Did your blood test for a health problem say you’re perfectly healthy even though you suffer from fatigue, brain fog, hair loss, digestive issues, joint pain, or other symptoms that make you miserable? Does your doctor give you a prescription for antidepressants or tell you to seek therapy because your problems "don’t exist?"

Many doctors dismiss the patient’s health complaints because of an incomplete blood test that only looks for full-blown disease instead of trends toward disease. In functional medicine, a blood test is used for assessing risk of disease before it develops. This way you can do something about it before it’s too late.

For example, rather than waiting until your fasting glucose reaches diabetic proportions at 127, if you have a functionally high level of 100 or even 99, you can start making changes in your diet now. If your glucose levels are functionally low, but you are still considered in "good health", you may be reactive hypoglycemic and need to take some steps to turn that around before you are diagnosed hypoglycemic. Whichever side of the fence you are on here, they both indicate a sugar handling problem. Hypoglycemia almost inevitably becomes insulin resistance.

Functional medicine addresses the underlying causes of symptoms instead of overriding them with drugs or surgery. One tool used to accomplish this is to interpret blood tests using functional ranges which outline the parameters of good health. The ranges most doctors use are based on a bell-curve analysis of all the people who visited that lab over a certain period of time, many of whom are in very poor health. And these lab ranges have broadened over the last few decades as the health of the American population has steadily declined. As a result, more and more people with real health problems are told they’re fine based on their lab results falling within these widened ranges.

Do you really want to evaluate your health in comparison to all the sick people who visited your lab, or do you want to look at a blood test for what constitutes good health?

Functional blood chemistry analysis has a standard based on the premise of optimal health, not the median of a sick population. Functional ranges are consistent and congruent with health and vitality and are constant.

The antiquated and incomplete methods of blood testing on the part of the medical community at large have led to countless people being over-prescribed, under-prescribed and mis-prescribed medication, which is at the very least causing complications, and at the very worst, overall harm to their health.

Because functional medicine is based on an in-depth knowledge of human physiology and how various bodily systems work together, a blood test is looked at for patterns instead of just individual markers. How these different systems influence one another is observed. For instance, looking at different white blood cells reveals whether an immune reaction is chronic or acute, and whether a virus, bacterial infection, allergies, or parasite may be causing it. Other patterns can help identify fatty liver, leaky gut, different types of anemia, or even a possible autoimmune disorder.

Monitoring a person’s state of health regularly by using functional ranges can significantly reduce the risk of developing many common disorders that plague society today, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes/blood sugar imbalances, liver and thyroid conditions, kidney disease, stroke, anemia, vitamin/mineral deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, fatigue, abnormal weight gain, mood imbalances, bone loss, sexual dysfunction, memory impairment, and so on.

Once the potential problems or risks have been assessed, functional medicine practitioners use a variety of science-backed, non-pharmaceutical approaches to restore health. These include:

Adjustments to the diet

Lifestyle changes (such as eating breakfast, proper sleep hygiene, exercise, or reduction of stress)

Physician/Pharmaceutical grade supplements

Intravenous Nutrition (Vitamin C, B-Comp, Magnesium, B12, Amino Acids, etc.)

Other natural medicine approaches customized for the patient based on lab testing

Functional blood chemistry and CBC analysis have been around for many years with many researchers and clinicians contributing their particular talents to this growing field. Orthomolecular Nutrition & Wellness Center tests over 50 different biomarkers and then uses the functional ranges to determine the next course of action (in contrast, a conventional practice would test between 12-20 biomarkers and then use the pathological range to determine treatment). Orthomolecular Nutrition has been using this particular functional method of analysis for the past eight years, refining their diagnostic criteria into the system that it is today.

 

For more information and to sign up for your comprehensive functional blood test analysis, customized report and phone consultation, go to YourBloodTest.com or call 727-518-9808. See ad page 55.