Your current lab work is keeping (or making) you sick
Your current lab work is keeping (or making) you sick.
You know how it goes…
You schedule an appointment to see your doctor for a routine visit. They order some labs so you do that first. Then at your appointment, your doctor quickly glances over your labwork and says, “Ok, everything looks normal.”
But you feel like sh*t.
Everything is definitely not normal.
Here’s the problem. From the time most of us are young, we’re taught that our doctors know best. They are held in such a high regard and often thought of being at the “top” of both the career and social food chains.
Many doctors get into medicine because they want to help people. Their hearts are often in the right place.
But it falls apart thanks to insurance billing and regulations. The idea of helping people quickly goes from wanting to helping people thrive to instead merely helping them stay alive.
There’s a very big difference between thriving and simply surviving.
That’s what we’re here to talk about today.
What does it mean to thrive?
Thriving means doing the things you love to do, having the energy to do those things, and the strength and cognitive ability to do those things.
Thriving means going for that promotion at work, taking on a board of directors position at your favorite non-profit, or offering your time to help those less fortunate.
Thriving also may mean seeking out a new skill or hobby, trying something new, or taking a risk or new adventure.
By contrast, staying alive is simply having a pulse. You could be in a coma being kept alive by machines and still technically be alive.
Did you know that when drug companies report survival rates for things such as chemotherapy treatments, their “survival” rates do not account for quality of life? As long as you have a pulse at the 5-year mark, you are counted as a “survivor”.
That is a very different 5-year survival than I think most people would want.
Quality of life matters. But somewhere along the road, Western medicine forgot that.
Why does this matter?
Simple. If we want to thrive in life, we need to stop accepting “normal” as good enough.
I don’t want my bloodwork to come back as “normal”. I want my blood work to come back as “optimal”. And you should too. When your bloodwork is optimal, you can thrive instead of merely survive.
Many clients come to me with bloodwork from their doctor who said it was all normal, but they are still having symptoms and feeling like sh*t. Bloodwork is only one measure of health but it’s a biggie because rarely do we feel amazing in every other area of health but have less than stellar bloodwork. Usually, the opposite is true.
Bloodwork helps to give us clues as to what the body is doing on the inside. It’s not just as simple as looking at one thyroid marker or one liver marker and calling it good. The trained practitioner looks for patterns between many different markers.
The opposite is also true. A doctor shouldn’t look at one thyroid marker or one liver marker and diagnose you with a disease. There are certain criteria that must be met and most often those include several different markers. But in “functional medicine”, there’s much more to the story…
How do you use this information to make health decisions when your doctor says everything looks “normal”?
You turn to the world of holistic healthcare.
Working with a holistic practitioner is completely different than working with a traditional doctor. Holistic practitioners (sometimes called “alternative” practitioners) often use what is called “functional” health views instead of “conventional” views.
The biggest difference is that functional practitioners want to help you thrive by preventing disease while Western practitioners want you to simply survive even if that means taking tons of medications for the rest of your life.
(Hello big money to Big Pharma!)
When it comes to bloodwork, functional practitioners, or practitioners that subscribe to the functional standards such as myself, have a goal for “optimal” markers, not just “normal”. When your bloodwork is at optimal levels, you have much less risk for chronic disease or premature death.
Conventional practitioners use reference ranges to diagnose disease states. So anyone who falls within these reference ranges are assumed to have no clinical signs of any disease and marked as “normal”. If you fall outside of them, you are considered to have a disease.
Because conventional lab reference ranges are based on a bell curve, placing 2 standard deviations above and below the mean representing “normal”, about 95% of people fall within the “clinically” normal range.
According to Dr. Weatherby and Dr. Scott in their book, Blood Chemistry and CBC Analysis, “This method of assessment does not allow for the large numbers of people who are told that they are clinically normal yet suffer from a wide range of signs and symptoms.” Those signs and symptoms can often turn into disease if not addressed.
What’s even more alarming about this method for assessing illness is that as the population becomes sicker and sicker, the reference ranges become wider and wider. Remember, 95% of the population falls within the normal reference range so as this group gets larger, the definition of abnormal or disease states becomes relative.
Alternative practitioners look for optimal blood markers that can clue us into dysfunctions within the body long before disease develops.
Most practitioners would likely agree that the majority of people who seek holistic care do not have a clinically identifiable disease. Which is why they’re told by their doctor things are “normal” even if they have symptoms.
“They may be normal compared to the rest of the sick population, but they are a long way from being in a state of optimal health,” according to Dr. Weatherby and Dr. Scott.
Here are a few differences between conventional and functional views:
Conventional View: The body is viewed as a “machine” composed of separate systems reduced to parts.
Functional View: The body is viewed as a dynamic and complex interconnected system of mind, body, and emotions.
Conventional View: Emphasis is placed on identifying disease or pathological tissue change.
Functional View: Emphasis is placed on identifying of areas of imbalance or dysfunction.
Conventional View: Treatment is based on reducing symptoms.
Functional View: Treatment addresses the underlying causes of symptoms or dysfunction.
Conventional View: Major focus is spent on how the patient is doing based on charts, statistics, and test results that are measured against a statistical “normal population”.
Functional View: Major focus is spent on both subjective and objective information gathering based on a concept of optimal function.
Conventional View: Health is measured as an absence of disease. As long as you do not have a disease, you are considered healthy. Typically no intervention is offered until there is a diagnosable problem able to be identified.
Functional View: Health is measured on a wellness spectrum moving from health to disease. Intervention can be made at every stage of the spectrum to restore and/or improve health and wellness.
For an example of how this works in real life, let’s look at blood pressure ranges.
According to conventional laboratory ranges, a blood pressure reading of 120/80 is considered “normal”.
However, at that blood pressure level, damage to your heart and body is almost certainly occurring. It’s not good enough to aim for 120/80 if you want to prevent heart disease.
According to functional lab views, the optimal blood pressure is 110/70 or less, quite a bit lower. In this range, there is virtually zero risk of developing heart disease.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not shooting for “some” chance of heart disease. I’m shooting for zero if I can help it!
How to use this information
Here’s where things become a little tricky.
If you are still feeling like sh*t but the labs your doctor ran came back “normal”, it may be worth getting a second opinion from someone in the alternative health field who knows about functional labwork.
This could be a naturopathic doctor, a holistic-minded chiropractor, or a health coach trained in blood analysis (that’s me!). If your symptoms are concerning your digestive system or may be, a holistic nutritionist trained in blood analyiss (also me!) could be helpful.
Most practitioners offer free or low-cost consultations which is a great opportunity for you to ask questions and learn their process, but also gives the practitioner a chance to say if he or she thinks they can help you.
There is so much more to you than what your labs say. You should not be treated simply as a bunch of numbers and symptoms. Find a practitioner who treats you like the amazing human you are!
At the end of the day, you need to be your own health advocate. No doctor or practitioner will ever know more about how you’re feeling and what it’s going on your body than you.
YOU are the expert when it comes to your health. My hope is that by shifting your perspective in this way will, you feel empowered and confident to ask for what you need and build a care team that doesn’t reduce you to number on a piece of paper.
Alternative health care starts with scheduling your FREE consultation. I would love to chat and find out more about you and your health goals. To take the first step, click the button below to schedule your FREE consultation today.