Health vs Disease Markers: What Doctors Miss

• Why does focusing on single biomarkers — like glucose, cholesterol, or testosterone — fail to capture what’s really happening in the body?
• How does viewing lab results as interconnected networks of nodes and relationships change how we interpret health data?
• Why can optimizing one marker in isolation create unintended imbalances across the body?
• What’s the difference between disease markers and health markers, and why does that distinction matter?
• How does shifting from reductionist medicine to systems-based, network thinking redefine the future of clinical intelligence and health optimization?

What We Discuss:

00:00 Why Single Biomarkers Don’t Tell the Full Story
01:00 Lab Tests Explained: Looking at the Whole System
02:30 What Is a Biological Network? (Nodes & Edges)
04:30 Real Examples: B12, Vitamin D & Nutrient Connections
06:00 Cholesterol, Inflammation & Hormone Networks
08:00 The Problem with Single Biomarker Medicine
10:00 Glucose, Thyroid & Metabolic Connections
13:00 Disease Markers vs Health Markers Explained
15:30 Why You Can’t Optimize Testosterone Alone
18:00 The Body Is Always Adapting (Not Failing)
20:30 Final Takeaway: You Can’t Change One Without Affecting All

Full Transcript:

Boomer Anderson: [00:00:00] Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Health Optimization Medicine podcast. I'm joined here by Jody Duvall, Dr. Alan Boot Katz, Dr. Ted Oso, and tonight, well, we always have a doozy for you, but tonight we're gonna get into the future of clinical intelligence pattern recognition across networks rather than single biomarkers.

Boomer Anderson: Now, before you click skip, I wanna just fully disclose that there [00:01:00] is a simplification exercise here in what that all means, right? And, and what we're gonna talk about today is, uh, more or less looking at lab results. And we've all received lab tests, at least if you're listening to this podcast, I assume you received lab tests before.

Boomer Anderson: Alan, you've got your lab test before, right? You're not just sort of going naked here, are you? 

Dr. Allen Bookatz: Once or twice? Well, you don't, you don't. Seely below here, so 

Boomer Anderson: Yeah. Continuous whatever. Monitor. Yeah, exactly. It's cramps off put test. Yeah. Okay. And Jody's already checking in with her. I was gonna say ankle bracelet, but that's probably something else.

Boomer Anderson: Uh, anyway. Uh, so. What we're really talking about here is looking at lab tests in the context of the whole rather than a single biomarker. For example, if you have a vitamin B12 that is, let's say low, does that mean your entire Vitamin Bs are screwed? We don't know. There's a question mark. [00:02:00] Uh, if you are adjusting for a low vitamin D, do you need to also think about A and K?

Boomer Anderson: And so we're gonna get into this idea of networks within the body. And since I, I mentioned the n word networks here. Um, let, let's talk a little bit about this guys. You know, the body does have various networks that some people are familiar with, some people aren't. Who wants to introduce the idea of, uh, some of the networks within the body?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Wait, uh, before you do that, I think there has to be a core definition of what a network is, or even just what a network has, right? Because in general, what a network has is actually nodes, which are the, the points of connection, and then the edges, which are the connections themselves, right? So a single biomarker, for example.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: It is just a node, right? It's just a static, uh, snapshot in time of a particular, uh, value. [00:03:00] And the, in the future of clinical intelligence that we're talking about here, what's the dynamic flow of, uh, energy, uh, and metabolites between two nodes? So for example, if you're, as boomer said, you know, uh, how are these different B vitamins related to the B12 vitamin?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: And not only that, how are the B12 vitamin, for example. Related to the, uh, colon cells that actually, uh, uh, are involved in, uh, in the metabolism of, uh, B12, right? So, uh, uh, so here, here we are, we're looking at nodes and edges, which are the two things that we, we will remember from, uh, from a network, right?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: That's why, uh, I, I always say you touch one, one node, you know, it'll affect the other because there are edges that connect them or those are the relationships, right? Uh, that you do. So. So, um, you know, when, when, uh, you're looking at. Uh, tests that we're talking about is our clinical [00:04:00] metabolomics tests, right?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: So, uh, what happens there is actually, for example, EDLS medicine, you could get just a, a, an high LDL for example, or a high fasting glucose, but that's just a really a node, right? How is related to something else? So, so looking at, at its relationships, like getting a Google Maps, for example, of the, the empire.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Of the positions of all of these, uh, different nodes in, in a, in a network, right? So that's sort of like the fundamentals of what a network would be like. 

