General blood test: your health, system by system

Your blood passes every organ. Along the way each organ leaves traces: enzymes, waste products, hormones and building blocks. A blood test measures those traces.

So a raised liver enzyme tells you something about your liver, even when you feel nothing. The same holds for every system in this panel.

Most single tests look at one organ. This test looks at six at once:

• Liver, via ALT and Gamma-GT
• Kidneys, via creatinine and eGFR
• Thyroid, via TSH
• Heart and blood vessels, via cholesterol, triglycerides and glucose
• Vitamins and iron, via vitamin D, vitamin B12 and ferritin
• Blood count and inflammation, via haemoglobin, white cells, platelets, MCV and CRP

Looking broadly is exactly what gives you a good picture of your general health.

Blood values are a snapshot. They do not tell you everything.

A normal result does not rule a condition out. And a value outside the reference range often means nothing is wrong. Reference ranges also differ between laboratories.

That is why a doctor is involved, and why your results come with an explanation.

You order the test online. After that we arrange your referral through ZorgDomein, usually within one business day. With the barcode from that email you go to a collection point near you; many have walk-in hours, others take an appointment. Without a BSN there is no barcode: you then print your referral form through the link in the email and bring it to the draw location.

Staff take blood from your arm, which takes a few minutes. We work with independent, certified laboratories across the Netherlands, and those laboratories run the collection points.

Your results appear in your own account. Every result carries a professional assessment by a BIG-registered doctor.

You see where each value sits and what that means. Planning to change anything about your treatment? Take your results to your GP first.

A blood test helps when you have a question blood can answer. For example:

• you have been tired for weeks with no clear reason
• you want to know where you stand on cardiovascular risk
• conditions run in your family
• you changed something in your diet, training or medication
• you want a starting point to compare against later

That last one is underrated. A single measurement only says so much. Put a second one beside it a year later, and you see a direction.

Either works. The difference is who asks the question and who pays.

Your GP requests a blood test when there is a medical reason. That goes through your health insurance and counts towards your deductible.

Ordering it yourself works without symptoms too. You pay for it yourself and your deductible stays untouched. You give blood at the same certified laboratories. The doctor assessment is the same as well.

Do you have symptoms that worry you? See your GP first. A blood test does not replace a consultation.

Already know where your question sits? Then a targeted test makes more sense than a broad blood test. We have one per system:

• liver test
• kidney test
• thyroid test
• heart test
• vitamin test
• blood count test

No specific question, and you simply want to know where you stand? Then start broad, with this test.