
The Big Movers
Triglycerides change rapidly after a meal, alcohol, or exercise. CRP spikes with minor infections and hard workouts. Progesterone and estradiol move quickly across a menstrual cycle. TSH and testosterone follow daily rhythms. Ferritin climbs with inflammation.
The Steady Ones
Albumin is very stable. Total cholesterol and ApoB are steady day to day (month to month can vary somewhat more), and HDL-C is modestly stable. When one of these shifts meaningfully, it usually reflects a genuine physiologic change.
What This Means for Your Testing
Collect under similar conditions each time, and treat one surprising value as a prompt to look at context and retest. This is where Rythm's design pays off: the same panel, the same lab, the same methods, month after month. Instead of fighting biological variation, you start to measure it and learn your own normal range, not just the population's.
Sources
EFLM Biological Variation Database:
Westgard biological-variation database:
