HOW FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE LAB TESTING DIFFERS FROM TRADITIONAL MEDICINE

I frequently get asked about the various types of testing we utilize at Love your body Nutrition and Lifestyle, so I would like to take this opportunity to explain why functional medicine laboratory testing can be an integral part of your work up. It helps us get a clear picture of your unique physiology and guides our treatment plan.

Conventional Medicine is the medicine of WHAT – What disease you have, determines What pill to take. Whereas Functional Medicine is the medicine of Why – Why is the symptom occurring, Why is the disease developing and what's at the root of it. This is where diagnostic testing to assess the root causes of illness can help.

Functional Medicine testing utilizes advanced testing methodologies to identify dysfunctional pathways and develop a road map to treat patients more effectively. However there are also drawbacks to testing.

Medical diagnosis has it's place, but its also rooted in an old paradigm largely based on symptoms and anatomy as opposed to molecular biology, biochemistry and metabolomics.

When a traditional physician runs standard blood work, they are looking for an already established disease process. Generally, action is taken only when the lab results are out of the “normal” range. The trouble with this is that many people might not have an actual disease yet, but they are suffering from chronic symptoms already. Why wait until damage has been done. 

The study of metabolomics – the complex relationship between physiology and biochemistry uniquely connected to an individuals genetic expression – allows us to understand more complex patterns and disruptions of disease.
Rather than defining someone's health status based on what we see – tissue changes under a microsope or static pathology observed from CT's, MRI's and gross aberrations in blood chemistry (excessive glucose or cholesterol) – why not assess your health on function?

Why not assess systems, rather than symptoms?

Why not address someone's trend towards disease and pathology rather than waiting until the develop it?

In traditional medicine, a doctor diagnoses your disease and prescribes a pill for you – a pill you might take for the rest of your life. Instead, as a functional nutritional practitioner, I ask Why? Why do you have symptoms, how is any disease developing, and what is at the root of your problem?

Whilst there is nothing more important than a good case history, Functional Nutritionist may uses advanced testing methods to identify which of your pathways aren’t functioning correctly aand can give you significant insights into ways your body operates and the things you need to do to achieve peak functioning. 

In functional nutrition YOU are the focus – not your diagnosis. Instead of waiting until things get bad enough for a lifetime of pills, it’s about helping you get well now. By shifting to a patient-centered approach instead of the disease-based focus of western medicine, functional nutritional medicine considers you as a whole, not simply an isolated set of symptoms.

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Despite having similar symptoms, our bodies are all unique and symptoms’ underlying causes differ. For example, three people who struggle with acne may have very different reasons for their outbreaks. For one person, bacterial gut issues could be to blame. The second person may be suffering from poor liver function and hormone clearance. For the third, symptoms could be caused due to insufficient thyroid function, poor blood sugar regulation, or a diet chock full of inflammatory foods.

• Does the patient need to get rid of something, such as toxins, infections, stress, a poor diet?
• Does the patient have some unmet individual need that must be corrected to improve function, such as nutrients, water, sleep, movement, social connection, meaning or purpose?

• Digestion and Absorption and Gut Imbalances
• Hormonal and Neurochemical Imbalances
• Inflammatory Imbalances
• Detoxification & Biotransformational Imbalances
• Mitochondrial Dysfunctions
• Structural Imbalances (cellular dysfunction, musculoskeletal problems)
• Mind & Body Imbalances