Testing – Functional Medicine Back to Basics

In this episode of Functional Medicine Back to Basics Dr. Rutherford discusses proper testing and how more testing is not always better.

Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

If you are interested in scheduling a consultation with Dr. Rutherford please visit http://PowerHealthConsult.com

We’ve done history. We’ve done. It is a series for both some of you who, just for some reason, poked. You know, decided to watch a video on testing. We’ve already done a general overview of what functional medicine should look like.

We’ve done something called obstacle secure. We have done the history and the application to a functional medicine practice versus a medical practice. Same thing, with with the testing we’ve done testing, functional medicine practice versus a medical practice.

As far as the exam exam testing, and today we’re, doing lab testing. We’re. Probably there’s. A lot of lab testing that you can do there’s, a lot of specialty testing that depends on who you’re, treating what you’re treating, but I’m going to go over the core of Testing today and I’m gonna make, I’m gonna try to make it clear what the confusion is out there relative to lab ranges, and also I’m gonna walk through kind of a just, a General overall basic testing test list of tests that I choose from to run across the board on so many of our patients, because it’s relevant to our patient population and our patient population is, is chronic pain, autoimmunity pretty much anything short of cancer.

That comes and won’t, go away yeah, essentially so so that’s. We’re gonna do today, and I’m gonna start off with lab testing. One of the things that propelled functional medicine into the into the into the lexicon into the conversation was was the the changing of lab mangez.

Now, when you go to your doctor, you go to your doctor and you get a lab test and the lab test has has the wit they’re testing, so it’ll, say glucose, and then it has the result. In this particular case, it’s 94, and then it ‘

Ll have something where it’s a flag and that flag will say high or low or normal, okay and and and then that flag is usually relevant to the range that they say you should have for glucose. So in here the range would be 65 to 99, all right, and so, if you’re in that range, they would say they would say nothing if they were above it below it, the flag would say high or low okay, so that’s pretty basic, I’m feeling.

Most of you are pretty familiar with that. If the problem is is when we started doing this, and – and we was a group of doctors that I was involved with a long time ago – and and we were on a boards together – and we shared information and and and the problem was that, as you’ve already heard everybody comes in here, and everybody probably comes into most functional medicine.

Practice comes in with lab ranges that are normal. There’s, nothing wrong with yesterday. Yesterday, one’s, got polycystic ovarian syndrome and the other one probably has Graves disease, which is a fairly serious thyroid problem.

But yet both of them had normal ranges, they all had. They all had the labs. I mean they all had that. All of the symptoms of these conditions, but they’re, but they’re live ranges were normal. So what do we do with that back then? What do we do with that? Well, there’s.

A gentleman named Harry Einar. He is a biochemist at a –, biotics and Harry is a pretty bright guy and Harry spent. I believe, ten years taking all of the pathological lab ranges and shrinking them down until they started to look like the patient sitting in front of us.

If the patient sitting in front of us has had a polycystic ovarian syndrome, maybe they’re losing their hair, or maybe they got? Maybe they’re overweight? Maybe they’re. Maybe they’re having bad period.

It’s, hot flashes, to lengthy periods to short periods. Anything you know too heavy bleeding too little bleeding they can’t get pregnant, they can’t carry the term, yet all their lab tests are normal.

Okay, so Harry spent a long time looking at an awful lot of lab tests and bringing them down until we. This this lab range is the lab range that says there’s, a problem here so, for example, in the in the example I just used glucose in this lab here in Reno Nevada.

This labs range is 65 to 99, for your glucose Harry found that once you get to 65, your brain is practically dead, because glucose is the main nutrients of your brain and if you lose too much glucose, you’re there, but that’s, the normal range interesting so Harry, says from all of the data that he and numerous doctors collected over a period of I think was about 10 to 12 years that it should be 85 to 99.

Now that’s now called a functional range okay, so in other words we’ve. The vast majority of ranges were tightened there’s, a few that were widened and and and they were and and each one was done. So to reflect the patients that were sitting in front of us now, the range that comes from the medical community is usually designed to pick up pathology and, and frankly, it fits today’s.

Medical model and I’m, not anti medicine. I’ll, get that out of the way. Okay, as you’ll, find out as I go through this series, but but but but those ranges are for pathology, the medical model, the insurance model, the diagnostic code model.

All of these models are based around pathology. I gave you two perfect examples. You know dementia people who have dementia there’s like seven ranges of dementia and Alzheimer’s. There’s like seven ranges of Parkinson’s; disease there’s and it’s.

