The Answer Is In Your Blood!
Ever find yourself asking questions like:
- Why do I feel more tired?
- Why does my body feel this way?
- Has something changed with my hormones?
- Why am I not feeling as good as I used to?
- Is there something not right with my digestive system?
- Why is my thinking not as clear as it used to be?
- Why are my lab results "normal", but I still don't feel good?
Well the answer to these WHY questions, and the story of HOW to predict and prevent future health problems, may be found in your blood!
Most labs provide you with results that have a very wide range for their reference range for normal with their tests, but they do not give a true sense of what is OPTIMAL for how your individual body should be functioning. Without understanding your OPTIMAL, health problems may be missed, and you may continue to suffer with issues and not feel good.
Traditional medicine often looks at lab results with the mentality of a light switch. If a lab result is within the lab's normal reference range, then the switch is "ON" and everything is normal. If the result is outside the range, then the switch is "OFF" and there is a problem. But your health doesn't act like an On/Off switch...it operates as a range of function, or in degrees of good or bad function.
This On/Off light switch approach to blood lab testing works well to identify health problems that are significant or have been going on for a long time. These are health problems that have reached a later states, and sometimes the symptoms are more severe. If you want to identify a health problem or imbalance early on, you need to look at your lab results in terms of what is truly OPTIMAL (in the green range) for how your body should function, and then you can more easily see when function is moving a little to the low or high side of optimal when health problems first start to develop. Here's what we mean by functional ranges:
Once you learn about your body and health with a blood report that focuses on function, you will never look at blood lab results the same way again. Blood lab testing can not only be a valuable tool in understanding why you aren't feeling good at the present time, but in predicting and preventing future health problems.
John Larson, DC, is the Natural Care Center of Woodbury's Functional Medicine practitioner, and can help you identify your best functional zone through such reporting using previous lab tests and our Comprehensive Lab testing. The Functional lab reports help to develop a plan of diet, nutritional and lifestyle changes to help get you feeling OPTIMAL. You can find more information about his approach in the Functional Medicine and Comprehensive Lab Testing pages on our website.
