The Lipid-Associated Sialic Acid (LASA) test is a specific blood marker that can allow the clinician and patient to gain invaluable knowledge in assessing overall states of health, specifically related to cancer cell presence or absence. The addition of this test on our male and female cancer panels have made huge strides in the ability to find the presence of leukemia and lymphoma.

When one reads the table included later in this article it will be easy to see that when testing leukemia patients 90% of them had elevated LASA tests and for Hodgkin’s lymphoma patients, 94% of those tested showed an elevated level too. This emerging test fills in a gaping hole where clinicians formerly had no laboratory options for assessing the potential for development, existence and monitor treatment efficacy of blood cancers.

Just like with many of the other tumor markers that we regularly check on patients, the numbers don’t serve as the be-all-end-all value but rather as a scoreboard to use when e...

For nearly two decades, the topic of cholesterol was rarely discussed. Now, cholesterol is the scapegoat for nearly every case dealing with heart disease. It’s plastered on billboards; it’s on commercials and on signs in your doctor’s offices. Each display piece is trying to persuade you for the need of medications to lower cholesterol and listing the consequences if it goes too high. But what if high cholesterol was really just your body’s attempt to heal and repair? Cholesterol is needed for fat digestion, the utilization of Vitamin D, hormone production, and repair and growth of every cell in the body. The notion that cholesterol is the cause of heart disease is very much engrained in most people’s minds.

Fortunately, it is a myth that is slowly being put to rest. Cholesterol is a vital component of every cell membrane on Earth. Lowering cholesterol too much actually increases mortality risk. People with low cholesterol do not fight off infections as readily. Cholesterol is also a ...