Functional Blood Testing
Blood has a lot to say about your state of health. The Blood Chemistry and CBC / hematology test is the world’s most commonly ordered medical lab test. Blood testing is an integral part of Western clinical medicine and is used to aid in the diagnostic decision-making process. Patients understand and are educated that blood testing is the norm for health assessment.
However, many people start to feel unwell long before a traditional blood test result becomes diagnostic, and more often than not, patients like you are told by their physician that “everything on your blood test looks normal.”
“Normal” is NOT optimal.
Most people who feel “unwell” will come out “normal” on a blood test. Clinical experience suggests that these people are by no means “normal” and are a far cry from being functionally optimal. They may not yet have progressed to a known disease state, but they are what we call dys-functional, i.e. their physiological systems are no longer functioning properly and they are starting to feel un-well.
The issue is not that the blood test is a poor diagnostic tool, far from it. The issue is that the ranges used on a traditional lab test are based on statistics, not on whether a certain value represents good health or optimal physiological function. The problem is that “normal” reference ranges represent “average” populations rather than the optimal level required to maintain good health. Most “normal” ranges are too broad to adequately detect health problems before they become pathology and are not useful for detecting the emergence of dysfunction.
THE FUNCTIONAL APPROACH
The functional approach to blood test analysis is oriented around functional changes in your body and not pathology. We use ranges that are based on optimal physiology and not the “normal” population. This results in a tighter “Functional Physiological Range”, which allows us to evaluate the area within the “Normal” range that indicates that something is not quite right in the physiological systems associated with this biomarker. This gives us the ability to detect changes in your physiological “function”. We can identify the factors that obstruct you from achieving optimal physiological, biochemical, and metabolic functioning in your body.
Another thing that separates Functional Blood Chemistry Analysis from the Traditional approach is we are not simply looking at one individual biomarker at a time in a linear report of the data. Rather, we use trend analysis between the individual biomarkers to establish hidden risk trends towards or away from optimal health.
THE FUNCTIONAL HEALTH REPORT
The Functional Health Report results from a detailed algorithmic analysis of your blood test results. Our analytical and interpretive software analyzes the blood test data for its hidden meaning and reveals the subtle, web-like patterns hidden within the numbers that signal the first stages of functional change in your body.
SUMMARY
In closing, Blood testing is no longer simply a part of disease or injury management. It’s a vital component of a comprehensive Functional Medicine work up and plays a vital role in uncovering hidden health trends, comprehensive.