🥇 Essential Lab Panel
For everyone · Marek pre-built panel · $135.00
with code CAMERON $150.00
The best single starting point if you want one ready-made panel and no decisions.
🩸 Order this exact panel — 10% off
Built by Marek’s clinical team, with the draw fee already included. No doctor's visit, drawn at any Quest location in the US, results by email in about two weeks. Code CAMERON applies automatically.
View this panel — $135.00 → Open the full Bloodwork Vault →Why this panel
Marek's entry panel covers testosterone, thyroid and a cardio-metabolic snapshot in one product, with the draw fee already included.
What this panel can settle, and by what logic
What a $150 pre-built settles is narrower than “everything”. It answers whether any of the four systems that fail quietly in a man's thirties and forties has already started moving, and one pairing does most of that work.
- Total Testosterone read beside HbA1c (Hemoglobin A1c) and the Lipid Panel (Cholesterol, HDL, LDL, Triglycerides). The commonest reason a man under 50 has a low testosterone is not his testes. Visceral fat produces a functional hypogonadism in which total testosterone falls while LH and FSH stay in the normal range, and the magnitude of weight loss is linearly associated with the size of the testosterone recovery Wittert 2022. Below 16 nmol/L, about 460 ng/dL, that pattern also carries an increased risk of incident type 2 diabetes Wittert 2022. So a testosterone of 380 ng/dL beside an HbA1c of 5.9% is one finding with one treatment, not two problems.
- TSH (Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone) on its own is the correct first thyroid test, because the pituitary amplifies: a small fall in thyroid supply produces a large TSH rise, so a TSH of 1.6 mIU/L makes a Free T4 (Thyroxine) unnecessary until it is not.
- ALT on the Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (CMP) is the number worth keeping. Cumulative high-normal ALT tracks incident steatotic liver disease in a rising linear relationship Lonardo 2024, which makes one value on a pre-built worth far less than the same value beside one from 2 years ago.
What it cannot settle, and what would
It tells you a number is off and structurally cannot tell you why, because the three markers that would attribute it are the three left out to reach $150. There is no LH & FSH, so a low testosterone cannot be separated into testicular and central Livingston 2023. There is no SHBG (Sex Hormone-Binding Globulin), so a total testosterone cannot be turned into a free one at all Livingston 2023. There is no Estradiol, Sensitive (LC/MS-MS), and at male concentrations the standard estradiol immunoassay is not a usable measurement Rosner 2013.
One draw is not a hormonal diagnosis. Testosterone carries real within-subject biological variation Itkonen 2024, and the laboratory standard is two morning samples on separate days before anyone treats Livingston 2023. A pre-built bought once produces one draw, so the second is a second purchase and it should be planned rather than discovered.
Normal liver enzymes do not clear the liver. Among middle-aged people with overweight and normal enzymes, MASLD was present in 42% — 47% of the men and 36% of the women van Son 2024. A cardio-metabolic snapshot reporting an ALT of 26 U/L has not looked at the liver; ultrasound or an Enhanced Liver Fibrosis (ELF) Test score has.
And it carries no ApoB (Apolipoprotein B). Across 13,015 statin-treated adults followed for a median of 8 years, ApoB and non-HDL cholesterol reflected residual risk better than LDL cholesterol did Johannesen 2021. The tier this site would compare it against adds SHBG, sensitive estradiol, LH with FSH and ApoB for roughly $127 more, which is exactly the four markers this section has just named.
Draw conditions that decide whether the money is wasted
Three conditions, and the first decides whether the most expensive marker in the bundle is worth anything at all.
- Testosterone between 7 and 10am. The diurnal peak is early morning and an afternoon draw reads meaningfully lower, which is the commonest way a healthy man is told he is hypogonadal Livingston 2023. If the only appointment is 4pm, the hormone half of this panel is not worth paying for that day.
- Fast 9 to 12 hours. Triglycerides and fasting glucose are the two numbers a meal moves most, and a non-fasted triglyceride of 220 mg/dL produces a calculated LDL nobody should act on. HbA1c (Hemoglobin A1c) needs no fast, which is why it is the one to repeat opportunistically Krhač 2019.
- Nothing biotin-containing for 3 days, and no heavy session for 48 hours. Hair and nail products carry 5,000 to 10,000 mcg of biotin, well above the level at which it displaces streptavidin-based immunoassays, and TSH is one of them Li 2020. Muscle damage lifts AST, ALT and creatinine on the Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (CMP) together, so a heavy leg session on Tuesday produces three flags on Wednesday with one cause.
How you would know it answered your question, and what each pattern means next
Four results worth acting on, and the interval each one runs on.
