What A Routine Blood Test Can Tell You About Your Survival Odds
Key takeaways
- Author: Zhané Slambee June 27, 2026mindbodygreen editor By Zhané Slambee Image by Klaus Vedfelt / Getty June 27, 2026Most people think about muscle in terms of how they look or how much they can lift.
- A new study1 published in Frontiers in Nutrition adds to that idea.
- The study followed 1,103 patients admitted to an ICU with sepsis, a life-threatening condition in which the body's response to infection begins to damage its own tissues and organs.
Why this matters: practical guidance grounded in recent research or expert insight.
Author: Zhané Slambee June 27, 2026mindbodygreen editor By Zhané Slambee Image by Klaus Vedfelt / Getty June 27, 2026Most people think about muscle in terms of how they look or how much they can lift. But a growing body of research is reframing muscle as something far more fundamental: a biological reserve that may determine how well your body holds up when things go seriously wrong.
A new study1 published in Frontiers in Nutrition adds to that idea. Researchers found that a simple blood test ratio, one that doctors already routinely order, may be linked to survival odds in critically ill patients with sepsis. The question is what that ratio is actually measuring, and what it might mean for the rest of us.
The study followed 1,103 patients admitted to an ICU with sepsis, a life-threatening condition in which the body's response to infection begins to damage its own tissues and organs. Researchers wanted to know whether a blood marker called the creatinine-to-cystatin C ratio (Cr/CysC ratio) was linked to whether patients survived the first 28 days.