Boomer Anderson: All right, so we've got the fundamentals of the networks. I need some examples guys. Dr. Ted did just touch on a few of these, right? And we talked about nodes within networks.

Boomer Anderson: But, um, give us some core examples of, you know, when you're looking at lab testing, what are some of the networks that we're analyzing? And, um, Dr. Ted just mentioned. Metabolomics. Uh, we also can go into other networks as well, so I'm gonna volley it [00:05:00] over. Jody, Alan. 

Jodi Duval: All right. Well, I can, I can input here while Alan's having a think.

Jodi Duval: Uh, I, so the most comment, I go through quite a lot of blood tests per day with my clients, and what I most commonly find myself feeding back to them is when we're analyzing, um. Obviously normal bloods, we do full blood counts, but then sometimes there's things that are missing as well. So some of the networks that I look at is, um, surrounding inflammation and cholesterol.

Jodi Duval: And so looking at, uh, you know, markers associated with that and what I find is missing, and I think this is not more of a, it's a network, but also other associations of how we actually have to see this. Um, in a network when we're actually measuring optimal ranges and actually, you know, not making diagnoses, but assessing where we need to be optimizing certain systems.

Jodi Duval: And so, um, the most common I find is clients will [00:06:00] come to me. Um, general practitioners have mentioned that their cholesterol is too high. And, um, you know, we, we obviously look at the, the markers associated with total cholesterol. We look at, um, LDLs, we look at HDLs. And what I see is evolutionarily, um, you know, over time the LDLs if going up, obviously that is also an inflammatory marker.

Jodi Duval: And we also see it in relation to other components. And now it's also seen as a highly protective marker in the right context. But HDL over time will also go up. So there is this protective mechanism, evolutionarily that goes on, that I've noticed with clients. We also have to consider that cholesterol going up as we age is also a natural hormonal.

Jodi Duval: Um, shift that goes on. So the hormonal network, so, you know, it, it's, it's all within that context. Then we also have to look at high sensitivity CRP in relation to cholesterol. So that's another component of the network. Then we also have to look at homocysteine, which is another component [00:07:00] of that network.

Jodi Duval: And then when we've got homocysteine that is related to folate and B12 as part of that network. And so if we don't have, um, you know, optimal levels of B12 and optimal levels of folate. Uh, then we also don't have optimal levels of the homocysteine marker. So I think, you know, obviously we've talked about this a lot in these podcasts is that we can't ate certain biomarkers.

Jodi Duval: We have to look at them in network ranges, even across the blood tests that we can get simply not just in clinical metabolomic. Um, 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: so, well, in short, what Jody is actually saying is we don't have single biomarker bodies, right? So we have to stop practicing single biomarker medicine, right? So 

Boomer Anderson: I wanna talk about, like, can I talk about single biomarker medicine?

Boomer Anderson: Because we have somewhat of an expert here on single biomarker medicine. Um, and so. You know, Dr. Bookatz here. Uh, and I, I am, I'm just picking on you 'cause you're still tied a little bit to the conventional system, [00:08:00] which does have many good aspects to it, particularly the area that you work in. Um, but let's talk a little bit about single biomarker medicine, how this is handled within a conventional, um, illness medicine system.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: Yeah, I, I'd say something very common that we see is. Glucose, right? Everybody you can see there's the fad. These days we're all worried about what's our sugar look like. You know, we can even see people are chasing this with getting continuous glucose monitors and I think it's really great in that it might help with motivating someone to have better choices for their, what type of food they're eating and their lifestyle and activity, but.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: I think what we're trying to do is ultimately we are trying to cause meth, right? Or make look prettier. A singular lab value that, that may not, um, may not be the sole answer in itself. And so what you'll find is that people become ongoingly [00:09:00] frustrated that they may not be making changes in their glucose 'cause they're tracking this singular marker day by day moment by moment.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: Uh, and these are again, let me just. Qualified. These are patient, these are clients or patients that are not type one diabetics, where they do have a functioning pancreas, although one would argue it's probably a stress pancreas. And so when we talk about networks, um, one of the, one of the things that we don't really talk about or learn about in, in traditional medicine is the connection between various systems such as the pancreas and the thyroid.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: And when we have metabolic stressors, then we can actually have the effect of one being strained and stressed, affecting the other. And so, um, for any of those that are listening, hypothyroid, physiology can actually worsen underlying insulin resistance. And that will show up in the liver and the muscle and the fat.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: And [00:10:00] we might someone that. Is looking at just that singular marker might say, wow, we gotta get this person to exercise more, eat more healthy, restrict their glucose intake, put 'em on these large fasting regimens, but at the same. But what's really happening is the pancreas is just trying to compensate with more insulin output, and then it's continuing to strain these poor beta cells over and over again until essentially they are effectively burnt out, right?

