Can someone talk to me about "fasting" blood tests please?

[sumsumsum]

I'm meant to go in and have a range of blood tests done. I need to be fasting, which the GP said is nothing except water for 12 hours beforehand. Thing is, I'm an insomniac and spend the night quelling anxious thoughts with tea and snacks : is the fasting essential, please? Is 12 hours negotiable? I can obvs avoid snacks but hot drinks are more difficult. Apologies in advance for being a wimp - insomnia is the very devil. If I'd had one cup of tea, and no more than that, would it completely skew the results?

Yes I would ask if there was something I didn’t understand or wanted clarifying.
I’d ask the GP who had requested the tests.

Sandy, any chance of a link to that research, please?

Tip OP

Try google :)

Took me 30 seconds to find this with a few key words into the search engine.

www.statnews.com/2016/04/29/fasting-cholesterol-testing/

If I can do it.....

My son has severe low sugars. If I tested him within an hour or two of eating or drinking anything containing glucose, you’d have no idea of the problem.

He’s 18 months old and just had a 15 hour fast in hospital. You can manage!

Great link, thanks. I rely on MN to be have a bit more expertise than Google; usually MNers are generous in sharing sources they know to be reliable, as opposed to weird wikis.

Really useful to know fasting is unnecessary, as of two years ago.

For some tests, they say clear liquids like tea or water with lemon are fine.

If it's the thought of the insomniac night that puts you off, could you fast in the day, and then have the tests in the afternoon? (you probably can't have them too late or they wouldn't get to the lab in time). But if you had your last tea at, say, 3am, then you could have an afternoon one, especially if you hadn't had food since the previous evening. Might feel harder as it's longer without food, but it's not during the night when you're stressed about being awake.

Great link, thanks. I rely on MN to be have a bit more expertise than Google; usually MNers are generous in sharing sources they know to be reliable, as opposed to weird wikis.

Google and Google Scholar throw up pretty much everything from top quality research papers to articles like this. It's up to everyone to search first and read what shows up.

Ever heard of SEO, Sandy?