What is your lab work telling you

Lab Work Interpretation

Your lab work can tell how well (or not so well) your body in functioning.

Curious what your lab work means from a functional medicine perspective? 

Most providers look at your lab work to see if there are any signs of disease present. Often times, you will hear "it all looks normal”. But why does it look “normal” but you don’t feel good? You don’t feel like “normal” should feel like. I take your lab work and look for dysfunction. Your “normal” lab work will often have many signs that your body isn’t working as good as it should.  

Think of your car. When the filter gets dirty and clogged, your car still runs (“labs look normal”), however, it would run better if you replaced the filter (correct the dysfunction). If you don’t, you will most likely end up with problems (disease). Another example is how your car needs an oil change on a regular basis. Just like your car, your body needs maintenance, too, in order to run and function at its best. 

Some of the things your lab work can show me is if there is an underlying, smoldering, chronic infection (bacterial and/or viral, parasites). These are not the obvious, outright infections that you typically think of – such as those that your finger is red and pussy or that you have a fever, are coughing and having trouble breathing. These are infections from a time in the past that your body was never fully able to clear or get rid of. Maybe you received antibiotics for something and you felt better than you did before taking them so you that you thought they took care of the problem. Maybe you had a bad cold or something like mono and you “recovered”. Whatever it was, your body knocked whatever pathogen down enough that it is not obvious anymore. Behind the scenes, though, your body is still having to deal with it on a constant, chronic level. Much like chronic inflammation and chronic disease, there is not an acute, in-your-face problem so you don’t think there is anything to treat. The pathogen remains behind, under the radar, and is still there to cause those constant, nagging, “I just don’t feel good” symptoms. 

Your lab work also gives clues about how your different organs like your adrenals, kidneys, and liver are functioning. It will show if there is leaky gut, food sensitivities, methylation or anemia issues, need for digestive support, insulin resistance or need for blood sugar support. It can also tell me if there is an autoimmune flare going on. While it doesn’t tell me which autoimmune process specifically, the main point is that your body is unhappy and we need to find the root cause of the issue. This also doesn’t mean you have an autoimmune disease (or at least not yet). Letting your health go unchecked, however, and not getting to the root cause(s) of your problems could lead to an actual autoimmune disease in the future, though. The time is now to get at the root cause of your health issues and feel better!

The minimum lab work I like to see done to get a good baseline for where to start helping you feel better includes a CBC with differential, CMP (complete metabolic panel), 25-OH vitamin D and a lipid panel. Note that it is necessary for the CBC to include the differential if it is going to tell us about infection, parasites, food sensitivities or an autoimmune flare situation. The differential part means that it includes neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils and basophils. 

If you are unable to obtain lab work through your regular provider, I can order it for you! In addition to the “regular” lab work, I can also order many functional medicine tests. This includes labs like the DUTCH test, Organics Acid Test, antibody testing, mold testing, the NMR Advanced LipoProfile test and more!  

The DUTCH Complete test is the most advanced hormone test, offering an extensive profile of sex and adrenal hormones and melatonin, along with their metabolites, to identify symptoms of hormonal imbalances. The Organics Acid Test is a comprehensive metabolic snapshot of your overall health with 76 markers included. The NMR test is an advanced cardiovascular diagnostic test measures LDL particle number and size as well as HDL and VLDL subclasses. This is more helpful than just knowing your cholesterol number alone. It is a more accurate way to determine your risk of atherosclerosis and heart disease because it tells you the kind of cholesterol you have: is it large and fluffy (yeah) or small and dense (boo)?

Ready to see what your lab work is showing or want to have lab work done? Click here.