Metabolic health, measured properly.

Metabolic health is how well your body turns food into energy, and it drifts quietly. Blood sugar control, liver fat, kidney function and uric acid can all shift for years before anything feels wrong: non-alcoholic fatty liver disease affects roughly one in three UK adults, usually silently, and around 5.1 million people in England are already in the pre-diabetes range. Because the early stages have no reliable symptoms, blood markers are the only practical way to see where you actually stand.

A metabolic picture is built from a few complementary markers. HbA1c shows your average blood sugar over about three months; fasting glucose is the snapshot on the day; fasting insulin and HOMA-IR can flag insulin resistance years before either of those rises. Liver enzymes (ALT, AST and GGT) pick up fatty liver and other liver stress. Creatinine, eGFR and cystatin C read kidney function, and uric acid connects the whole picture to gout and insulin resistance. The guides below explain each one in plain English: the UK reference ranges, what high and low results can suggest, and the questions worth taking to your GP.

When is testing worth it? Common prompts are weight that climbs or refuses to move, a family history of type 2 diabetes or heart disease, waist size creeping up, an earlier borderline result you want to track, or starting a medication that needs a metabolic baseline. If you are on, or considering, a GLP-1 medicine such as Ozempic, Wegovy or Mounjaro, the GLP-1 hub covers the testing that sits around those treatments; cholesterol and other heart markers live in the heart health hub.

At-home testing works with a finger-prick kit posted to a UKAS-accredited UK laboratory, with results reviewed by a qualified clinician, typically within days. It suits establishing a baseline, tracking a borderline HbA1c or liver enzyme over time, or seeing exact numbers rather than a normal flag. A home test is education, not diagnosis: anything abnormal or persistent belongs with your GP, who can examine you, repeat the test and act on it.