I did a recent health test.
Usually, my colleagues who were tasked to be our company champions would help arrange a company health screening. Since 2022, we been engaged with Dr. Tang from Meridian Medical Centre. Now typically, you can just take blood, urine and stool and once the results come out, someone will interpret the data for you.
Dr. Tang’s service for us is slightly different. This year, our Chairman Chris got out of his comfort zone to give us a pep talk on the importance of focusing on our health, how it adds up to a good/poor life and some of the stuff he learn over the past two years being more intentional about his health. Dr. Tang then briefed us on the tests that is available, and open to questions if we would like to know more.
We can then arrange for a web-session with Dr. Tang if this is the first few times we are seeing him, and would like to find out if doing certain tests is more applicable for our own situation.
Then after we do the test and the result is out, we have a web session with Dr. Tang to review our results.
I just did my review with Dr. Tang two days ago.
I would usually not do comprehensive blood tests that frequently due to cost optimization. But I would usually do some tests because I am interested to see how are my cholesterol, blood sugar readings.
This time, I opt for the comprehensive test which cost me $438.
The price is tad more expensive than the usually $250+- test that we usually do. But Dr Tang sold us the idea that this test has more metric that would give me different and deeper perspectives about my health situation.
I didn’t actually paid attention to what it is supposed to measure. I just pre-commit that even if I don’t take this test, I might struggle to spend this sum of money.
What If You Can Sense Your Chronic Disease Chances for the Next Decade Based on Real World Blood Patterns?
I realize that the test Dr. Tang recommended is an advanced blood technology test from Finnish company Nightingale Health.
Most blood tests check just a few things — like cholesterol or blood sugar.
Nightingale’s test is different. It takes one small blood sample and runs it through a special scanner (called NMR — think of it like a super microscope for blood).
That scanner reads hundreds of tiny building blocks in your blood (like fats, amino acids, and inflammation markers) that say a lot about your body’s health — even before you feel sick.
Then they use smart computer algorithms to predict your future risk for multiple diseases, such as:
- Heart disease. This is the number 1 killer globally.
- Diabetes.
- Kidney or liver problems. These usually progress silently until it is too late.
- Lung disease. A leading cause of disability and death (especially with smoking history or pollution exposure)
- Chronic inflammation.
They do all that in one go, from one blood draw, and you get a detailed health report. So didn’t do any urine and stool test. Just one blood draw.
These health conditions usually build up over many years, often without symptoms.
But they also leave metabolic fingerprints, which leaves subtle changes in your blood’s chemistry that Nightingale’s scanner can detect early.
For example, high triglyceride levels, inflammation markers, or abnormal lipoproteins can all signal future heart or diabetes risk, even if your normal tests look OK.
Nightingale will then correlate my blood test with the health data sets of their partners. They have partner with big long-term health studies like the UK Biobank and FinnGen. Each of these have large groups of people who gave blood samples, and researchers will track these people over 5, 10, 15+ years. Because some people developed diseases while others didn’t. With these information, they have a database of the blood of people who got sick.
They feed all this historical data into AI models that:
- Learn what blood patterns typically lead to disease
- Spot combinations of markers that raise or lower risk (even if any single number looks normal)
- Adjust for your age, sex, etc.
So, if your fingerprint resembles thousands of people who later developed heart disease or diabetes, your risk is higher.
They give you a personalized score, like:
- “You have a 24% chance of developing heart disease in the next 10 years.”
- “Your liver disease risk is low.”
This isn’t a guess — it’s based on patterns proven in real-world outcomes.
This test is pretty new. Nightingale only open their laboratory in November last year. They have been granted ISO 13485:2016 certification, which is the international quality management system standard for the design, production and distribution of medical devices. ISO 13485 is a requirement for medical device distribution in Singapore, and together with the earlier announced Health Sciences Authority approvals, this certification makes Nightingale Health ready to launch its blood testing service in Singapore before the end of the calendar year.
Let us take a look at my results.
My Cardiovascular disease score: Low risk
I was presented the risk score against various ethnic group but I was told I should focus on my ethnic group Chinese:
I got to admit I struggle to understand what this means initially. Dr Tang guided me to read that my overall risk category is low. If you look at the top bar under Low risk it is broken up into three section. I am to the left side. This kind of means that based on the biomarkers collected, when cross reference the database of the people with similar blood values, 3 out of 100 people are likely to develop cardiovascular disease within the next 10 years.