Seven, seven, seven different stages, not ranges, seven different stages or something like a kidney disease. There’s there’s, depending on which which diagram in which rating system you’re. Looking at there’s, either four or five stages to kidney disease function in all of those, there is a there.

The the in the medical community, there is mamada Liz to wait until you start to see all of the symptoms in the in that that they ‘ Re allowed to look for in that person and you must have the damage, in other words like in Alzheimers, Parkinson’s.

You must see the Lewy body damage in the brain. You must see on this MRI. You must see these white spots, okay or or the alpha synuclein, that for the Alzheimer’s there or or if you’re talking about the kidney, I mean the kidney you just they just keep.

Looking at the bun, the create creatine rate, they just look at it at the kidney markers, but those of you have kidney problems know what I’m about to say it’s, correct where the kidney it’s. Pretty much wait until there’s, so much pathology and and and it stops working and then what what you want dialysis.

So the point is, the medical model is built around kind of oddly different things. One is like acute come in. You know you. I have acute bacterial infection or cubano infection, kill it kill the bacteria, get it and get it under control as quickly as possible.

On the other end for chronic problems like walk in here, all the time it’s, wait until it’s so far gone because not because they want to, but because that’s, the model. The model is to wait until we can see something on the MRI see something on a cat scan and then we’ll treat it.

These ranges reflect that you can have pre-diabetes for ten years before it actually shows up in your medical model. Ranges. Okay, I should use the term pathological ranges, but in the meantime, you’re having irritable on shakiness, you get tired after meals, you get irritable and shaky.

If you don’t need anything, you know you’re. Putting on weight you can’t get rid of it. You have all of the symptoms of free of high and low blood sugar symptoms craving foods. You eat, you eat food, you feel better.

You eat food. You fall asleep afterwards. That’s, a combination of high and low blood sugar symptoms, and that’s. What people usually have insulin resistance? They’ll experience that for 10 years before it gets into a pathological range and what is that pathological range? It used to be diabetes type 2.

Now, if you look on these tests they actually have a pre-diabetic range, but still it takes 10 years to get into the pre-diabetic sorry. So I have a patient sitting in front of me. They have small fiber neuropathy, one of the most common causes of small fiber neuropathy is pre-diabetes, but their numbers are normal because they’re using the pathological range which more or less is for diabetes, okay, but they’re, not getting treated Because it’s going to take ten years before it gets to diabetes, and at that point you got numbness.

You know your feet are starting to turn blue and now the doctor will say: okay, let’s, do a nerve, conduction velocity and hopefully that shows something and if it shows something they ‘ Ll give you a gabapentin, but that’s, that’s.

Pathological ranges and functional ranges. You’re picking things up, hopefully before it’s, creating the damage that becomes permanent or the damage that becomes irreversible. It’s, you’re, picking up abnormal function and and and you’re doing that by looking at it earlier and and this this glucose range number is perfect.

Example, I mean 65 by the time you get down in the range in the medical model and the physiological model 65 to 99. The range in the functional model is 85 to 99. So if you dip below 85 and you’re 80, your doctors telling you normal, we’re.

Looking at your symptoms and you’re, getting irritable and shaky! You’re nodding off, you. Have you got sugar cravings? We look at that and go you know in the functional range you are. You have low blood sugar and we need to treat you for that and we use a combination of the history forms that we talked about in the last couple of presentations to see what that patients, where that patient’s.

Symptoms are every week because we will actually go by those symptoms and by the functional ranges and – and it can get pretty complex in in trying to figure out what’s wrong with somebody. Just give you an example: I’ll stay with blood sugar.

I have this happen all the time because blood sugar, as we’re gonna talk about in the next couple of presentations, is foundational to you getting better. If your blood sugar is not pristine it, it creates a lot of abnormalities throughout the body.

Sigh roid brain anxiety, inability to sleep install through the night does a lot of bad things, and so you’re, trying to fix stuff and it’s, not working because your blood sugar is off. Okay, you’re, trying to take an herb for staying asleep, but it’s, not working because your blood Sugar’s dropping in Melanie.

Why so? We need to know about blood sugar, but but it’s hard, because I just got done talking about blood sugar and saying you could be pre-diabetic for 10 years before it shows up. So what we do is in blood sugar.

We actually have people take their blood sugar, two hours after after they eat every meal, and some of our patients are eating six times a day. Some of them are eating three times a day. They take it after every meal, and then that gives them a number.

Then we look at their assessment forms that we have people fill out every week and those are the symptoms. Remember the symptoms can be there for 10 years before you have a problem, and then we look at the blood panel.

