Biomarkers
Biomarkers that can matter for mood, focus, sleep, and energy.
Biomarkers are not psychiatric diagnoses. They are inputs that may change the differential when the symptoms, timeline, and medical context fit.
Review frame
How biomarkers enter the review
Inputs
- Recent lab values with reference ranges
- Related symptoms
- Medication and supplement list
- Sleep pattern
- Relevant medical history
- What changed over time
Output
- Symptom and timeline summary
- Lab-pattern read in psychiatric context
- Medication, supplement, sleep, and substance review
- Psychiatric-medical differential
- Named pathway for care or monitoring
Not this
- Not emergency care
- Not a diagnosis from labs
- Not a medication or supplement change by website
- Not a replacement for primary care, psychiatry, or therapy
- Not proof that biology explains every symptom
First biomarker set
Start with the markers most often tied to psychiatric-medical questions.
Ferritin
Iron stores can affect fatigue, restlessness, attention, sleep quality, and cognitive endurance. Low ferritin does not diagnose ADHD or depression, but it can change what should be considered.
Thyroid
Thyroid status can overlap with depression, anxiety, fatigue, cognitive slowing, sleep disruption, and medication sensitivity. TSH alone may not answer every symptomatic presentation.
B12 and methylmalonic acid
B12 status can matter for cognition, neuropathy, fatigue, mood, and neuropsychiatric symptoms. One number is not the whole clinical story.
Vitamin D
Vitamin D is common on lab reports and often overinterpreted. It may belong in the mood and fatigue differential, but it should not become a single-cause story.
hs-CRP and inflammation
Inflammation markers can add context for fatigue, mood, metabolic risk, and medical complexity. They do not diagnose depression.
Cortisol
Cortisol patterns can matter when anxiety, insomnia, fatigue, blood pressure, weight change, or endocrine symptoms fit the picture. Timing and context matter.
Testosterone
Testosterone status can overlap with energy, libido, mood, motivation, sleep, and metabolic risk. It needs careful interpretation and appropriate medical scope.
Glucose and insulin
Glucose and insulin patterns can affect energy, cognition, sleepiness, irritability, and metabolic medication risk. They belong beside symptoms, not apart from them.
HbA1c
HbA1c gives a longer view of glucose exposure. It is useful, but it can miss daily swings that affect energy and focus.
Liver markers
Liver markers can matter for medication metabolism, alcohol context, metabolic health, fatigue, and prescribing safety.
Common questions
Questions people ask before they start.
Can biomarkers diagnose the problem?
No. Biomarkers can change what belongs in the differential. A responsible review still requires clinical history, symptoms, timing, medication context, risk review, and the appropriate clinician relationship.
What does the review actually give me?
A written psychiatric-medical synthesis: what appears more likely, what remains possible, what seems less likely, what needs another clinician, and what should be monitored or left alone.
Is this emergency care?
No. If symptoms are acute, dangerous, rapidly worsening, or involve possible self-harm, psychosis, mania, delirium, withdrawal, chest pain, neurologic symptoms, or medical instability, use emergency or urgent care.