Have you ever had obvious low
thyroid symptoms but your lab tests came back normal? Many such patients, the
majority of them women, are told it’s simply stress, aging, or depression. The
problem is most doctors use lab ranges on blood tests when functional ranges
provide more clues that explain the symptoms of conditions such as Hashimoto’s
hypothyroidism.
The lab ranges on a blood test
look for diseases while functional medicine ranges look for patterns and
markers that spot trends toward
disease that can still be reversed or halted. For instance, the lab ranges for
diabetes are quite high, but a functional range can let you know your blood
sugar is in the danger zone well before you need pharmaceutical treatment and
have caused considerable inflammatory damage to your body.
In another example, many people
with clear and obvious symptoms of low thyroid function are told they are fine
for years while autoimmune Hashimoto’s destruction of the thyroid gland
continues unchecked and untreated, worsening symptoms all the while. Had it
been identified early enough, the patient could take the necessary steps to
slow or even halt its progression.
Functional blood ranges can help
you stop the progression toward disease
Functional medicine addresses the
underlying physiological mechanisms causing symptoms of conditions such as
Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism. In conventional medicine, a condition must have
progressed far enough to diagnose and treat with drugs or surgery, such as
thyroid removal (which still doesn’t help many patients).
In other words, functional ranges
define the parameters of good health while lab ranges define the parameters of
disease.
Additionally, lab ranges are
determined by a bell-curve
analysis of
patients who had their blood drawn at that center, many of whom are likely
quite sick. As the health of Americans continues to decline, so do the ranges
for what qualifies as healthy. For some markers, we don’t know what qualifies
as healthy, just average. Lab ranges for hypothyroidism are widely believed to
be too broad and thus fail to identify many patients with hypothyroidism.
Functional ranges look for
patterns in the markers
Functional medicine doesn’t just
look at individual markers, but also for patterns among various different blood
markers. All systems in the body are inter-related and a problem in one area of
the body can show up as an out-of-range marker in another area.
This can help identify different
types of anemia, whether your high blood sugar is raising your risk of heart
disease, or whether a hormone imbalance might be affecting your thyroid.
Another example involves looking
at markers to determine whether activated or depressed immunity is related to a
virus, bacterial infection, allergies, or even parasites.
A functional blood test includes
many more markers
Another
difference between functional and conventional blood tests isn’t just the
ranges used, but also the markers ordered. A conventional blood test will
typically include far fewer markers than a functional one.
We can especially see this in
testing for hypothyroidism. Standard tests only look at thyroid stimulating
hormone (TSH) even though about 90 percent of cases of hypothyroidism are
caused by an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto’s. This is because knowing
whether a person has Hashimoto’s does not change the standard of care in
conventional medicine.
However, a functional test will
include markers to identify autoimmune Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism and other
causes of low thyroid function. Knowing what is causing the thyroid to under
function determines the best way to manage it and improve thyroid health.
A
blood panel is an important tool in the functional medicine evaluation. Ask my
office for more information about identifying and addressing Hashimoto’s
hypothyroidism.Dr Eric Balcavage
Chronic Condition Recovery Center
www.chronicconditionrecoverycenter.com
610-558-8920
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