We have regularly have this happen where the blood panel says they have high blood sugar, the the the the blood glucose or that their thing says they have low blood sugar and their symptoms say they have something else, preferably in that case it would say they have Been some resistance, what we would do is we would treat the insulin resistance because the because the symptoms believe it or not in that particular case are more accurate.

We’ve had just the opposite. We’ve, had the home, the home test tell the person that they have high blood sugar. We have the a1c glucose tone, they have low blood sugar and then we have the symptoms, saying high blood sugar without getting into that a great leg.

There, probably in some resistant to moving from high blood sugar to to from low blood sugar, it’s, a high blood sugar. So I’m, not trying to confuse you. I’m just trying to show you pathological ranges versus functional ranges and and and and and I’ll just say this okay Cleveland Clinic is now doing functional medicine.

They are adopting many of the functional ranges that are still not being adopted in labs. Around the country Mayo Clinic has adopted the functional ranges for autoimmune thyroid disease. It used to be in the pathological range used to be 0 to 100.

For as long as I’ve been a functional medicine, it’s been 0 to 9, so everybody from 9 to 100 is being told you’re. Fine, they’re, not, but they have all the symptoms of an immune attack against their thyroid 20 out of 20 symptoms.

But they’re being told they’re normal because they’re, 40 and and and and now the range in a lot of the labs is 0 to 32. On that, for those of you who may have Hashimoto’s and go no, those are those are wrong numbers.

Now there’s 32. In a lot of labs, we have a hospital in town, a 0:32. We have another hospital in town. It’s 0 to 9 in the pathological range, so they’re coming down to these ranges, and I think it ‘

Ll continue to do so because they’re, finding it more effective to be able to treat people before the damage is so far gone that that you can ‘ T that you can’t do anything for them, so that and so to two subjects.

Why are the ranges different and and this story in the labs? Okay, what you? The ranges are different because each laboratory that you go to really does kind of a bell curve of all the people that are coming in and then they kind of cut off the ends and and then they use the ranges that that patient population has for their Pathological range and in whichever they’re embracing if they’re embracing 32, is the range or 33 or 34 is the range or 0 to 40? Is the range or 0 to 16 is range, whichever ones the closest, when they do that? That’s, the range that they use, that’s, why they differ from lab to lab? But you’ll notice that these numbers tell a story: okay, we just got done talking about.

We just got done talking about blood sugar, and we got talking done talking about how you have to really they tell a story and they’re, not accurate. There’s. All I actually was at a seminar this year in which the doctor, whom I have had a lot of respects for said the only truly accurate blood test out.

There is the strep test and I raised my hand. I said you mean like in infectious diseases. He said no, I mean like period. He said that’s, really the only accurate test out there IIIi think I can embrace that, based on under based on looking at thousands and thousands of labs and seeing how they are, how they are and and – and you have to understand the the Body, the body is a mechanism of millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of chemical reactions that are going on all the time.

Many many many many vicious pathways, a vicious cycle pathways and and and and so the medical model again goes back to. We’re gonna target, one particular aspect of your physiology and that’s. How these tests are used in the medical model.

You have something with your kidney. Then we’re going to well. I just used that as saying they’re, not kind of too much for your kidney and they’re not, but they might do something for your kidney. They try to ameliorate it until it fails and then it’s.

In and you’re put on on dialysis, but but but the medical, but the functional model is, is not to is not to wait for that to happen. The functional model is look at this and and look at this cycles and systems.

So the functional model is to look for the story in these labs. So, for example, if you have somebody who has a heart problem and and and and they do all these cardiac that I forget – which one now it is there’s, a lab it ‘

S like Harvard has a Boston. It’s. Boston has a cardiac screen that a lot of doctors are doing now and then it’s. Give you statin drugs. If you’re a doctor or it’s, give you coq10 or let’s. Give you whatever that for your heart, but here’s, a thing: okay, we in functional medicine, we don’t even really have a section on our metabolic assessment form for heart, okay, and when I was just looking at a lab this Morning with a gentleman who’s had multiple heart attacks.

He’s on statin drugs, but we’re, not going to treat his heart because that’s, not functional medicine, functional medicine is why did your heart clog up the reason his heart clogged up is because there was inflammation In the arteries in his heart – and he may or may not have had a high what’s called c-reactive protein C reactive protein is an inflammatory marker for the heart, but but hopefully he did, but if he has a high C reactive protein, you Know there’s, an inflammation in the heart.

