COA_Karl said:

The single most useful discipline is bringing the whole panel to a clinician rather than one flagged value.

Filing a mild objection. Mild because I might be wrong; an objection because nobody has addressed the case that does not fit. I would drop the "get everything" instinct further than this thread does. Every extra test is another chance at a false positive, and incidental findings have their own cost in scans, biopsies and worry.

MASHdoc_SA said:

I got a full panel before starting and a repeat at three months, and the second one is more useful than the first purely because I now have something…

Blood work came back perfect. baseline bloodwork + this community = winning. 🏆

JennaRN said:

I would drop the "get everything" instinct further than this thread does.

There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. ApoB is the more informative number and it is cheap. LDL-C estimates cholesterol mass in atherogenic particles; ApoB counts the particles, and it is particle count that tracks risk — which is why the two can disagree and why the disagreement is the clinically interesting case. Triglycerides fall substantially with weight loss and improved insulin sensitivity, HDL moves modestly, and LDL-C often barely moves at all, which surprises people who expected everything to improve together.

A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:

What actually belongs on a baseline panel, as opposed to the enormous list that gets pasted around here?

Reporting back.

Took the whole panel in rather than the one flagged line, and the conversation lasted two minutes instead of generating three more tests.