Dr. Allen Bookatz: And they're unable to keep up with the demand. So if we maybe step back for a moment and say, Hmm, we know that there is this correlation of the pancreas and the thyroid system, and if we teach them as a network, not as two separate entities, then we can see that maybe insulin resistance isn't just a glucose problem and that if we look at the thyroid well, it's as it is.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: While it is associated with insulin resistance, it is also the mean driver of our [00:11:00] metabolic. Basal rate, right? The rate in which we burn, uh, our, our basal metabolic rate, as well as our overall metabolism. And so again, without going into a lot of mechanism, mechanistic here, um, let's, instead of looking at a singular marker and and chasing that gland or that organ system would step back and say, what else is connected to that organ system?

Dr. Allen Bookatz: And look at all of them in a whole and ask ourselves, how do we support. All of those organs in together. And then let's step back once we do that and let's, let's watch, uh, let's, let's watch things as they improve. 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Alan is actually talking about two things here that are important, right? The first one is that, you know, the biomarkers that we check in illness medicine are disease biomarkers, right?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: These are disease markers. So they usually say that, Hey, the body's already crashed. Health optimization, medicine and practice. It's like, no, this is telemetry. Like, oh, your, your, you know, your B12 is running low, or, or [00:12:00] your, your alpha lip orca is running low. Right? It's not saying your system has crashed.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Um, the, the second thing that a, Alan actually made a point here to make, which is, uh, you know, uh, if you are listening between what he was saying, this is actually very, very important in evolutionary medicine, right? It's not. The what is, uh, actually being said here is that all of these changes, the disease markers, et cetera, are the body's adaptation.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: It's trying very hard to write itself, and this is a product of its adaptation. It is not a symptom, it's not a disease, it's not a sign. It's all it is, is the body's trying very hard to write itself and it just. It's, it's probably right at the cellular level, but it's actually wrong for the or at the IC level.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: So, uh, you see here, because the, the, the drive is always to survive and reproduce right, uh, at all levels of the body. So, but what that particular fitness function may be do [00:13:00] for the cell, it may be right for it, but it's not right for the organ. It's not right for the entire organism. So those two are very important things.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: You know, a, this disease biomarker is already a marker that shows that. Body, that the body is already crashed, right? And the second is that that is not a, this risk biomarker, really, that's an adapt evolutionary adaptation of the body trying to write itself at a particular level that it knows how to write itself.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: So those are two very important things, uh, that, uh, he made, uh, uh, uh, comment on. I, 

Boomer Anderson: I want to, um, talk about a very popular biomarker right now, and particularly for. Males who may be my age or approaching my age, and it, it has a whole cult following. Um, and that's testosterone and testosterone replacement therapy.