The medical model is let’s, do something and give something for that inflammation. Let’s, go in and do that and and them and the functional model is like wow. Okay. What’s, causing inflammation and, interestingly enough? We you will find that that that those inflammatory markers are they can be caused by so many different things and and and one of the things that can cause it is blood sugar.

So I’m. Looking at a heart problem, I’m gonna leave. Looking at that person’s, blood sugar – oh wonder of wonders. The gentleman has blood sugar problems. Okay, he has. He has a1c of eight, which means he ‘

S got diabetes type, two okay! Well, why is that important? Because diabetes actually will break create the inflammation first of all, and then it causes you to not that your insulin, doesn’t work right.

It causes you to not get this. Your your blood sugar into your cells, it ‘ S got to go somewhere, it breaks down into triglycerides. We can. I could spend an hour talking about why your cholesterol panel is not about cholesterol or triglycerides or low-density limits.

It’s about blood sugar if you have high, triglycerides and and and and everything else is normal. You’re, getting blood sugar problems and you can tell that from the triglycerides. You can tell you’re getting pre-diabetes years and years and years at a time so, and so it’s.

It’s, so so the point being that it there’s, a story there. It’s, the heart it’s, the inflammation it’s. What’s, causing the inflammation? The diabetes is probably what’s, causing part of the inflammation.

The diabetes is actually hitting the the is causing the high blood panel. So if you have high cholesterol and you have a bad heart, what are you gonna do well in the medical model, you start treating.

Basically, you usually give a statin drug to make sure that this doesn’t clog up, and then you start treating the cholesterol wrong. You would treat the diabetes and when you treat the diabetes, the cholesterol panel would get better.

The inflammation would cut and wouldn’t be now and if you’ve caught it in time, you’re done, so this is functional, medicine versus pathological medicine, and this is – and this is how you read the labs.

So I do that that took a little bit of time, but but it’s. It’s. It’s, a challenge in here when people come in and I go through the functional labs and they go. But my doctor said it was okay and I want to say I know your doctor said it okay and but you still have your problems and you’re here.

So so let’s. Talk about the let’s. Talk about functional norms, so some of the and some of the interesting things I could walk through this whole. I could walk through this whole lab process and and and go through all of these labs, and I’m.

Just gonna hit some interesting things here that might help you to to to assess your cases better. The djinn, the genesis of this whole series was that power health has like six or 700 hours online yoga power, health talk comm, you name it just about anything.

Comes in here we have a presentation on. Some of them are short, some of her very lengthy. I think there’s over a couple of million views on them. They’re there. They’re well received. We got a lot of good feedback, but people say, but you’re, not telling us how to get better.

So I’m walking through this whole procedure. To tell your wife, we don’t. Do that, but also to help you to know what you know, what should functional medicine look like if you walked into it? If you’re, really walking into it, you want to get.

You want to get a real functional medicine feel when you walk into an office, and frankly, there’s, no discipline board, or there’s. No regulation board on functional medicine, so anybody can call themselves a functional medicine practitioner.

I’m gonna walk through some, so I’m gonna walk through some of the more salient things I like that. I think you might be interested in and then I might go through some and then I might go through some just some testing that I that that I keep in mind on every patient that walks in the door.

So this is actually a test that we do on everybody. It’s, a test that’s extraordinarily comprehensive, and it really is designed to tell us everything that we need to know about the chronic patient relative to inflammation and autoimmunity.

These are all standard lab tests. None of them are. These are not special D tests and I’m not going to get into specialty tests today, like Lyme, testing and stuff, like that, it’s controversial and frankly, the vast majority of the time you don’t need as Much of that, as you need of this, if so so, the a1c, so the blood sugar testing is very important because of what I just said: okay, it’ll.

Take you, 10 years before your blood sugar becomes looking like like pre-diabetes and and the range for pre-diabetes is five point. Seven to six point. Four. We like to see it too. We like to see it below five point four and I’m, going to give you some clinical pearls as to why we look at this.

So the functional range is below 5 point 4 and above 5, point 4 usually indicates there’s a little bit of something called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth in our patients, and these are things that we’re looking for, because that can Cause a lot of problems, and somebody most of you watches, probably heard that, and this is a way of finding it, the testing for it.

Isn’t great. It’s. Okay. You know the C bow breath test, but this is kind of a cross-check on that. Uric acid is a marker that we use for most of you would know if we gap our range is as much as much again it’s.

It’s, much more contracted, but it well. If we see it in the functional range, we use it as an inflammatory marker. We know that we, we are inflammatory hunters that’s. What we do here I mean this is this: is this? Is three-dimensional medicine where you’re? Looking for the story, you’re.

