Test, Don’t Guess
It’s that time of year again… time to start making health plans, schedule physicals, and mark your calendars for next years appointments… Many of us have a bit of a routine for getting standard medical check-ups, optometrist appointments, dental cleanings, etc, but perhaps you’ve entered a new season. Perhaps you’re someone who is considering what appointments are really important (or not) and you might even be thinking about doing things a bit differently than you have in the past. If you’re in this health planning phase, let me share my two cents regarding the tests I think everyone needs annually and the few I’d recommend at least once in a lifetime.
As I’ve shared in the past, I’m all about prevention & awareness. It’s a proactive approach to life that helps us to avoid certain pitfalls and enables us to enjoy a better quality of life for longer. Here’s the thing - NOBODY is healthy on accident anymore. With all the biological, environmental, and energetic hurdles we have to overcome in life, the only way to truly be healthy is to dedicate serious effort and research. From a health perspective, this starts with figuring out your baseline - where do your health markers land now? Do you feel good? Do you sleep well? Are you aging gracefully?
These are the things that really catch our attention, but then there’s the things that we all want to get ahead of before any symptoms develop…
Wouldn’t you like to know that you’re on the verge of diabetes and correct it before symptoms tip you off to the problem?
How about cholesterol? Wouldn’t it be great to track and understand your cholesterol before it starts causing you problems?
Wouldn’t it be great to address inflammation and digestive issues before it turns into an autoimmune diagnosis?
It’d be awesome to do something about a health issue before it becomes a major diagnosis that requires serious medical intervention.
The challenge is figuring out how to get ahead of things. Doctors don’t typically run bloodwork if symptoms don’t correlate to very specific blood markers. And this is why I’d say that it’s absolutely worth it to get a bit more proactive. Make your own plan to get a thorough understanding of your health status. I can guarantee that you’ll want to add a few things to your doctor’s shopping list of tests.
Here a list of what your primary care practitioner will probably run at your annual physical:
CBC w/ differential
Metabolic Panel
Lipid Panel
TSH ( & maybe T4 if you get lucky)
It’s rare that an MD will order more unless some of the markers on those above panels are out of range… which takes more time & requires more blood draws.
At a minimum, I do recommend seeing your primary care physician once a year & getting some standard blood work done. Use your health insurance if you have it! Most insurance policies cover a physical each year so there’s no need to waste that!
THERE’S A PROBLEM WITH STANDARD LAB RANGES…
One of the big problems with mainstream healthcare & standard testing is that the medical system is using very wide lab ranges. These lab ranges consist of the average of all the people who had blood tests that year - think “grading on a curve”... The sicker people get, the lower the “average” becomes. Average is NOT healthy. Wouldn’t you think that “average” would be based off of HEALTHY?!
This is why I use and recommend functional lab ranges to gauge your health! By analyzing blood markers and recognizing when they’ve drifted out of optimal ranges, we can do something about it! There is no need to wait for blood markers to move so far out of range and into an alarm stage (major symptoms) to get a diagnosis and THEN look into treatment. Too often, waiting so long is painful, costly, and tragically too late. Unfortunately, I’ve worked with too many people who weren’t feeling well, but their doctor has insisted that “their labs are normal”… yet when I compare their labs to a functional range they are wildly out of balance..
This is the benefit of paying out of pocket for your labs & working with a professional to get your data into a functional analysis.! Even then, there is SO much to be learned from your old labwork! I can take your old lab work and track it to see where things are improving or where they might be getting worse - all to point us to the root sources of the issues. Observing underlying patterns of dysfunction before they grow into a diagnosis gives us life changing opportunities.
LOOKING THROUGH A FUNCTIONAL LENS
The lab work I listed above that your doctor will typically run is just the beginning. I think it’s extremely important to do a full comprehensive analysis (at least ONCE in your life to get a baseline, and then as needed to monitor changes). It includes all that I previously listed plus an iron panel, full thyroid panel, copper panel & more.
Click the link below to see what I’d consider a full - comprehensive panel . This panel offers an excellent snapshot of what’s currently happening in your blood. This is also where you can also order your own bloodwork! For anyone who’s completed the New Client appointment, I’ll share full access to all the labs at my best price (substantially less than most insurance or cash rates) for themselves and their household. Right now, this offer is only for those in the United States who have a Labcorp near them. You can search to see if you have a Labcorp near you by clicking here.
For a longer view of “intracellular bloodwork”, which looks inside your cells at what is getting absorbed from the blood into the cells (where these nutrients go to do their job), I prefer Micronutrient Testing. This test measures 31 vitamins, minerals, amino/fatty acids, antioxidants, and metabolites – and how they affect cellular function in a person. Correlating micronutrient deficiencies not only slows aging and degenerative disease progression, it can also prevent as well as repair cellular dysfunction, and by extension, disease. One of the incredible things about this test is that it offers about 4-6 months perspective into your cellular nutrition, which is pretty mind blowing. There is a lot of nuance to the blood work analysis & I always recommend getting both extracellular & intracellular bloodwork for a full viewpoint as to what is happening inside your body.
For anyone struggling with digestive challenges or suspected food sensitivities, I only trust MRT (Mediator Release Test) Food Sensitivity testing which is very different from typical food allergy testing. MRT Testing measures your inflammatory response to more than 170 foods & chemicals to show not only what you need to avoid during a healing process, but also what to eat in order to encourage quicker healing! For anyone with any sort of inflammatory issues, digestive problems, or even just wanting to know how to better support your body - this is a must at least once in your life!
Lastly, maybe you just need some help figuring out what types of food would best support your metabolic type. I’m not talking about detailed elimination of specific foods or healing for acute situations… But if you don’t want to experiment with Keto, Paleo, Carnivore, Mediterranean, South Beach, Pro-Metabolic, or whatever diet noise that you’ve been hearing about and just want to eat what supports you as an individual… Then it’s time to do some Metabolic Type Testing! This is extremely affordable and provides clear direction on the spot to help get you started in the right direction.
So to wrap it all up, here are my top Functional Labs that I’d recommend for 2025!
Comprehensive Blood Work
Intracellular Micronutrient Testing
MRT Food Sensitivity Testing
Metabolic Type Testing
For all of these tests, I offer simple, yet in-depth Functional Analysis & Health Reports that clarify all the findings. I’ll then provide you with a comprehensive wellness plan that details lifestyle, dietary, & supplemental guidance aimed at bringing your body back into balance from a Root Cause perspective.
As always, it’s important to remind you that I do not diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease or condition. Nothing I share is intended to substitute the advice, treatment or diagnosis of a qualified licensed physician. I do not make any medical diagnoses or claims, nor substitute for your personal physician care. My role is to partner with clients to provide ongoing support and accountability in an opt-in model of self-care and should be done under the supervision of a licensed physician.
