Started TRT 6 months ago and going great. BF down to 16%, muscle is up, strength is up and all symptoms have disappeared. I’ve been lifting pretty hard. Couldn’t be happier.
However, I just received the results of a urinalysis I took for an insurance app and they denied me based on high protein and high protein/creatinine ratio. When I took the test, the administrator arrived an hour early and I was just finishing up a pretty intense workout. He asked me to take a pee test and I was pretty dehydrated (and drinking a muscle milk to boot!).
Can these factors affect the test results? Looking to find out so I can appeal their decision. FWIW I had a blood test taken a few months ago and my serum creatinine was well within range.
I don’t know about urinalysis, but I know for sure that creatine can cause blood tests to give false results for “GFR”, which is a calculated value used to evaluate kidney function. My GFR on creatine indicated that I could have stage 4 chronic kidney failure, even though my kidneys are perfectly healthy. It can also cause creatinine to be out of range on blood tests.
I had a thought FWIW. Whether or not you were taking creatine with something sweet could have impacted this? I remember reading about creatine potentially being turned into creatinine without sugars, which would probably be excreted quicker…could potentially cause a false positive.
Creatinine levels can be elevated due to muscle damage, and are elevated in athletes. You work out, you raise CK levels (creatine kinase) and a whole bunch of other somewhat related stuff as well.
Do a search on “elevated creatinine levels in athletes” or “elevated creatinine levels due to exercise”. They should test further for renal(?) function to make sure your kidneys are ok before they make a decision. Interestingly, creatine monohydrate use has some backing on REDUCING CK levels, as it was shown that levels were lower with use (the study drew conclusions that creatine helped guard against muscle breakdown, lower CK levels being an indicator). So creatine might help (somewhat of a guess), but it’s 2 am and I’m still on the Internet, and need food.
I know CK and creatinine are not exactly the same indicator, but IIRC they are related as to what they are used to indicate, so I thought I’d mention - please ignore if I’m wrong.
Interesting. Mine came back just over the high end a couple of times, and freaked my doctor out. Exercise - especially weight training, and being dehydrated can lead to elevated levels. Pretty sure my kidneys are fine.
I wouldn’t do any serious exercise for a week before getting that test redone. Talk to any lifter here who had the test done within close proximity of training and the results will be the same as yours. lol