Looking for the vicious cycles, you’re. Looking for the feedback loops, you’re, not just looking for something to drop a pill on alright, you’re, looking to change physiology here, so your egg a-sixes hints of inflammation.

There are kidney markers here which we look at sodium and potassium, for us is more of an adrenal marker. If it’s in the functional range, we we all do adrenal testing some adrenal specialty testing, but potassium and chloride are controlled that the adrenals they can tell you a little bit about the kidneys.

But for us those are adrenal markers protein and globulin people will look at those for disease purposes. The medical pathological model will look at those mostly for disease purposes. Those are large molecules that should not get through your intestines, your intestinal barrier.

So if we look at that and and and we see that they’re, either high or low it’s, an indication of intestinal permeability, leaky gut so and a lot of people come in here from a lot of difference. What sort I’m, looking for abilities to a liability, different different layers of economic abilities, okay and if testing is, is, is going to be a financial issue.

A lot of times you’re, going to work largely off of this test, because there’s. A good test for specialty test for Leakey got out of out of the lab called cyrex labs, and I and I and and and you can do it – it’s $ 120 desai entirely and reasonable.

But if the person is on a budget shall we say, then you can look at this protein and globulin ego? You know what you probably have: a leaky gut there’s, something in here called lactic dehydrogenase lactic dehydrogenase is, is, is used for in the medical profession and their model.

It’s used to find disease in in, in your kidney and your liver and muscles throughout the body in different structures throughout the body it’s, a sugar based molecule. We use it to look for blood sugar under a hundred and fifty is, and the range for the medical pathological model looking for these pathologies is 120 to 225.

Let me see: is that correct, yeah, 120 to 225 and and and and we like to see it above 150? Okay, if it’s above 150, we’re fine if it’s below 150 functionally. That person has something called reactive, hypoglycemia, another blood sugar marker that we can use because the blood sugar markers can be affect your blood.

Sugar is affected by so many things we’re gonna talk about that. It’s affected by food sensitivities, stress sleep apnea, so it’s really hard to get exact blood sugar numbers. It’s. Going back to the fact that he said that the one gentleman said the strep is the only real solid number.

This is another indicator that that that the person has a blood sugar problem liver there’s, lever enzymes, ast and alt. The medical model is zero to forty. We are zero to twenty five. It tells us that the person has a fatty, liver.

The medical model waits until it’s like zero to a hundred or until you have a real pathology there, and then they start doing some pretty aggressive stuff in our world. Once we have a over 25, we know there’s, a fatty liver they’re functionally.

That means you’re, not going to clear your liver properly. You’re, not going to clear your estrogens properly. You’re, not going to be you’re, not going to be all those nice fatty vitamins that you’re.

Taking the fat soluble vitamins ad Ek, you’re, not going to be processing those properly. You’re, not going to get in their system in our in our understanding above 25, between 25 and 100, the medical model doesn’t care.

They’re. Looking for pathology, we’re, looking for it to work, okay and, and so that helps us a lot same thing with the with the gallbladder iron. A lot of medical models, don’t include a ferritin in their iron panels.

They should ferritin is extremely important if your ferritin is high your iron and you don’t need to, like you know, go into the chemistry of this. The iron in your system is going to be low and ferritin is massively inflammatory, but most most most panels that are dictated by insurers, never run it.

So the point being this: if your ferret ins high and you got inflammatory issues and they don’t run it and they don’t know you have it and they just run an iron panel without it and your irons love they’re gonna give you iron, as though you’re anemic, and then it’s going to and ferritin is, is high because it’s, not breaking down it’s, something in your cells That’s, not breaking down.

It should break down into iron, which goes into your bloodstream. If it’s, not breaking down it’s, gonna get more and more because it’s really really really bad. They call that hemochromatosis, if you’ve ever seen somebody with hemochromatosis they are in bad shape, so ferritin is important.

We just talked briefly already about the cholesterol in our world. Cholesterol is like almost never. The problem. Cholesterol is like the good kind. Cholesterol goes in and it patches up bad things. Cholesterol goes in and goes into your system and makes all of your hormones, except for your thyroid hormone cholesterol.

If somebody is comes in here and they’re polycystic ovarian syndrome and and and and they’re vegan and they and and they’re vegetarian and and and i and i honor that and i honour philosophical beliefs.

But the reality is, is cholesterol makes our your hormones? It’s kind of hard to get that person to be able to get their hormones right. So they get babies if they insist on being vegan, even because even those people you can give them essential fatty acids to go, get their cholesterol triglycerides and up, and it’s hard to do.