Boomer Anderson: Right. Um, uh, perhaps just throwing out a question there is, can you [00:14:00] overhaul one biomarker in this case and get a ton of results? And then what are your risks? 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Um. You cannot touch one node without affecting other nodes. You know that is true. That's why I never personally, I never do testosterone replacement therapy.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: If you want that, I refer them to a urologist and let the urologist deal with all the side effects of that, right? When I do hormone balancing, I balance all the seven, uh, neuroendocrine nexus, uh, of the body, right? Uh, if you tell me that you just want TRT, then go somewhere else. Right. Because testosterone will affect everything else.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Right? And it's not only that, that single biomarker that you wanna look at, the testosterone levels, the testosterone and free testosterone, for example. Um, you, you also know, should know that testosterone has a 24 hour dance, right? And more recently, we know that testosterone actually has a. As a two week cycle.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: If the, if the women have a 28 [00:15:00] day average menstrual cycle, the men, males have a 14 day, uh, testosterone cycle. So you could see here that all of these things actually play into that value that you're looking at. So if you're not testing everything else right then, uh, that are involved in the network, then you're basically just putting the body of balance, right.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: So that's the way I, I, I, I take a look at it. Uh, in terms of, uh, the body being in the network and that, that should be the new, um, way. Really, with all of the information now available to us and, and how things are connected to each other, that should be the way actually that medicine should be practiced.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Even illness medicine, right? Is that taking a look at the patterns and now they're, they're seeing like, for example, giving particular drugs at a particular time affects, you know, and this is in the less medicine, it has a different effect on, on, on, on the. Uh, on the management of the disease. So it's like, and for us at Health Optimization Medicine, like, eh, what's new?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Right? So these are, uh, [00:16:00] realizations that they're having now because Wait, wait. Can I, can I, they've always been after the quelling or, or, or, uh, uh, increasing certain biomarkers according to what they think is, uh, uh, should be for the particular person. Right? Like testosterone. 

Boomer Anderson: So what I'm hearing now is that.

Boomer Anderson: I shouldn't just try and take my testosterone 1800, is that what I'm hearing? What would, just outta, outta curiosity, I mean, aside from the fact that I'm gonna have like a raging erection all the time, like what, what, what else is gonna happen to me? 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Well just, uh, the body is, you know, our definition of health in health optimization medicine is that it's a balance between anabolism and metabolism according to the life cycle of the organism, right?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: And so, uh, you are, when you're just giving testosterone, the alone, you're just upsetting the anabolic. Uh, balance, right? So you're basically, what's your metabolite? What are, what, you know, uh, [00:17:00] how, how, how are you going to in induce a balance with your, uh, uh, uh, constantly upsetting that balance, right? If your bodybuilder good upset at balance, right?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: And, and, uh, you know, watch your immune system drop anyway because the energy is that being pushed towards building all the time with no energy left for you to protect your body. Ever notice, you know, that bodybuilders, when they're about to show themselves in October, when they run out the stage, they would like have all those ne falls, have all the calls, et cetera.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Just because energy has been shunted away from, from defense and into anabolic growth and inflammation, right? Uh, because growth requires, uh, inflammation, uh, of the body. So you, you could see there that, uh, uh, these are the consequences of not balancing, right? You, yeah, you got the 1800 and then you find yourself actually getting quite sick.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Um, you know, uh, in the process. 

Boomer Anderson: All right, 

Jodi Duval: beautiful. I think I just wanted to add here, boomer, is that, um, for practitioners out there and maybe not yet learned about the different nodes and the [00:18:00] way to balance all these, um, nexuses, but I think it's an entryway, and I find this a lot where males will come to see me in clinic and they, you know, do all their labs and we see the testosterone low.

Jodi Duval: Uh, and it's a motivator for them. I'm right, right. You know, this is low now that's just the start. That's just the tip of the iceberg. What else is underneath this and what else is out of balance? So I think we can look at it in a really, um, motivating way for clients and to, to have them see that. And then you aim at a higher level.

Jodi Duval: But we're actually working on multiple different levels and the explanation of where all that impacts, and that actually gives them insight into how they're feeling. Because if they've got low testosterone. Then all these other components are going to be suboptimal. And so then you can work from that.

Jodi Duval: So I think that's a good point to make. 

