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 curl is “everything came back normal” especially when a patient sought a medical office visit with health complaints. 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 the relationship of the different blood values. Dietary changes and/or nutrients are recommended to improve the out of range results and health.
The functional labs that I offer are from federally accredited labs and are commonly used by doctors trained in functional medicine. These tests assess the physiological functions not seen in traditional blood work or labs. They might just be the answer to an unresolved health problem!
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?