If your so the point, but the point is cholesterol – is not the bad guy. Okay, well, cholesterol: doesn’t heart attacks as it goes in and it and it patches up the damage from the inflammation that, in the example I used before, was actually caused by the diabetes.

If your cholesterol is really high and your inflammatory markers are really high like something called you should get, you know if you got chronic problems, you should probably get a c-reactive protein and a homocysteine run if they’re high.

Now you now your cholesterol matters, because now, if you’re, you got high cholesterol, then you got a better chance of having a stroke or a heart attack. But if your inflammatory markers are under control, your cholesterol could be 500.

I know that’s, heretical to say that, but you’re Rick correct. You could be out of the range for sure and and it’s. Okay, so cholesterol in our world is really more of a blood sugar marker or or the or the lipid panel is more of a blood sugar marker, because the blood sugar breaks down when it can’t get in his cells and it breaks down The triglycerides and then that and then that whole panel starts to look bad tyroid on.

Tell you here on thyroid. Is you should have you should you should have one two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight nine there’s, ten markers! You should run! Okay and your thyroid panel should look something like this okay, your thyroid panel should look like that.

Not like not like this, not just the TSH and a T, and sometimes a t3 and t4. There should be 10 markers there and and and then you can tell the story of thyroid now, thyroids a whole thing unto itself.

You should look on our website. You should look on power, he’ll talk, for we have so many thyroid presentations. Their thyroid has to make the thyroid hormone, it has to then get somewhere and, and the way gets there is on these on these proteins.

These proteins can be affected by blood sugar stress, birth control, pills steroids. Those of you guys who are taking testosterone, steroid hormones and stuff like that that can all screw up the ability of your thyroid hormones to work properly.

Then it has to get to the liver. So you have to live wrens here then it has to get through the gut. Then we looked at leaky gut that you can see in here and then it has to get to your cell sites and there’s, a lot of drugs.

That can stop this that from going in so you have to review the person’s drugs. You cannot. You cannot tell relative to if that’s happening or not, unless you look at unless you look at all of these markers and you need to know all of that to be able to assess somebody’s thyroid and, frankly, their overall Physiology thyroid is almost more reflection of what’s going on in your entire physiology, and you need something like this to to be able to understand that we already talked a little bit about Hashimoto’s.

Basically, the the thing you need to know about Hashimoto’s. Is the lab range right now and the lab range, I think, is going to become the standard 0 to 9 and most of the half the labs out. There are zero to 34.

I’ve seen it was zero to 20. I’ve, seen him in 0 to 16. I haven’t, seen too many zero to 60s, but I ‘ Ve saw one within the last couple of weeks, so it’s. It’s, pretty wild it’s like the wild wild west out there when it comes to Hashimoto’s, zero to nine and the Mayo Clinic is using this standard right now: okay, vitamin D, vitamin D: the the lab Range just cure it, and just interesting lab range is 30 to 100.

Here I just I just saw one of our old keys to success where one of our doctors said that they didn ‘ T want to want it over 70, which was correct at the time there are places in Europe, South America, where the lab range is a hundred to three hundred, and we just had a patient from hong kong and their lab range read: zero to 222, so lab Range is for vitamin d are all over the place.

Okay, we like to see vitamin d up around that hundred mark in our patients. I can go into vitamin D sometime if, if you show interest than that it’s, it’s. A big deal, vitamin D is a big deal. If your vitamin D is below this lab range, you probably have autoimmunity and that’s, something that we discuss again in in a lot of these videos that we’ve done already on power.

Health talk, comm white blood cells. There’s a whole, it’s. There’s, a CBC with white blood cells. So you’re. Looking for autoimmunity, you’re. Looking for anemias, we’re gonna talk about oxygen and II means they’re gonna be part of it.

Those have you been told, you have anemia for ever and ever and ever, but just don ‘ T worry about it because it’s low. It just must be normal for you. It’s, not normal, usually chronic disease due to chronic information and inflammation, and you have to have oxygen getting to your extremities and your brain and your hands and your feet and everywhere for you to it’s.

One of those foundational things we’re, going to talk about a little bit more in the upcoming episodes and, and so so so anemias are very important to us white blood cells. We have a lot of people coming here, so my white blood cells have been low forever.

They’ve done all kinds of testing. I don’t have any pathologies again again. The the medical profession is looking for pathologies. They want to know if you have polycythemia leukemia, they want to know you know if you have high red blood cells, high white blood cells or low, they’re.