- Total Testosterone under 300 ng/dL: draw it again on a separate morning before anything else happens Itkonen 2024. If waist and HbA1c (Hemoglobin A1c) are both up, treat the metabolic side first and retest testosterone at 6 months rather than 6 weeks — the rise tracks the weight lost, and weight is not lost in a month Wittert 2022.
- HbA1c (Hemoglobin A1c) 5.7 to 6.4%: prediabetes. Add Fasting Insulin, which this bundle does not carry and which moves years earlier Krhač 2019, and retest HbA1c at 12 weeks rather than 4, because it averages the lifespan of a red cell.
- TSH (Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone) above 4 mIU/L: add Free T4 (Thyroxine) and Thyroid Antibodies (TPO + TgAb), then retest at 8 weeks. The pituitary needs 6 to 8 weeks to re-equilibrate after any change in thyroid supply, so a 3-week recheck reads the old set point.
- ALT above 30 U/L in a man or 20 U/L in a woman: assume metabolic liver disease. The next test is imaging or Enhanced Liver Fibrosis (ELF) Test, not a repeat Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (CMP) Lonardo 2024.
- Everything in range: the bundle did its job and the next one belongs 12 months away, not 3. If you spend sooner, spend it on the four missing markers Johannesen 2021.
Sources read for these sections
- Wittert G, Grossmann M. Obesity, type 2 diabetes, and testosterone in ageing men. Reviews in Endocrine and Metabolic Disorders 2022 · PMID 35834069
- Livingston M, et al. Adult Male Hypogonadism: A Laboratory Medicine Perspective on Its Diagnosis and Management. Diagnostics (Basel) 2023 · PMID 38132234
- Itkonen O, et al. The European biological variation study (EuBIVAS): Biological variation data for testosterone, follicle stimulating hormone, prolactin, luteinizing hormone and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate in men. Clinica Chimica Acta 2024 · PMID 38341016
- van Son KC, et al. Prevalence of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) in a middle-aged population with overweight and normal liver enzymes, and diagnostic accuracy of noninvasive proxies. Medicine (Baltimore) 2024 · PMID 38181294
- Lonardo A. Alanine aminotransferase predicts incident steatotic liver disease of metabolic etiology: Long life to the old biomarker!. World Journal of Gastroenterology 2024 · PMID 38983954
- Johannesen CDL, et al. Apolipoprotein B and Non-HDL Cholesterol Better Reflect Residual Risk Than LDL Cholesterol in Statin-Treated Patients. Journal of the American College of Cardiology 2021 · PMID 33736827
- Krhač M, Lovrenčić MV. Update on biomarkers of glycemic control. World Journal of Diabetes 2019 · PMID 30697366
- Rosner W, et al. Challenges to the measurement of estradiol: an endocrine society position statement. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 2013 · PMID 23463657
- Li D, Ferguson A, Cervinski MA, Lynch KL, Kyle PB. AACC Guidance Document on Biotin Interference in Laboratory Tests. J Appl Lab Med 2020 · PMID 32445355
What this panel covers
Free marker breakdowns
These explainers are free: what each one measures, the optimal range rather than just the lab range, and what actually moves it.
What this panel is ordered to decide
A panel is a set of numbers until it settles something. These are the decisions this one feeds — each links the pathway it belongs to, what that pathway claims, and what its test list is read for.
If you do one thing on this entire site, do this. Four of these six are commonly low, all four are cheap to fix, and every one of them blunts everything else you might try.
Related panels
A panel gives you numbers. Skool is where they get read — 103 marker breakdowns with the optimal range rather than just the lab range, 42 evidence-graded protocols, and me answering questions daily. $10/mo, cancel anytime.
Join Skool — $10/mo →Frequently asked questions
A pre-built panel from Marek Diagnostics' clinical team covering: Testosterone, Thyroid, Cardio-metabolic snapshot, Basic chemistry. The draw fee is included in the price.
$150.00 before discount, $135.00 with code CAMERON applied automatically. The draw fee is already included in this panel. Ordered through Marek Diagnostics and drawn at any Quest Diagnostics location in the US.
No. These are ordered direct-to-consumer through Marek Diagnostics — you order online, walk into a Quest location, and results are emailed to you in about two weeks. No physician visit or insurance required. Not available in NY, NJ or RI.
Fast 9–12 hours. Morning, 7–10am if testosterone matters to you.
Anything flagged, look the marker up in the Vault and read the five fix pathways.
Where this goes next
The pages here are the frameworks. The protocols — the dosing, the order to correct things in, the week-by-week schedule and what to retest — are inside Skool.