April 2025. My triglycerides had nearly doubled in thirteen months. My first thought was the one everyone reaches for at fifty-something: it’s hormonal. Age does that to a diagnosis. Any symptom, any odd number, gets filed under “probably hormones” whether it belongs there or not.
I was wrong. Not completely wrong. Just wrong about which part of the story I was in.
The Number That Didn’t Fit
Everything else on that blood test was going the right way. Sixteen months off every medication I used to take. HbA1c at 37, the best it had been in records going back to 2012s. Weight steady. CRP down at 1.0, barely any inflammation showing.
And then one number, sat there, refusing to fit the story. Triglycerides at 4.3. Back in March 2024 they’d been 2.3. Nearly double, in just over a year.
The idea that unexplained changes in your fifties are “probably hormonal” is everywhere. It’s the first thing you think, the first thing friends suggest, sometimes the first thing a GP appointment gets rushed toward when there isn’t time to dig further. And on the surface it makes complete sense. Hormones shift. Things move. Why wouldn’t that be the explanation.
So that was my first guess. Hormones.
Turns out that guess said more about the culture around ageing than it did about what was actually happening in my blood.
What’s Actually Going On Underneath
There’s a researcher, Izabella Wentz, a pharmacist who’s written a lot on this, who describes blood sugar and cortisol as locked in a loop. Not one causing the other in a straight line, but going round and round: blood sugar swings trigger cortisol, and disrupted cortisol throws blood sugar back off balance. Too little cortisol, the liver can’t make enough glucose. Too much, it overproduces. Either way, the system wobbles.
Think of it like a warning light on a dashboard. The triglycerides spiking was the light coming on. You’ve got two options. Cover it with a bit of tape and carry on driving. Or pop the bonnet and look at what’s underneath.
Most health content is built around the first option. Guess a cause, apply a fix, move on. “It’s hormones” is basically the tape over the warning light. It sounds plausible enough that you stop looking.
I nearly did exactly that.
The Marker I Nearly Missed
While I was puzzling over the triglycerides, a second marker was doing something worse, and I’d barely clocked it.
Ferritin. December 2023 it was 141, comfortably normal. By January 2025 it had dropped to 18.4. By April, 8.9. That’s not a dip. That’s a 94% collapse over sixteen months.
Second guess, when those numbers came in: must be the fasting. Extended windows, less food volume, less iron going in. Made sense on paper. I’d half written that explanation in my head before I’d even asked anyone.
A good garage mechanic gets in a car and within seconds hears something subtly different from yesterday. A slight roughness in the idle. Nothing that would register to anyone else, but to someone who knows the car well, it’s worth investigating. That’s the level of attunement you want with your own data. Not waiting for the engine to fall through the floor. Catching the rough idle early and asking what’s actually causing it, rather than reaching for the nearest plausible answer.
I hadn’t quite done that. I’d noticed the rough idle. I’d guessed at the cause instead of properly checking.
So this time, I took both numbers to my GP. Not with a theory. Just the data.
Why “It’s Hormones” Is the Easy Answer, Not the True One
There’s a piece of research worth mentioning here, from a team at Rockefeller University working with Jeffrey Friedman’s lab. They found that a specific set of neurons involved in hunger and appetite signalling also affect glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, independent of body weight. What that tells you is the wiring between appetite, hormones, and blood sugar is genuinely tangled together. It’s not one dial being turned by one hormone. Insulin, glucose regulation, appetite signalling. They’re all talking to each other constantly.
Which is where the insulin story usually goes wrong for people too. Blaming insulin for insulin resistance is a bit like blaming a sore throat for your cold. The sore throat is a symptom. Treating it doesn’t touch the virus. In the same way, chasing the insulin number without asking what’s driving it, usually fat sitting somewhere it shouldn’t in muscle or liver tissue, means you’re treating the symptom and missing the cause.
That reframed the whole triglyceride question. Not “what hormone did this,” but “what’s actually upstream of this number.”
I still don’t have a fully confirmed answer on the triglycerides. Could be dietary. Could be timing, coming off the back of an extended fast. Could be lab variation, it happens. What I do know is that one abnormal marker sat inside an otherwise excellent trend doesn’t erase thirteen years of trajectory. It’s a thread to keep pulling, not a verdict.
The ferritin, though. That one got properly resolved. And it wasn’t what I expected at all.
What My GP Actually Found
My GP didn’t accept “probably the fasting” as an answer. He wanted it properly checked. Full iron panel. Referral.
The actual reason my ferritin had fallen 94% in sixteen months: bleeding piles. Chronic, slow blood loss. Nothing to do with fasting. Nothing to do with hormones. Nothing to do with what I was or wasn’t eating.
I’d built a story, fasting causing a nutrient deficiency, and I was ready to believe it because it was plausible and fit a narrative I already had in my head about extended fasting having trade-offs. The story was wrong. Not because fasting has zero effect on anything ever, but because in this specific case the actual cause was sitting somewhere completely different. I’d never have found it if I’d just accepted my own first explanation.
November 2025. Piles treated. Bleeding stopped. Iron supplementation started. Ferritin’s climbing back now, slowly, as it should.
That whole process is the best example I’ve got of why you take real numbers to your GP rather than a theory. Not me deciding the answer and him rubber-stamping it. Him refusing to accept my guess and going and finding the real one.
What data going back to 2012 Has Actually Taught Me
I could have built a tidy hormone narrative around the triglycerides. Fifty-something bloke, hormones shifting, story writes itself. Would’ve made a cleaner post, if I’m honest. But it wouldn’t have been true, and I don’t actually know yet whether it’s true. That’s the bit I’m not going to pretend I’ve solved.
What data going back to 2012 has taught me, more than any single number ever could, is that the story you reach for first is very rarely the whole story. Eight years of gout markers barely moving, then shifting over about fourteen months once the inputs genuinely changed. Nine years of cholesterol numbers getting worse on medication, then improving inside fourteen months off it. Patterns take time to reveal themselves. Single readings, especially the scary ones, tempt you into a verdict long before you’ve got enough information to reach one properly.
So here’s what I’d invite you to sit with. If a marker moves and the easy answer is sitting right there, ready-made, how do you know whether you’re looking at the real cause or just the most comfortable one? I’ll leave that with you.
🎯 Key Takeaways
- The easy answer isn’t always the true one: “It’s hormones” was my first guess and the wrong one. The real cause was somewhere I hadn’t thought to look.
- A single abnormal marker doesn’t erase a strong trend: One number moving inside thirteen years of otherwise good data is a thread to pull, not a verdict.
- Chase the cause, not the symptom: Blaming insulin for insulin resistance is like blaming a sore throat for a cold. The same logic applies to hormone-blaming.
- Taking it to your GP means someone checking your guess, not confirming it: My GP refused to accept “probably the fasting” and found bleeding piles instead.
- Track the trend, not the single reading: One test tells you little. The same test against years of others tells you whether something’s genuinely shifting.
Ready to Start Your Own Rhythm Reset?
If you’ve ever had a blood test come back with one number that doesn’t fit the rest of the story, the instinct to reach for the nearest explanation is a normal one. The 14-Day Rhythm Reset Guide won’t diagnose anything, but it will get you started on tracking the basics properly, so when something does move, you’ve got a trend to check it against rather than a single number floating on its own.
👉 Get the 14-Day Rhythm Reset Guide (free)
💪 Want ongoing support? Join Rhythm Club for £30/month (includes FREE app access, community, and weekly accountability calls)
⚠️ Important: This is educational content based on evidence and personal experience. It is not medical advice. Speak to your GP before making changes to your fasting pattern, diet, or medication.
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