Doctors miss all kinds of useful information on labwork. I would like to highlight my functional health analysis of laboratory blood work. It’s my goal that I can help you understand the difference between the review of blood work solely to identify pathology and disease versus a functional health analysis of blood work to identify places where health has started to deteriorate.

Evaluating lab work can be a daunting task. For many doctors, perhaps even your doctor, it simply involves running down the lab report looking for the biomarkers with results outside of the lab range. Then coordinating that with your history, other tests, and symptoms to diagnose a disease. This is the model of care in our current system. It is disease oriented. That means if you have symptoms (feeling lousy, etc.), but your labs are not outside of the lab range and you’re taking your medication as prescribed. They have done their job and managed your disease.

But, what happens next? What if that doesn’t alleviate your symptoms!?!

For many people, it involves years of getting used to living with the symptoms or finding other doctors who tell you more of the same. I am going to highlight the difference in how I look at lab work to identify places where you have lost health, but still have normal lab results by your current doctor’s standards.

First, it’s important to know a little more about how laboratories create their lab ranges. Perhaps, you were listening closely and heard me say I was going to tell you more about how labs create their lab ranges. This may surprise some of you, but a substantial portion of lab ranges are based on the averages of the people who get their labs drawn from a particular lab company.

Let’s take Thyroid stimulating hormone or TSH for instance. It’s like this, all of the people who get sent to a lab for TSH testing are plotted on a bell curve. As an approximation, the lab may take the 5% with the lowest scores and the 5% with the highest scores and list those ranges as the end limits of the lab range, leaving the other 90% of the people tested with a normal result.

The problem with that is that you may have a problem, and your body’s response may not measure outside of the lab range. Or, you may have all of the symptoms of a problem, for instance a thyroid problem or autoimmune issue and your labs may still be normal. Therefore, you don’t have a disease and don’t have a place in the current system.

My functional health analysis is different. We use a tighter window of lab ranges to identify those on top of the bell curve and distinguish them from those who are sliding off its edge. This allows for recognition of areas where you may have lost your health and developed symptoms but they are not clear cut enough for the conventional system to identify a disease. In short, this allows me to help people rebuild their health, almost irregardless of whether or not they have a diagnosed disease. When we look at labwork with a focus on finding health versus disease, it changes the entire picture! It also provides hope for those who have been lost in the cracks of a disease focused healthcare system for far too long.

For more details about expanded lab work and my functional health analysis, please watch my Comprehensive Metabolic Testing Video and I will go over a case example from my practice so that you can see the enormous amount of information that your doctors are likely missing when reviewing your lab work.

Simply click this link or if it is not appearing, keep watching for more information on how to see this video or contact my office for help.

I look forward to helping you find, Your Path To Health!

Dr. Richard L. Robles, DC