Blood Tests

Your regular doctor may do a blood test to rule out various diseases, but what about that gray area between health and disease? This is the stage where, if your doctor has special training, effective intervention may prevent disease and create a more optimal level of health.

Stresses of all kinds begin to take their toll on the body and eventually dysfunction results. If the stresses continue, this dysfunction leads to symptoms. If we don't heed the warning that the symptoms represent, we might allow a dysfunction to develop into a full-blown disease. For example, it takes many years of stress and poor dietary habits to build up the amount of plaque in the arteries needed to end up with blocked and hardened arteries. Much can be done to prevent this and many other diseases and illnesses.

THERE IS A DIFFERENCE

If your doctor looked at your blood test and said everything was okay, was he or she saying that based on the interpretation that there was no disease indicated? If so, that's great! But a doctor with special training will take this a giant leap further.

FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE

Functional medicine is the field of health care focused upon the detection and effective treatment of body dysfunctions and nutrient deficiencies. Doctors trained in Functional Medicine may take up to 45 minutes studying a blood test in order to discover imbalances that would otherwise be missed.

CLINICAL RANGES VERSUS OPTIMAL RANGES

The lab determines the normal range of a blood test by calculating the average of all the people tested. This is called the clinical range. The problem is that the people tested don't represent a healthy population. So being within the normal range of a sick population is not such a good deal!

The optimal range is a much narrower range that represents normal values for a healthy population. In functional medicine, we use these ranges in our analysis of a blood test. Then diet, hands-on treatments, life-style modifications, and nutritional supplements documented in the scientific literature are recommended to help bring test values back into the normal healthy range. Retesting determines if the mission has been accomplished.

Having a complete blood test is an important step in achieving your health goals. Do it NOW!