Considering Functional Medicine Testing: What You Need to Know

It’s easy enough to undergo basic lab work, but those labs fail to offer a comprehensive picture of your health. It’s all too common for doctors to order a standard lab without ever digging deep into the root causes of your health problems.

If you’re struggling with symptoms that don’t seem to make sense with your lifestyle or have no obvious trigger, you need the help and expertise of a doctor who knows how to use functional medicine testing to decode your health mystery.

What Is Functional Medicine Testing?
Functional medicine testing is distinctly different than traditional lab testing. In most doctors’ offices and hospitals, physicians run standard blood work to see if they find an established disease process. Action is taken only when the lab results are out of the “normal” range.

This standard blood work process fails to help or recognize the many patients who have chronic symptoms but will not show anything remarkable or out-of-the-ordinary in blood work. Functional medicine lab testing is used to assess subtle patterns of imbalance that would otherwise be ignored. More than anything, the goal of functional medicine testing is to prevent disease before it happens by identifying potential or developing problems and guiding patient care accordingly.

Types of Functional Medicine Tests

There are many different functional medicine tests that your holistic doctor might recommend.

One is the four-point cortisol test. This test examines the health of your adrenal glands, which produce the stress hormone called cortisol. If the test reveals that your cortisol levels fluctuate irregularly, your adrenal glands could be the cause of your symptoms like weight gain, hormone imbalances, blood sugar irregularities, and more.

The comprehensive stool analysis is another critical test that assesses gut function. By testing for imbalances between the good and bad bacteria in your gut, evaluating digestive juices, and looking for overgrowth of yeast and parasites, the stool analysis indicates if your body is failing to properly absorb nutrients.

Micronutrient testing, heavy metal testing, comprehensive hormone testing, and DNA testing are also used as functional medicine tools to gain a full picture of your health, identify the root causes of your symptoms, and guide your doctor as he formulates your treatment plan.

Let Functional Medicine Testing Change Your Life
Call (813) 935-2273 now to make your own functional medicine testing appointment with Dr. Ron Shemesh at MindBodySpirit Care in Tampa, Florida. You don’t need to leave your health to chance.