Nutritional Testing

Many people believe that if they eat a balanced healthy diet, and perhaps take a multivitamin, they will not suffer any nutritional deficiencies.  They believe they are doing what they need to do to ensure good health now and in the future.  I can tell you that scientific evidence as well as my experience prove that this simply is not the case.  Many people with exceptional diets, and certainly those with less than ideal eating habits, have nutritional deficiencies.  

In my practice I frequently see individuals with exceptional diets full of high quality, nutrient dense foods, yet when I test their nutrient levels they still have nutritional deficiencies.  How can that be?  Individual nutritional deficiencies can develop for many reasons.  Some of the foods we eat are lacking in nutrition due to deficiencies in the soil they are grown in.  Many of us do not adequately absorb or convert into active forms, the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients in our food.  Each person needs different amounts of nutrients to support their own unique needs and chemistry.  The factors which determine how much we need of a nutrient, and if we can absorb it include; our genetics, our unique stresses, the type of work we do, the types of exercise we do, our diets, and our individual physiology.  It is important to know your nutritional status both to treat existing concerns, and to prevent future ones.  

There may be a dozen or more nutrients involved in preventing any single medical condition. Prevention of osteoporosis, for example, requires adequate levels of 16 other nutrients besides calcium.  If you are deficient in just one of these all the calcium in the world will not improve your bone health.  Should you take all 16 of those nutrients?  What if you are only deficient in 2 of them, and wasting money on the other 14?  And how do you know how much to take?  And what form?  The form of the vitamin you take is important, some supplements contain a nutrient but in a form completely unavailable to your body, so you are literally flushing the vitamin down the toilet.  Some forms of nutrients are downright dangerous to certain individuals, but without testing, you would never know if you are one of those people.  Depending on the result of one of the genetic tests I do for patients I can identify if a common vitamin and food additive can be harmful to them.  They need a different form of that nutrient based on their unique biochemistry.  Thanks to modern testing and expert guidance you no longer have to guess about your nutritional status.

For my patients, I do simple blood or urine tests to scientifically determine their nutritional deficiencies, and their capacity to convert vitamins and minerals to their active form.  Then I can help them customize their diets to get what they need. That way, they can avoid spending hundreds of dollars on unnecessary supplements (which could be doing them more harm than good) prevent future illness, and feel confident that they really are getting everything they need from their food.