If you feel that you are not feeling as good as you should, it may be worth seeing your General Practitioner for some routine blood testing.
Having annual blood tests can provide not only a snap shot of how your body is currently travelling, but over time, will show trends towards various health states. For example, cholesterol, liver health, hormonal balance or kidney function.
All blood markers have a “range” that is used to determine health issues. These ranges however, are calculated based on population ranges and do not necessarily reflect a personal health status. Often clients walk through my clinic door, only to tell me that their doctor said their blood results returned “normal” levels, even though they feel fatigued, have heavy menstruation problems, or have issues concentrating and sleeping.
I encourage anyone who has had a blood test recently, to ask their doctor for a printout of the results and have them analysed by a Holistic Nutritionist. We review each blood marker, checking for imbalances in the body, trends in the wrong or right direction and correlations between symptoms and blood markers. We look for values to be in the “Healthy Range” rather than the “normal range”.
In my clinic, I also use other tools to gather data such as body scanning, iridology, urine testing and heavy metal testing. No one test is going to give you all the answers, however each diagnostic tool provides another piece of a clients’ health puzzle, along with detailed case taking.
It is also important to have all relevant blood markers done, especially those that are often overlooked, including Iron (even in men), Vit B12 and Vit D. Other markers of significance include full cholesterol and homocysteine for cardiovascular health, fasting glucose, insulin & HBa1c for blood glucose dysfunction such as diabetes or metabolic syndrome or CRP & ESR, inflammation markers which are often high in clients with chronic pain or chronic digestive problems.
A good holistic practitioner should also offer pathology services, although they are not generally covered under Medicare or Private Health benefits, so they do incur an additional cost. However, not all doctors will authorise all the blood work to be done, as they can sometimes feel them to be unnecessary and they have very strict guidelines that they must follow. If this is the case, we offer the ability to obtain any missing pathology to complete the puzzle as well as the full range of tests.
Eat Right for Life have a partnership with I-Screen who have collection centres all over Adelaide and provide high quality pathology testing at reasonable prices. Tests can be ordered directly from their website or from our practitioners at the same costs. They offer not only blood testing, but also saliva, urine and stool testing, depending on the type of data required, for example, stool testing is often used for investigating digestive health. Hormonal testing for fertility, thyroid and adrenal health is often not thoroughly investigated by General Practitioners, with several markers often missing from the reports. This leaves the data incomplete when trying to assess the whole person.
Taking the time to have some testing done could be your first step in finding the source of ill-health or discovering how well your body is aging or recovering after injury or trauma. The second step is finding a practitioner, whether it be in conventional medicine or natural health medicine or both, who you trust and feel will work tirelessly to help your body to heal, recover and rebalance so that you can live your best life possible. Life is short, don’t waste a second of it.