C: 84 mg/dL
• HDL-C: 56 mg/dL
• Triglycerides: 78 mg/dL
• hsCRP: 0.4 mg/L
• Hematocrit: 49.8%
• Total testosterone: 1,150 ng/dL
• Free testosterone: 26 pg/mL
• SHBG: 22 nmol/L
• Estradiol (sensitive): 28 pg/mL
• IGF-1: 342 ng/mL
• HbA1c: 5.1%
• Fasting glucose: 89 mg/dL
• ALT: 38 U/L; AST: 42 U/L; GGT: 24 U/L
• Creatinine: 1.1 mg/dL; eGFR: 89
• TSH: 1.4 µIU/mL; Free T3: 3.2 pg/mL

I’m running TRT plus a couple of cycle-dependent additions. My numbers aren’t perfect — AST is elevated (training), testosterone is supraphysiologic (deliberate), and IGF-1 is well above midlife baseline (MK-677 + ongoing protocol). But everything is in territory I can defend, and nothing is heading in a dangerous direction.

Compare this to what you see on most “enhanced longevity” feeds: zero numbers, lots of photos.

The Honest Argument for Publishing

I get pushback on this from inside the industry every time I bring it up. The standard objections:

“Bloodwork is private medical information.” Yes, and so is anything else you choose to share publicly. You don’t owe anyone your labs. But if you’re selling protocols, coaching, or supplements based on physique outcomes, your audience deserves the input data that produced those outcomes. Otherwise you’re asking them to outsource trust to your face.

“Different people respond differently — my labs don’t predict yours.” True, and irrelevant. Your labs tell us whether your protocol is internally consistent with what you claim to be doing. They’re a check on you, not a prescription for the audience.

“Publishing labs is a flex.” No. Refusing to publish them while making claims is the flex — it’s a claim of credibility without the cost of accountability.

The honest answer is that if your bloodwork would embarrass you, your protocol is the problem, not the disclosure.

What I’d Like to See This Industry Become

If every meaningful enhanced-content creator published quarterly bloodwork, the entire information ecosystem would improve overnight. The “natural” claimers would be exposed. the trt clinic owners would have to admit which patients are running supraphysiologic doses. The biohackers would have to defend their stacks with data instead of vibes.

The audience would benefit. They’d be able to map physique outcomes to actual biomarker profiles. They’d see what real damage looks like in real numbers. They’d be able to tell the difference between someone running a sustainable longevity protocol and someone running a cycle that will end in atrial fibrillation by 55.

It would also be massively deflationary for the influencer economy. A lot of people would lose audiences. Which is precisely why almost no one will do it.

Citations & References

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should I get bloodwork if I feel fine?

The diseases that kill enhanced athletes — cardiovascular events, kidney disease, liver dysfunction — produce no symptoms until they’re advanced. Bloodwork is the only early warning system you have. By the time you feel sick, you’ve lost a decade of preventable progression.

How often should I run a comprehensive panel?

Quarterly if you’re running anything that moves biochemistry — TRT, SARMs, peptides, GLP-1s, even aggressive supplementation. Annually at minimum if you’re doing nothing more than training and a clean diet. The quarterly cadence catches drift before it becomes a crisis.

What’s the most important single marker to track?

ApoB. It is the single best predictor of cardiovascular events and is consistently underreported in fitness and enhancement spaces. If you only get one number off this panel, get that one — and then go run a full panel because you can’t optimize what you don’t measure.

Where should I get my labs done?

Direct-to-consumer services like Marek Health, Quest, or LabCorp work in the U.S. In Thailand, Bumrungrad and Bangkok Hospital both offer comprehensive panels at a fraction of U.S. cost. The brand matters less than the consistency — pick one lab and stay with it for trending data.

What should I do if my labs are bad?

Address the worst marker first. If ApoB is elevated and you’re on enhanced protocols, that’s a stop signal — back off compounds that worsen lipids, add ApoB-lowering interventions, and re-test in 8 weeks. Bad bloodwork is information, not condemnation. The mistake isn’t having a bad reading; it’s not knowing about it.

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• FDA May Approve peptides under MAHA: What This Means

For Tony’s archive of published labs and protocol breakdowns, the tony huge Enhanced YouTube channel and @tony.huge on Instagram are where the long-form transparency lives. Quarterly panel pulls posted as they happen.