Looking for that, by that time, your blood cells have been doing damage to you for a long time, so chronic low white blood cells usually mean if they’re, not pathology, and if they’ve been ruled out, they usually mean either Chronic inflammation, they may mean autoimmunity, they could mean a chronic viral infection, a chronic bacterial infection like an Epstein, Barr virus or cytomegalovirus, or something along those lines.

There eosinophils are interesting on your on your CBC. Eosinophils can be a check as to whether you maybe have parasites. If you have Cinna fills. This is functional. Okay, eosinophils here there’s, not an established norm in the in the medical profession.

For us, if it’s over two, then we’re. Looking for we’re. Looking for allergies type 1 allergies, you know like I like I got like here – would be that sagebrush, where we’re like right at the foot of the Sierra Mountains here and then from there on it’s desert, and so so It would be that, but the eosinophils can be a marker for parasites.

Have you been out of the country? If you’ve been out in the woods they’ve been drinking the water I’ve diarrhea. If the Essene fills are over to then, then you should do it. You know, then you would do a parasite test.

Okay, didn’t there’s neutrophils and lymphocytes a lot of doctors, don’t. Really they do some interesting testing for viral infections and stuff, but it’s. Not all that accurate. You can look at your neutrophils and lymphocytes here and if they’re, if they’re like more than 40 points apart depending on which ones more will tell you what’s going on.

So what I’m, looking at in front of me, actually has a bacterial infection. They’re neutrophils are there? Nutrients are a viable infection, they’re, neutrophils are 25 and their limps or 71. Lymphocytes are representative of viral issues.

Neutrophils are representative of bacterial issues. They have much more it’s more than 40 that they have a viral infection. In fact, this person has epstein-barr virus, so so that’s, so that’s that we do it.

You know we do a CBC, pretty pretty basic. I’m. Sorry, we do, it urine analysis, pretty basic and then the rest of our testing. We do is more specific to the patients, but we and and and they’re, not and they’re and and they’re and they’re like we like.

If we have a. If we have a female that has polycystic ovarian syndrome, then certainly we’ll. Do hormonal panel testing for that. If we have a person, a patient who comes to me, that’s, andropause a male overweight, mmm, high blood sugar and high blood pressure and and testosterone low, and all that we’ll.

Do that type of testing. We do do some specialty where we do a lot of specialty testing, but the ones that I think are more basic to the patient population out there. Looking for what can I do for myself? Okay and most patients should check their essential fatty acids.

Essential fatty acids are foundational. We’re, going to talk about that. The vast majority of patients I check for essential fatty acids are low. We get them up to normal and just that foundational issue alone can change a lot of things.

Essential fatty acids have a lot to do with a lot of stuff blood. Sugar inflammation brain function mood a lot of things skin a lot of things that’s. A lot of my patients have those things and they think it’s like for me.

I mean I’ve, full disclosure. I had dry skin forever and I thought it was my Hashimoto’s and I was had my uh schmoes under control and then I finally tested my essential fatty acids and they were almost non-existent.

And now I have healthy skin again, so anti parietal and cell antibodies. The hydrochloric acid in the stomach is massively underrated. I mean it does so many bad things. If you don’t have enough hydrochloric acid, so we usually run anti Prell and anti parietal cell antibodies on almost everybody walks in here to see if they have an immune attack against there, if they, even if they have a low hydrochloric acid.

According to their symptoms, then we’re gonna know that that is going to cause a cascade of problems throughout their intestines, and so we run those two and anti-prior so antibodies is an autoimmune problem we want to see.

Are we going to need? Can we fix that, or is this something they’re gonna have forever and they’re gonna need these supplements forever. We run those another another test. We run on everybody’s called the DHA sulfate.

It tells us it gives us a big heads up on the health of the adrenal glands. Those of you are in the alternative world. No, you don’t fix the adrenals. You know fix anything that’s, that’s. One thing we do on just about everybody: let’s, see what else most of the rest of our tests are specialty tests that we do based on on the cases.

So we have we do. You know we use something called cyrex labs for most of our autoimmune testing. There are some other labs that are coming out now. I’m, not a big fan. Just for those of you’re lying people.

I am NOT a big fan of Lyme testing. I have actually been to seminars where the people who do the I Jenna stood up there and said how bad it was, but it’s. The only test we have so that’s. The test we have to use, if you want to know about lime, look at it.

Look on our. You know, look at power, I’ll, talk, calm and look at our lime presentation. I think it gets very, very, very positive reviews from those people who have not kind of drank the lime. Kool-Aid is what I said.

Usually, I put it relative to the whole have to take antibiotics for years and all that type of stuff, so lime testing is, is a whole different animal. If you have anxiety, I, like I like to see the zinc and copper your zinc should always dominate your copper.

