You cannot evaluate an "after" without a "before"
This is the step people skip, and skipping it makes the entire protocol uninterpretable. If your energy improves at week six, was that the compound, the season, better sleep, or nothing at all? Bloodwork is one of the few places you get an answer that is not a feeling.
The minimum panel
The Playbook's baseline set, drawn before your first dose:
IGF-1: the growth hormone marker. Essential for anything touching the GH axis, and useful as a general reference point.
Complete metabolic panel (CMP): glucose, liver enzymes (ALT, AST), kidney function (creatinine, BUN), electrolytes.
Complete blood count (CBC): white cells, red cells, haemoglobin.
Lipid panel: total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, triglycerides.
The retest schedule
Draw 1: baseline, before starting. Draw 2: week 4. Draw 3: week 8, or end of cycle. Draw 4: post-cycle, optional.
Four draws sounds like a lot. In practice, for a single 4–6 week cycle, baseline and end-of-cycle is the realistic minimum, and week 4 becomes important on longer protocols or anything affecting glucose.
Why each marker earns its place
IGF-1 is the readout for GH secretagogues. Tesamorelin's monitoring guidance is explicit: check IGF-1 periodically to ensure levels stay within the normal range. Elevated IGF-1 is the signal that you have overshot physiological replacement into something else.
Fasting glucose and HbA1c matter because several compounds move blood sugar, and not all in the same direction. Growth hormone increases insulin resistance and raises glucose. MOTS-C enhances glucose uptake and lowers it. Glucose elevation is one of the Playbook's named reasons to stop tesamorelin.
Liver enzymes matter because tesamorelin and retatrutide both affect hepatic fat, and because ALT and AST are the general-purpose early warning for a lot of things going wrong.
Lipids improve on several of these protocols, and that improvement is one of the more objective signs that a metabolic compound is doing something.
CBC is the broad safety net.
Reference ranges are your lab's, not ours
The Playbook's bloodwork tracker prints a "Reference Range" column deliberately left blank for you to fill in.
That is not an oversight. Reference intervals are assay-specific and laboratory-specific. The normal range for IGF-1 at one lab is not the normal range at another, and it varies by age and sex. Copy the range printed on your own report.
Claritide does the same thing. We do not ship reference ranges we cannot source, because a number that looks authoritative and is wrong is worse than a blank field.
Tell your provider
Bloodwork is also the natural moment to have the conversation the Playbook asks for: drug interactions with peptides are understudied, and if you take any medication your doctor needs the full picture, especially blood pressure medication, diabetes medication, CNS depressants or immunosuppressants.
Turning up with a panel and a list of what you intend to run is a far better conversation than turning up six weeks in with a symptom.