Optimal Health Guide Part 2: Why Conventional Lab Testing Is Inadequate

MYTH: Your labs are all ‘normal,’ therefore there is nothing physically wrong with you. Any health irregularities you may be experiencing are “all in your head.”

FACT: It is quite possible to have health symptoms that would not be detected by our current modern lab testing.

At a recent conference, a physician put it this way:

To say that there is no physical basis of your health issue when your labs are all “within normal range,” is to say that medicine knows all it needs to know and will never develop any new ways of measuring our health

We can look back in the past 100 years of medical developments and realize that a lot can change in a short amount of time. We didn’t even have insulin for diabetes until 1921, antibiotics or chemotherapy until the 1940’s, or statin drugs for cardiovascular disease until 1987.

Can you imagine how much more we will understand, be able to diagnose and treat in the next 50-100 years?

The Functional medicine movement of the 21st century:

Easy access to research and medical journals online and through the open access movement in the past 20 years and has allowed us to compile research in ways never before possible. 

This has been the foundation of the Functional medicine movement, where curious practitioners and even lay people can research to find answers to complex medical questions that they feel aren’t being properly addressed by their health providers. New labs have developed allowing us to investigate the body in new ways.

The questions we are trying to answer range the gamut, from better ways to prevent, reverse and deal with cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases to better understanding and treatment for menstrual irregularities, fertility, migraines, CFS, FM and mood disorders.

This is where Functional medicine practice comes in: Filling the big gaps between what science understands and what conventional medicine looks for and treats.

Functional medicine is not ‘alternative’ nor ‘complementary’ and may not even be ‘natural’ medicine. It is using research to understand the underlying, connected mechanisms underlying all aspects of our health and well being. It is clinically applied scientific research.

The foundation of Functional medicine is to investigate and treat health conditions by addressing their underlying causes, avoiding or reversing illness and optimizing wellness.

MYTH: Labs should be used and interpreted to detect disease and avoids death.

FACT: Labs should be used and interpreted to optimize health and prevent or reverse disease.

What does this mean in practice?

Expand what we test.

Your annual physical runs a panel of tests that looks for established disease patterns. Mainly in the kidneys, liver, blood sugar regulation, cholesterol and possibly cancer. This is not at all the sum total of what makes up ‘health.’

Expanding what we test means running extra blood tests as well as including testing for areas of the body that are currently only available through your Functional medicine practitioner. These include tests that look at the gut microbiome and digestion, expanded hormone profiles, nutrients, organic acid tests, inflammation/infection and toxins.

Expand how we interpret what is tested.

Remember the annual physical panel of tests? The range of ‘normal’ values is set to detect established disease. Many ranges could be narrowed, (based on research and clinical evidence) to detect health issues before they are established diseases and when they are still signs of health dysregulation.

Let’s put this all together in an example.

A common example of this is hypothyroid. Standardly, a physician will run a TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) to detect hypothyroidism. The normal range in conventional practice is considered 0.5 - 4 μIU/mL.

The solution

1. Narrow the range. 
   However, health disruptions may be experienced when TSH is as low as 2.5.
   

2. Run other blood tests to help pinpoint the issue.
   If TSH is is >2.5, or if hypothyroidism is otherwise suspected from symptoms, run a more complete thyroid panel including the thyroid hormones T4 and T3 (total and free) and T3 uptake.
   

3. Investigate the underlying causes.
   Since hypothyroid is a symptom of other underlying issues, we won’t just prescribe hormone treatment, but instead also run tests to discover the underlying causes of hypothyroidism, looking at the gut microbiome, stress, inflammation, toxins and nutrient insufficiencies.  

With this approach of deepening our interpretation of standard blood lab panels as well as investigating the underlying causes through Functional medicine testing, we can do a much better job of treating, preventing and reversing health issues.

Have questions? Need professional guidance? Want any particular topics or health conditions discussed? Book a free discovery call to get started!