What are functional labs and how did they help me improve my energy and bring balance to my body?
Throughout my life, even as far back as my childhood, I have struggled with chronic health conditions. As a child I caught every virus that floated by. Eventually, that culminated in a diagnosis of Asthma and allergies. After my husband and I were married I struggled to get pregnant. After years of trying and a devastating miscarriage, we sought out further answers as to why we were having so much trouble conceiving. Ultimately, after much investigation, the diagnosis was Unexplained Infertility. Thankfully, through fertility treatments and supplemental progesterone I was able to get pregnant and maintain the pregnancy…kind of. As my pregnancies progressed, I experienced pre-term labor and was hospitalized on bed rest. While I thank God every day for our three healthy girls, that time is still perplexing to me. Why was it so hard for me to get pregnant and stay pregnant when so many other people I knew around me seemed to do this so easily? My high risk OB said after the fact that my pregnancy was the worst she had ever dealt with that ended successfully…our girls were truly miracles! Again, my doctors, as amazing as they were, really had no answers as to why we struggled so much.
A few years went by and I began noticing more fatigue, exhaustion, difficulty concentrating, feeling cold all of the time and numerous other vague symptoms. Honestly, at first I thought it was just completely normal since we had three young children (and 2 large dogs), with our twins being only 19 months younger than our oldest. Who wouldn’t be tired?!? I kind of just lived with this for a long time. As time went by, I began to think maybe it was Perimenopause. After all, I was in my thirties now. A friend referred me to her Functional Medicine doctor who was also an OB/GYN. The first thing she said to me when I walked in for my consultation was, “have you ever been diagnosed as Hypothyroid?”. I had never even thought about that possibility. She noticed my thinning eyebrows and told me that was a hallmark symptom. She ran the bloodwork and I was diagnosed with Hypothyroidism and Hormone Imbalance/Perimenopause. My first thoughts were, “Yay, I finally know what my issues have been all of this time! I can’t wait to start treatment and regain my energy again!!” So I started both Thyroid medication and some hormonal support. Some symptoms lessened, some disappeared, but many remained. Is this what life was to be like forever as a mother and wife?
I lived what I thought was a healthy lifestyle. I exercised regularly and I ate what most would consider a very healthy diet. Time continued to pass and I tried everything I knew of at the time to naturally improve my energy and overall health. As time went on, I went to many different Functional Medicine practitioners, hoping for more insight and answers. At one point along the way I found out I was Homozygous for a MTHFR mutation. Again, I thought, “this is the answer!”. I dove in and researched everything I could about it and followed the recommendations. Still felt the same. Then I thought, maybe it’s Adrenal Exhaustion. Again, I tried what I could and really no improvement. This story sounds really depressing, right? Diagnosis, after diagnosis, after diagnosis and really no effective “treatments” to make me feel myself again and improve my health.
Thankfully, though I wish I had found this much sooner, I found Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. I had been reading about Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA) (I am a health nut and a health nerd…always seeking to learn more) and I decided to run a test on myself to see if I had any evidence of heavy metals in my system that could be explaining my exhaustion, fatigue, and other symptoms. I had all of my mercury fillings replaced years prior and I was not sure that was done properly, so I was worried about Mercury exposure. Funnily, I thought I could figure out how to interpret my own HTMA, so I did not purchase a consult with the test. How hard could it be, I am a health nerd and have a strong science education?? Well, it was NOT easy to understand on my own. That lead me to searching for how to interpret my HTMA online. I landed on a YouTube video by an FDN. I purchased the consult through her and learned about the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® program. The protocol she recommended made a huge impact on my energy and the chronic cramping I experienced subsided. Quickly, I signed up for the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® program! I was excited to learn about how this health philosophy and functional lab testing could help me and many others. I already had a Health Coaching certification, but I felt limited in how to specifically address peoples’ health issues up to that point. This was going to fill that gap!
Through the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® program I learned about how our body aims to maintain homeostasis. I learned how all sorts of stressors on our bodies, internal and external, can cause imbalances in many different body systems, including the hormone, immune, digestive, detoxification, energy, neurological and oxidative systems. When the stresses on our body become too much to handle, our body begins to subtly break down and symptoms occur, which we as FDN-Ps call Metabolic Chaos®. Conventional and even many Functional Medicine doctors will pinpoint specific symptoms and tie that to a specific diagnosis, with a specific treatment regimen.
As an FDN-P, we understand that individual symptoms can be signs of imbalance in many different systems, not just one. So our job is to investigate what systems are impacted and out of balance, with our aim being to uncover the root causes and then restoring balance and resilience to ALL of the bodily systems, so that one can restore function and energy to the whole body. And that is why we rely on Functional Lab Testing. Functional labs give us a picture of:
- how your hormones are behaving (everything from sex hormones to cortisol),
- how your microbiome is functioning,
- whether you have any opportunistic bacteria, pathogens, or infestations of any type,
- whether you have any food sensitivities including gluten,
- how your gut barrier is functioning and
- whether you have leaky gut,
- whether you have excessive oxidative stress that is causing DNA damage,
- how well your liver is detoxifying your body,
- how your immune system is functioning,
- how your digestive enzymes are working, and also
- how your body is processing minerals and nutrients.
- Whether you have heavy metal exposure
- Whether you have mold exposure
- And many more!
This is a lot of great information!
You may be asking, how is this different than the labs my doctor runs? Well, normal blood chemistry panels don’t look at ANY of these factors in depth. A Complete Blood Chemistry panel is designed with ranges that look to diagnose illness and disease. That is why often we have conventional labs run and our doctor tells us everything is fine, even when we don’t feel fine. That’s what happened with me over and over again.
Our functional lab panels are designed to find where you have any breakdowns in the bodily systems that are causing symptoms (even subtle complaints), but not yet causing disease. Our functional labs utilize reference ranges that are aimed at optimal health, whereas conventional labs reference ranges utilize averages of the entire population, including many unhealthy and sick people in those numbers. With all of the information we get from these functional labs we work closely with each person to design a personalized health rebuilding program that includes specific recommendations for diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction and targeted supplementation (DRESS for Health Success® Protocol) to help each person rebuild optimal health, energy, and function, ultimately restoring the natural resilience and balance to the whole body. This is FDN® in a nutshell.
I have done all of these labs on myself and I continue to follow my own DRESS Protocol. I don’t remember a single time in my life that my health and energy has been as good as it is now! Balance is the key to everything. We talk about maintaining balance of the ecosystem, we talk about work-life balance, and in the same way we must focus of maintaining balance of the systems of our body in order to have optimal health and energy. Follow along and I will be explaining the different functional labs further in future posts, along with sharing my own functional lab results.