Boomer Anderson: Amazing. 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Well, um, 

Boomer Anderson: go ahead. 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: But the point here that I wanna make Boomer is that in illness medicine, which actually originated from, uh, trauma and, uh, acute infections, right? You're looking at these, these are easy [00:19:00] things to monitor. But when you're looking at chronic illness now, you cannot actually ignore the fact that every, all the, all of these different nodes are related to all of the different markers that we're looking at, are related to each other.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: And there is also a distinction that I actually like to make, uh, often to my patients, right? Yeah. I tell them, yay, your, your illness medicine doctors, your specialists, they look at your disease markers. Here in health optimization medicine, we look at your health markers and look, they are different. Right.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Uh, they, they are a different set. There is some overlap that you look at, but then that, that, uh, that there's your health markers. This is also my, my, uh, argument against lifestyle medicine, right? Because lifestyle medicine actually prescribes lifestyle according to the performance of your disease markers.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Again, your disease not according to your health. That's why if you have like three diseases. Right. You have three different lifestyle prescriptions for you, which is totally fucked, you know, and so, you know, it's, it's, it's [00:20:00] not really the way you wanna do it. You want to have one comprehensive guideline for the lifestyle of the, of, of your patient or your client.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: And you want that all integrated and you want the health markers to drive it rather than the disease marker. Right. You, you have to let the, the, the, the health markers drive that, and the disease markers will actually, uh, behave themselves if you address your health markers first, because which is more plentiful?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: The, the deceased cells in the body or the healthy cells in the body, right? 

Boomer Anderson: Depends on who you're talking to. 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Well, depends on the brain cells too, right? It depends on the organ. I'm kidding. I, I, I use brains actually have a higher value, right? So, uh, I'm sorry. 

Boomer Anderson: All right, so look, we, we've outlined a couple of things here and I just wanna summarize key points as it relates to health optimization and health optimization medicine.

Boomer Anderson: First, uh, what Dr. Ted just elucidated was. Differentiating between disease markers and health markers. You know, you have your, you go to your illness medicine [00:21:00] doctor, they're gonna look at disease markers. Your health optimization medicine practitioner looks at health markers. Uh, one of the things that Jody brought up was the idea of biomarkers and using those as motivation.

Boomer Anderson: And this is one of my favorite reasons for continually testing every six months or so, even more frequently is because. It helps get client motivation or yourself if you're looking at yourself. For me, uh, seeing my own metabolomics results gets me motivated to get back on track. If, you know, you slip off and have a birthday or something and everybody orders you cake.

Boomer Anderson: Another thing that Alan, uh, or Dr. BlueCat's really highlighted was this singular relationship around glucose and making sure that, um, as you're thinking about glucose, you know what else is. Part of that network that makes the glucose show up in the way it does above 1 26, let's say. But yeah, again, fascinating conversation here about the networks in the body.

Boomer Anderson: And as I promised in the beginning, this isn't too [00:22:00] scary. It really shouldn't be super scary when we start talking about networks because unlike, you know. Sort of illness medicine where you find a, an additional marker and you look for perhaps a prescription, which is fine. And part of disease management here, what we're looking at as markers as a part of a network and networks aren't overhauled with one, one, let's say interject, they're balanced.

Boomer Anderson: And uh, yeah. Anything else we wanna add guys? Or should we wrap things up here? 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: I have prepared a beautiful wrap up speech for this because we were supposed to record this last time. 

Boomer Anderson: Okay. 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Would you like me to wrap this up? 

Boomer Anderson: Okay. Wrap it up. 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Right. For the last century, medicine has been an exercise in deconstruction.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: We broke the body down into organs, the organs, into cells, the cells into isolated biomarkers. We became absolute masters of the parts, but we lost the whole. The future of clinical intelligence is the era of reintegration. It is [00:23:00] acknowledging that a shift in the exposome instantly changes the gut microbiome, which alters mitochondrial bioenergetics, which shifts the epigenome.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: You cannot pull one single thread of human biology without the whole web vibrating the doctors of the future. Won't be mechanics replacing single spark plugs. We will be systems ecologists, and that is the shift from illness medicine to health optimization. Thank 

Boomer Anderson: you. Mic drop moment. Mic drop moment, everybody.

Boomer Anderson: I love it. Wow. All right. For those tuning in here, if you're watching this on YouTube, please click like, subscribe, leave a comment, let us know what you think. Did we dance around the complications of network ride rain shifting very easily, or can we do it a little bit better? Let us know. We read every comment.

Boomer Anderson: If you're listening to this on Spotify or Apple Podcast, please leave a rating and a comment and thank you ladies and or lady and gentlemen. We'll talk to you guys next time. Bye [00:24:00] 

bye.

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