Have you ever been to your doctor and had them tell you that your blood tests are normal and there is nothing wrong with you, when clearly you don’t fell well? You may have intense fatigue, hypoglycemia and sugar cravings, increased belly fat, hormone imbalances, weight loss resistance, allergies, high cholesterol, hair thinning, and a multitude of symptoms. But why doesn’t your blood or lab test reflect the way you feel? There is nothing more frustrating than being ignored by your doctor who doesn’t believe you. Before you give up, there’s a lab test that you need to know about that can help you get to the bottom of your troubles.
How A Functional Blood Chemistry Analysis Can Help You Discover The Causes of Your Health Concerns
The reality is that there any many ways of interpreting a blood test, and what many doctors consider to be “healthy” or “normal” is highly questionable. When most doctors look at a blood test, they are looking to make a diagnosis for an overt pathology or disease, based on a given standard lab range. These lab ranges are determined based on an average of some population of patients, however, these patients are usually sick. Often, people go to their doctors with multiple health concerns before they are in a diagnosable diseased state, yet their blood tests show that nothing is wrong with them.
A comprehensive functional blood chemistry analysis is something that every new patient I see has done and I often repeat the test several times each year to monitor my patient’s progress and keep them on track. A routine blood test provides us with important information about the physiology, biochemistry, and metabolism of your body.
Before you get tested, you need to understand there are three major problems with conventional laboratory testing offered by most doctors today.
1.Broad reference ranges – Standard lab reference ranges have been created by using people who are very sick and go to the doctor. This does not include people who are seemingly healthy, but just don’t feel right, which is the majority of my patients. These reference ranges are far too broad and most patients only get paid attention to once a lab marker falls outside the lab range
2.Non-standardized reference range – Not only is the reference range too broad, but it varies from lab to lab, and province to province. For example, you can have hypothyroidism in one province, but not another according to the lab ranges used
3.Provincial Ministry of Health Influence– Doctors only run tests that are considered “medically necessary” by the provincial health ministries because it costs the province money to run these labs. As an example, most doctors won’t run a comprehensive thyroid panel and will only run a TSH because labs are legislated to only run additional testing if the TSH comes back abnormal. If the TSH comes back within a standard range, they tell you that you are healthy. However, TSH is only a very, very small part of thyroid physiology and it can even show up as normal even though you are clearly having hypo or hyper thyroid symptoms.
What is the difference between a functional and pathological blood analysis?
There are two main types of ranges used by most doctors, a pathological or laboratory range, which is the range used by most conventional medical doctors to make a medical diagnosis. The other type is a functional range, which is used by most functional medicine and naturopathic doctors. The laboratory range is used to diagnose a disease, while the functional range is used to assess for risk before disease develops and find hidden patterns that might be contributing to a patients symptoms. All labs report their results using reference ranges according to the pathological range, not the functional range. In order to have your blood test results interpreted according to the functional or optimal range, you need to have the skill of a doctor trained in advanced functional blood chemistry analysis working with you.
Pathological Ranges
- Wide ranges are used
- Used to diagnose a disease
- Takes a reactive approach to disease
Functional Ranges
- Much narrower ranges are used to assess risk before disease develops
- Takes a proactive approach to health
- Used to discover hidden imbalances that may the cause of unexplainable symptoms
- Identifies imbalances and dysfunction in metabolism and physiology
- Treats the underlying cause
- Early predictor of disease
Here are a few of the things we can see from a comprehensive functional blood chemistry analysis:
- Anemia
- Too much iron
- Subclinical and overt thyroid problems
- Hidden chronic infections (viral, fungal or bacterial)
- Adrenal dysfunction
- Digestive problems and leaky gut
- Allergies
- Blood sugar regulation problems
- Liver/gallbladder disorder
- Cardiovascular disorders
- Nutrient deficiencies
A comprehensive functional blood chemistry panel and expert interpretation allows me to make the best recommendations possible to help my patients see results quickly. It can help me determine what other types of testing may be needed such as food allergy testing, hormone testing, digestive health testing, and nutrient deficiency testing. It also allows us to get a better understating of your symptoms and ask more of the right questions and guide us towards a deeper investigation of your health. I have found the standard method of blood chemistry interpretation to be lacking in depth and did not quantify the actual problems and symptoms that many of my patients were presenting. In order to best serve my patients, I have undertaken advanced training in functional blood chemistry biomarker and pattern analysis.
Pattern analysis using a comprehensive blood chemistry panel can identify physiological imbalances and nutritional deficiencies and allows me to pinpoint the primary imbalances with greater precision and clarity. It serves as a guide to investigate the underlying issues that may be causing, for example, a person to have elevated cholesterol. Rather than just interpreting the results as “this patient has high cholesterol, so we will try fish oil and niacin first, and if that doesn’t work, we will try red yeast rice, and if that doesn’t work, we will try a low fat diet” and on and on. By closely analyzing other markers, such as LDL/HDL ratio, triglycerides, glucose, CRP, homocysteine, thyroid, electrolytes, proteins, albumin, LDH, and alkaline phosphatase, which are relevant to cholesterol metabolism, we can uncover why the cholesterol is high, and develop a much more comprehensive, accurate plan that gets results fast.
A well-interpreted functional blood chemistry analysis is a powerful preliminary screening and discovery tool that all patients deserve so we can launch into a deeper clinical investigation and exploration of health issues and concerns.
“There is no general screening test that is more efficient, effective and affordable than a comprehensive blood chemistry panel. A comprehensive blood chemistry panel will allow the healthcare provider to quickly assess the degree of health or disease in a patient. It is the ultimate tool in biomedical laboratory sciences to evaluate new patients. It allows the healthcare provider to establish a baseline of biomarkers that can be used to track the patient’s health immediately and over a period of time”. Datis Kharrazian, DC, MS, FAACP, DACBN, DIBAK, CNS, CSCS, CCSP
Interested in a private consultation to discuss if a comprehensive functional blood chemistry analysis is right for you? Schedule your health consultation today.
