Do you need to fast before heart-related blood tests?
Dr Ravi Assomull explains when fasting is required before heart-related blood tests. In this video, he clarifies which markers such as cholesterol are unaffected and when fasting is important for assessing glucose or triglycerides.
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Transcript
So traditionally we would have asked our patients to fast for blood tests. That's really changed in recent times as we've begun to understand that a lot of the important blood tests that we ask for actually aren't affected by fasting. So your cholesterol, LDL, HDL are not affected.
Your triglycerides, if they're very elevated, can be affected. So if we're focusing on your triglycerides then yes we would ask for you to fast. The only real blood parameter that can be affected by fasting is obviously your blood glucose.
So if we're looking to specifically understand what your fasting blood glucose is then we will ask you to fast and that's a marker we look at for any signs of underlying poor metabolic health.
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