Functional Medicine
Functional Blood Chemistry
Most people are aware that blood chemistry analysis is a tool to help assess a person's health status. However, many people are not aware that different paradigms exist when viewing health and blood chemistry - conventional medical and wholistic functional views. Conventional medicine focuses on diagnosis and treatment of disease or suppression of symptoms with drugs or surgery. While functional practitioners acknowledge this approach when appropriate, they prefer to focus on determining the underlying causes of symptoms and utilize gentler treatments such as dietary and life style changes, nutritional supplements, and botanicals to support healthy functioning and relieve symptoms. All too often, patients are told that everything is "normal" because the practitioner is unaware of the contributing factors causing blood chemistry abnormality that are found in the outer edges f the normal range. Wholistic functional blood chemistry practitioners will look at the normal range and se if the values are in the lower, middle (optimal) or upper third of the range. Each range suggests certain conditions. For clients with variations from the optimal, this is an excellent method of seeing what is actually occurring in the body. This allows the practitioner to identify and treat the client's functional and nutritional deficiencies, and to discern between pathological and non-pathological changes.
A blood draw from a laboratory will be required to do a functional blood chemistry analysis. All lab fees are to be prepaid and a form will be given to the client to take to the Lab Corp. drawing station. Some functional testing requires an overnight fast and/or sometimes multiple blood draws. This will be explained to you prior to leaving our office.
Fees:
Laboratory fees vary upon type of test.
Report of Findings: $195
Functional Endocrinology
Endocrinology is the science of the endocrine glands. The pituitary gland, the pineal glandm, the hypothalamus, the adrenals, the thyroid, and the parathyroid, the pancreas, the ovaries, the testes, and the prostate glands are all part of the endocrine system. The endocrine system controls and regulates the production of all hormones in the body.
Functional endocrinology allows the identification of irregularities in the endocrine systems before the imbalance manifests itseld as a full-blown diagnosable disease. Early detection, treatment, and prevention of a developing disease is a quality-of-life issue. The well known commercial says it best: "You can pay now or you can pay me later". Functional endocrine disorders are typically unrecognized by allopathic doctors since they are not yet in a disease state. These undiagnosed diseases are left untreated in the standard healthcare model until the manifestations of disease occur.
A functional endocrinology practitioner applies natural therapies such as diet, nutrition, detoxificatoin, and lifestyle changes. Most of the time, this will enable and support the function of the glands before prescription drugs are required. For example, high blood pressure is just one of the many signs of a hormone imbalance. You can choose to get blood pressure medicine from your doctor or find the cause of the problem through functional endocrinology testing and use diet and lifestyle changes to correct the underlying problem.
The client is given a functional lab test kit. The specimens are collected at hoe and then mailed to the lab as instructed. The lab results are then sent to our office for evaluation. Our office contacts the client to make an appointment to review the report of findings and develop a personalized program that addresses each client's individual needs.
Fees:
Lab Fees: $50 - $300 depending upon test ordered.
Report of Findings: $195
Lab Fees - Retest: Same as above.