🔎 Research Literacy is live — and it's free I built this because I've been on the other side of it — trusting a confident claim about a peptide or supplement because it sounded right, before I learned to actually check. That's what this course teaches: not what to think, but how to check for yourself. What's inside — nine free chapters: - Find a real paper instead of trusting a headline or a screenshot - Read a study's methods and know what the design can and can't tell you - Turn "cuts risk in half!" into the actual numbers behind it - Spot the red flags of a weak or oversold study - Weigh one study against the wider evidence - Make sense of a test result — sensitivity, specificity, and why a "positive" isn't always what it sounds like - Walk into your next doctor's visit with sharper questions, not secondhand confidence Get started: the full course (PDF) is in the Classroom Area now. It's self-paced — work through it on your own schedule. One thing before you dive in: this is education, not medical advice. It won't tell you what to take. It'll make you harder to mislead — by an influencer, a headline, or an AI. Lived it. Lab-checked it. Now — let's learn to check it ourselves, together. — Varghese

Hi LIFE Assay Community. I’m looking for testers to review a project idea. No cost to you. Just need access to a computer, the internet and ability to be a critical reviewer. If you are interested, send me a DM and I will give you the specifics. Thanks for giving this your consideration.

This was me on my birthday in May 2025, at about 340 lbs. Today I'm 195. 145 pounds in about 16 months, working with my physician the whole way. I feel better than I have in years. About six months ago I also started TRT under medical supervision, and that has made a real difference in how I feel day to day. But I want to share the part of the story that doesn't usually make the before-and-after posts. When I reviewed my August labs, my hematocrit came back at 60.4%. Hemoglobin 19.1. RBC 6.38. All flagged high. Hematocrit is the percentage of your blood made up of red blood cells. Push it too high and your blood gets thicker, which raises the risk of clots, stroke, and heart attack. Testosterone therapy is one of the most common causes, because testosterone stimulates red blood cell production. Many clinicians hold or adjust TRT once hematocrit passes 54%. I was well past that. Here's what I'm doing about it: 1. Calling my HCP now instead of waiting for my next appointment. 2. Asking about therapeutic phlebotomy (a prescribed blood draw), which can be done more often than regular donation. 3. Discussing a TRT dose adjustment. I wanted to go UP to build more muscle. That's off the table for now. 4. Running a fresh, expanded panel in early October, including EPO, ferritin, and iron studies, to find the actual cause. I'll share the new numbers when I have them. The lesson I keep coming back to: feeling great and being healthy aren't always the same thing. I felt fantastic, and my blood was quietly getting thicker. Only the labs showed it. That's exactly why I built LIFE Assay: to help you read your own numbers so you can walk into your doctor's office with better questions. One more thing: I was also looking into a "bone marrow bioregulator" supplement. When I dug into it, the evidence was thin, and it's marketed to INCREASE blood production, the opposite of what I need. Always ask what a product actually does before you buy it. Anyone else on TRT? When was the last time you checked your hematocrit? Drop your questions below.

While the community feed is where we connect, share updates, and debate ideas, the Classroom is where we build the actual skillset. I’m currently putting the finishing touches on our first three modules. Every core educational lesson here will always be completely free. If a specialized tool or outside resource ever carries a cost down the road, I’ll always be upfront about it long before you touch it. No surprises, no bait-and-switch. Here’s a look at what’s on the workbench: 1. How to Do Your Own Research Healthy skepticism protects us from bad advice, but it shouldn't leave us paralyzed when solid evidence is staring us in the face. In this module, you’ll learn how to find and break down primary scientific papers for yourself. We’ll walk through how to actually search the literature, how to audit a study's methodology, how to spot marketing cleverly disguised as science, and how to stay objective enough to follow the data wherever it leads. 2. The Bloodwork Field Guide This will be a practical, no-fluff guide to understanding your blood markers: why blood is our best baseline, when it’s genuinely worth pulling a panel, which markers matter, and the massive difference between a standard "reference range" and numbers that indicate real metabolic vitality. Alongside the free lessons, I’m developing an interactive, AI-assisted study partner. It will not diagnose you or hand out cookie-cutter protocols. Instead, its job is to train your critical thinking—testing whether you understand what you're looking at so you can evaluate labs with real discipline, not just an internet guess. While that specific tool may eventually require a fee to cover server costs, training AI, other development costs, the core foundational lessons will always remain open to everyone. 3. Field Testing & Vetted Products (On the Record) Whenever I evaluate a supplement, compound, or health tool from a reputable source, it goes through the exact standard this community was built on: I test it on myself, and objective lab work tracks what actually happens inside the body. To take it a step further, I’m incorporating independent third-party analysis through Gold Standard Analytics (https://www.goldstandardanalytics.com/) so you have transparent certificates of analysis alongside my personal trial data. If a vetted resource ever includes an affiliate link, you’ll know right away—full transparency, always. You decide what’s worth your investment; my job is simply to make sure nothing earns a recommendation without passing both real-world testing and objective lab verification.

When I put the name LIFE on this group, I meant it literally: Living In Fitness Everyday. Not as a slogan on a gym shirt, and not as a temporary six-week sprint for a before-and-after photo. To me, real fitness is much quieter and much more demanding than that. It’s about whether we can still do the things that actually matter: moving freely, getting off the floor without hesitation, protecting our hard-earned muscle, learning to read lab work with clear eyes, and staying strong and dependable for the people counting on us. Most of us have already paid plenty of "tuition" in the wellness space. We’ve chased stacks because an influencer sounded completely certain. We bought the promise, spent the money, and ended up with more confusion than results. I’ve been there myself more times than I care to admit. That brings us to the second word: Assay. In science, an assay is simply an analysis to determine what something really is. That’s what we do here. I run the experiments on myself. I draw the labs. I live with the protocol long enough to see if it genuinely holds up in the real world. Then, I bring the data to this table. My commitment is straightforward: I test it first. Bloodwork validates it. If both hold, I share the findings. A quick note on how we operate: this is shared experience and open investigation, not medical advice. I’m not a doctor, and this room isn’t the place to post personal labs, diagnoses, or requests for individual protocols—those conversations belong with your clinician. Instead, think of this community as a collaborative workbench where we examine the experiments together. You get to look at the data, ask tough questions, challenge my conclusions, and help figure out whether the hype matches reality. What we will focus on together: - Doing your own research: Developing the skills to evaluate clinical studies, vet scientific claims, spot marketing or social media influencer hype, and find credible answers for your own health instead of relying on hearsay. - Bloodwork literacy: Learning how to read the markers that actually matter for metabolic health, inflammation, hormones, and recovery through real tests rather than abstract theory. - Functional longevity: Practical strategies to preserve muscle, optimize body composition, and maintain high performance through your fifties, sixties, and beyond. - Cutting the noise: How to stack less, measure more, and stop wasting time and money on trends that don’t move the needle. - Real-world outcomes: Telling the difference between a number that looks good on a printout and changes that genuinely improve how you feel and move.