If we compare my blood values to those in a reference group of similar ages (male, 35-44 years old) in say the UK Biobank, my risks is lower than average.
The way to read these result is: If I carry on the lifestyle that I have recently, my chances of developing cardiovascular disease is 3.2%. However, if I change my lifestyle, or there is something external that affects my health, then this will not be accurate anymore.
My Risk of Heart Attack: Low Risk
The test then break down that cardiovascular to the risk of heart attack.
The risk is low here.
My Risk of Stroke: Low Risk
It is good to know that the risk of having stroke based on similar blood values is low.
My Risk of Developing Type 2 Diabetes: Low Risk
I think I always have a slight concern with whether I would develop type 2 diabetes ever since my 2-week monitoring of my blood sugar, done with Providend in 2022 (You can read I Tracked My Blood Glucose for 14-Days 24/7. What I Found Out About My Glucose Tolerance)
So I was thankful that it shows that my risk is low and if we compare to the reference group, my risk is much lower than average. We will have to revisit this diabetes topic later.
My Risk of Chronic Kidney Disease: Low Risk
When I had a glimpse of the test result, my chronic kidney disease score is the one that I struggled to interpret. It show higher than average against the reference group and the risk category is low.
Dr Tang explain that overall my risk score is low. So if we look at the top bar, I am still towards the left side of low risk, which shows that my risk of developing chronic kidney disease is low. But compare to the 35-44 year old males of my group, my score is higher than average.
My Risk of Fatty Liver Disease: Low Risk
Strong.
My Risk of Liver Fibrosis: Low Risk
My Other Test Scores
The test includes a few standard metric profile and I have listed them with some comments below.
High Cholesterol
Dr Tang is a pretty polite person but even when he saw this he basically ask what the fxxk did I do in the past year that got my cholesterol to this.
My overall cholesterol was higher but in a way both my LDL and HDL was higher. I told Dr Tang I been basically eating no vegetables, eat three eggs a day with chicken, and pork balls. But I think what is more significant is my LDL was much lower in 2024 relative to the other years.
The main difference in 2024 was less meat than usual. And now that I return to more meat you get this kind of result. This year, I really cut down on even my favorite snack Cheezels and the like a fair bit and that reduction doesn’t seem to help.
I would probably reduce from 3 eggs to 2 eggs a day, but I think I will also remove the skin in my chicken boneless thigh and see if the reduction in saturated fats will help.
Dr Tang pointed out that because my HDL is higher as well, the overall Cholesterol/HDL ratio maintain at the same level.
I think it is important that I keep my Triglycerides low. I think I was a little concern by my 2024 triglycerides reading but Dr Tang explain that the reading can be a little noisy especially if I have a alot of calories intake within the 2 hour of the test. Last time, we need to fast for these tests. With the advancement of technology we don’t need to fast before the test.
Triglycerides are a type of fat in our blood. If the amount is low it is okay but too much may result in inflammatory process which leads to plague in the blood vessels.
This test also tests Apolipoprotein A1 and B. A1 or (ApoA1) is the main protein on HDL and B (ApoB) is the main protein on LDL, VLDL and IDL. Lipoprotein can be seen as the bus or transportation of the cholesterol because cholesterol by itself cannot move through the bloodstream. The B/A1 ratio tells us how our “bad” lipid transport compare to the “good” lipid transport. Low is better.
Traditional cholesterol tests can miss subtle risks. Two people may have:
- The same LDL cholesterol level.
- But one has more ApoB particles = more plaque risk
Apolipoprotein tests show the actual number of dangerous particles, not just how much cholesterol they carry.
Since the ratio is within the acceptable range, my balance between both lipid is good, which indicates a heart-protective profile.
I got to Watch My Sugar Intake
Dr Tang request to see if I can get my HBA1C down below 6.0. While my reading is in the ideal range, we can see the number inching up. If we reached above 6, we might need to do fasting plasma glucose (FPG) or oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) to see if I am pre-diabetes.
I actually saw this result before the 10-year diabetes risk you see before and I was confused how I should relate the two. I think the way to look at it is, if I carry out my current lifestyle, my chances of developing diabetes is low. However, based on the HBA1C there are some things I can do to improve the situation.
The Kidneys
Dr Tang is slightly concern with my lower eGFR.
He wonders if this is due to not being properly hydrated. I guess maybe I been drinking too much coffee and not enough water. So this is something that I should see if I can improve upon.
