Have you ever gone to your doctor and told them about something that was wrong, only to be told all your blood work looks fine?
Well, we cannot find what we're not looking for.
The standard conventional blood chemistry panel typically does not consist of much more than a CBC and Metabolic Panel––around 30 markers or so.
These are mainly used to assess the patient for serious disease or pathology. If everything comes back in range, the patient is told there is nothing wrong.
While it might be true that patient does not yet have anything seriously wrong (which is good!), every person knows when there truly is something off in their body.
In fact, it's these early warning signs our body is sending us messages about (which often do not show up on basic blood work) that can help prevent the development of more serious pathology down the line––but only if we heed the call and find out what's wrong now.
Simply running a few dozen basic blood markers and declaring a patient to be "fine" is far from the in-depth analysis needed in today's day and age of chronic inflammatory conditions, which underly 8 of the top 10 causes of death in America.
Beyond the limited individual blood chemistry markers themselves, conventional testing often compares patient results to outdated or inaccurate ranges that can be too broad to be useful.
In Functional Medicine, we always strive to make sure each patient is in the most optimal range possible for every marker we look at.
In the case of a Functional Medicine blood chemistry panel, we run more than double the amount of markers found in a standard conventional blood chemistry panel, at least 70 or more.
By running far more markers and focusing our assessment of normal ranges on only the most up-to-date, optimal standards, we are able to dig deeper into what may be contributing to a patient's health concerns and create a preventative, therapeutic treatment plan.
The list of Functional Medicine blood chemistry markers above is an overview of what we commonly run in our blood chemistry panel, but we don't stop there. What we find through blood chemistry is only part of a patient's wellness story.
In addition to a blood chemistry panel, we run stool, breath, urine and saliva testing to look at hundreds of other data points in an effort to leave no stone unturned in our search for the many imbalances that often contribute to today's pervasive modern health challenges.
If you've ever been told all your labs were normal, but you still don't feel well, something is missing from the picture. Functional Medicine looks at all the pieces of the puzzle, blood chemistry and beyond.
Don't settle for the most basic blood work, we must keep digging until we identify the root of the problem.
Only then can true healing begin.
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