Functional Medicine Lab
reverse, slow, or stop disease process & related symptoms
As a Doctor of Chiropractic certified in Clinical Nutrition, understanding the disease process enables me to recommend functional diagnostic laboratory testing in an effort to identify the underlying causes of many health conditions. Achieve Health Maumee offers Maumee Functional Medicine Lab services.
Functional Medicine Defined
As a Doctor of Chiropractic certified in Clinical Nutrition, understanding the disease process enables me to recommend functional diagnostic laboratory testing in an effort to identify the underlying causes of many health conditions. These are not your standard medical tests; these tests provide information of the biochemical and metabolic glitches likely to lead to a specific disease process. By having this information, measures can be taken to reverse, slow or stop the disease process and its related symptoms.
The following are some examples of tests that are available through Dr. Acuna’s office:
Traditional Blood Work for the purpose of determining nutritional deficiency
Food Sensitivity
Comprehensive Digestive Stool Analysis
Adrenal Stress Profile
Pre-Menopause Hormone Panel
Post Menopause Hormone Panel
Male hormone panel
Cholesterol Panel
Thyroid Panel
Neurotransmitters
Gliadin (gluten protein) Antibodies
Hair analysis
Functional Labs
A comment that makes my skin crawl is “everything came back normal,” especially when a patient sought a medical office visit because they are experiencing real health concerns. Being told that everything is normal can feel frustrating and discouraging when symptoms are still present and impacting daily life. In many cases, traditional lab ranges are designed to identify disease, not necessarily to identify subtle imbalances that may be contributing to how someone feels.
To help uncover these underlying issues, I use a service that takes specific blood test results either from the patient’s doctor or from blood work that I order and provides a Functional Health Report. This report is very detailed yet easy to understand, showing the relationship between different blood values and how they work together within the body. Rather than simply labeling results as normal or abnormal, the report looks at optimal ranges and patterns that may point to nutritional deficiencies, metabolic stress, or other functional concerns.
Based on these insights, personalized recommendations such as dietary changes and targeted nutrients may be suggested to help improve out-of-range results and support overall health and wellness.
The functional labs that I offer are from federally accredited laboratories and are commonly used by doctors trained in functional medicine. These specialized tests assess physiological functions that are not typically evaluated in traditional blood work or routine labs. By looking deeper at how the body’s systems are functioning, these tests can sometimes reveal important clues that may help explain persistent or unresolved health problems, and may be the missing piece in finding the right path toward better health.
What is Functional Medicine and how does it work?
Functional medicine is a personalized and holistic approach to the patient’s healthcare that addresses the root cause of disease rather than the prevailing conventional model of treating symptoms or worse yet “keeping an eye on it” until the disease progresses to a point that pathology is present. Functional medicine helps the patient attain true primary prevention of disease rather than just early detection.
Symptoms are the body’s way of letting you know something is not right. Masking the symptoms with pain medication, for example, does not address what is causing the symptoms, it merely dulls the symptoms.
When it comes to blood work, as a society we are becoming unhealthier, consequently the lab values considered “normal” are being widened since they use the average found in the population. For example, back in the 1960’s blood glucose values were normal up to 90 mg/dL. In today’s labs, blood glucose values are “normal” up to 99 mg/dL. In the 1960’s you would have been diagnosed as a diabetic with blood glucose of 99 mg/dL. The labs I use look at optimal values. Who wants to wait until the disease process sets in before addressing something preventable?