High Testosterone and Normal Thyroid Function
Dr Tang ask if I am on any medication because some might affect my testosterone level. My testosterone was higher than normal. Since I am on no medication this is a surprise.
Dr Tang tell me to enjoy this high level because usually it will go down with age.
Tumour Markers Reveals Little Clues
These tumour markers are not diagnostic on their own. They provide clues of potential cancers.
- AFP: Liver Cancer
- CEA: Colorectal Cancer
- CA 19-0: Pancreatic Cancer
- Beta-HCG: testicular or ovarian
- Total PSA: Prostate cancer
At this moment, they provide no clues of the presence.
Conclusion
I always have a weird feeling doing some kind of comprehensive tests and checks because you don’t know what it might pick out. Perhaps I am afraid to face the fact that if some numbers is out of the norm, how would I feel about it.
I think some of you don’t like to do these checks because you might be able to live in continue denial that you can eat some of the delicacy or continue to engage in some current lifestyle.
If the tests is able to pick out early signs of problems, then we have the chance to revert and continue to live a good life. Perhaps we might even have a life to live in the first place.
And I guess this applies to some areas that we have neglected for a while.
For some of your friends, it is their wealth. My ex-colleague felt so much guilt about not wanting to engage actively thinking about money until one day she say enough was enough. Sometimes it is our fear about confronting health.
I grew to learn that some of these reports, finance or health is pretty useless if you don’t have someone to contextualize what it means. Dr. Tang’s review with me is pretty short, but I somehow feel that I am open to sharing more overtime. Perhaps this is the third year talking to him and the familiarity does changes the dynamics.
I told Dr. Tang: “You know…. seeing you trying to help me learn how to read the bar charts and the table kind of make me more in touch with how it feels whenever I try to explain these financial planning stuff to other people! I be nodding my head and say ‘Okay’ or ‘I see’ but I be thinking what the hell is this!”
There is always going to be some areas of our lives that we are less familiar with.
It is whether we want to be intentional to take a step forward. I shared with Dr. Tang I would probably have to review this report again and try to process what he said, and what was written in a more quiet setting to move forward. Asking him explain again might be a waste of his time and my time.
I kind of like this 10-year look at my chronic risk level because sometimes that is how I view wealth planning. I am thankful that my chronic risks for the next 10 years is pretty optimistic if I can keep my current lifestyle.
But there are some areas to work on (See cholesterol and blood sugar).
I think firstly, I might want to test my degree of sensitivity if I make some daily changes.
The fxxk thing about health is that you got to make meaningful changes and test to see how the numbers look. The difference with the financial stuff is that you could try and make meaningful changes and see your own progress.
What improve our health changes is good motivation, and crafting good habits of wealth. Making wise wealth decisions and allocating your family free cash flow are critical good wealth habits. And while it is good to project how our situations will look like in 30 years, that is probably too far.
But I think many families will benefit if you just draw a straight line of ten years, and try your best to think of all the milestones that could potentially happen. You could draw a couple or three lines if your life is not so clear cut. And for each of these lines, you can project the outcome.
If you are kind of interested in a test like this, maybe you can let me know. I may be able to put you in touch with my colleagues and guide you how to do this with Dr. Tang.
If you want to trade these stocks I mentioned, you can open an account with Interactive Brokers. Interactive Brokers is the leading low-cost and efficient broker I use and trust to invest & trade my holdings in Singapore, the United States, London Stock Exchange and Hong Kong Stock Exchange. They allow you to trade stocks, ETFs, options, futures, forex, bonds and funds worldwide from a single integrated account.
You can read more about my thoughts about Interactive Brokers in this Interactive Brokers Deep Dive Series, starting with how to create & fund your Interactive Brokers account easily.
Kyith is the Owner and Sole Writer behind Investment Moats. Readers tune in to Investment Moats to learn and build stronger, firmer wealth foundations, how to have a Passive investment strategy, know more about investing in REITs and the nuts and bolts of Active Investing.
Readers also follow Kyith to learn how to plan well for Financial Security and Financial Independence.
Kyith worked as an IT operations engineer from 2004 to 2019. Currently, he works as a Senior Solutions Specialist in Insurance Start-up Havend. All opinions on Investment Moats are his own and does not represent the views of Providend.
You can view Kyith’s current portfolio here, which uses his Free Google Stock Portfolio Tracker.
His investment broker of choice is Interactive Brokers, which allows him to invest in securities from different exchanges all over the world, at very low commission rates, without custodian fees, near spot currency rates.
You can read more about Kyith here.