A lot of people have anxiety there’s. A lot of other things that go in anxiety at thyroid can go anxiety. Hashimoto’s can go into anxiety, low blood sugar can go into anxiety. There’s, a ton of things they can go into anxiety.

I’m going through all this. For all of you who say why don’t, you tell me how to get better just by telling me how to get better so that. But so if you have anxiety, zinc’s, a good thing to do there’s, some specialty tests, if you’ve, had your anxiety for your entire life.

There’s, a good test out there, but it’s. A specialty test called the Geno mind test there’s, a lot of other tests. I mean there’s, a that we probably use. I don’t know we probably use 25 or 30 other tests depending on the patient and what they need and those are specialty testing.

We there’s a there’s there, the whole stool industry out there is vying for who’s, the best test out there and to me it’s between Genova stool tests and Diagnostics, diagnostic solutions, stool Tests, but but that’s all here and there the main thing is the understanding of when I what I just went through you through through you with you.

What I just went through with you was to tell you here’s. Why the functional norms are important because we are looking at you functionally. We are looking at to put your physiology back together by the time you wait until it’s, pathological norms.

Yes, you can use those lab rain and and, and you don’t know how much damage is there by the time the persons in diabetes type 2 and you don’t know how much damage is there by the time they’re in stage 3, can you function but you so? You may still be able to recruit that, but you build off of the whole picture that is presented by these because you’re.

Looking at the person’s, entire physiology and you’ll notice. I kept saying this means this means inflammation. This means inflammation. This means that you know this means that their blood Sugar’s off, even though that’s, not a blood sugar marker.

So we’re looking globally, that’s, functional medicine testing to the best I can. I mean I get spent like the book on this. I’ll, just pull it out. This is the book right. This is this is the book. This is the initial okay.

Just this one. This is the apex one okay, so this is one of the supplement kind. This is the initial book on the basics of reading these lab tests. There’s there’s, so there’s, so much data in there. It would take three days to go through it, but I’m, not looking to make you experts on this.

I’m, looking to help you to understand it, so that when you go into your functional medicine doctor, you understand what they’re trying to accomplish, so that should wrap it up for today and then next week we are gon.

Na start into the foundation, now we’re gonna start into treatment, okay and and – and I go back to the fact that when I first got into this, nobody knew what a functional medicine practitioner was. People come in here out of told desperation.

It was an interesting experience. Some of them would really kind of like abuse you like, what do you think you’re? A medical doctor and Michael might think would be like well. What are you doing here? You don’t want to know what I’m talking about, and it was like that it was.

It was actually like that you know it’s crazy! Well, my mother, the doctor, said you’re, a quack and well. I’m gonna go check with my medical dye, so we didn’t have very much going back then now medical Central medicine is pretty well.

It’s at the Cleveland Clinic and there’s. There’s. There’s. There’s. Several colleges around the country that are teaching functional medicine. I know my mentor doctor doing some work at loma linda he just got done doing a hundred.

Fifty million dollar research project be participating it on the gut and at harvard, so it certainly changed since the time I’ve been here and now what I’m. Seeing is I’m, getting a lot of people coming here.

I’ve, already been to functional medicine, doctors, homeopathy, naturopaths and naturopathy frankly, was kind of you know the precursor, through functional medicine and and and yet still, they’re doing a lot of the right things.

But – and this may be this particular patient – isn’t getting better a lot of times it’s because the foundational issues have not been addressed. I briefly mentioned sugar as a foundational injury issue.

I briefly mentioned the essential fatty acids of a foundation I chew, so we’re gonna get into that over the next couple of weeks, because it’s hard for you to get better if the foundation is not set, and there’s, certain things that just make us human beings like proper blood, sugar and proper, essential fatty acids, and there’s.

A handful of things like that, so we’re gonna talk about those next, so we’re, so we’re more or less getting into treatment a lot of times. You set the foundation and these mystery diseases that nobody can tell you what is start getting better okay, so my whole world is back to basics.

I’m. The author of book called back to basics. It actually needs to be edited, because I need to go okay. I wrote this before the whole explosion of autoimmunity, but but in the end it’s still about back to basics.

Nothing has changed. We’re still: human beings, it’s, not magical. We have work, we just need to get back to understanding physiology, and so next week we are gonna start really getting into the physiology of autoimmunity and by going over the very basics of what we’re doing and we ‘

Ll start with, we’ll start with oxygen next week, so that’s. What we’ll start with next week, and I’ll.