You’ve heard of that person who was super healthy and then suddenly drops dead from a heart attack, has a stroke or maybe gets a check-up only to find they have cancer…sometimes advanced cancer. It’s true that how you feel is no indication of how healthy you are.
Many people get their annual physical, which may include blood work. This blood test is done through regular doctors and paid for by insurance companies. However, the lists of markers tested have been getting shorter over the years. In addition, the test ranges have changed over the years to correlate with population averages. These ranges are the average of the average population. Are American’s getting healthier? Who gets their blood tested most frequently – healthy people or sick people? Thus, these ranges are the average of a sick population. Do you want to be average?
To illustrate this point: suppose a blood test has a range of 15-60. Many doctors will only see a problem if the test result is lower than 15 or higher than 60. Does that mean you’re healthy or have optimal health if your test result is 16 or 59? No, it means you’re just not sick enough yet to be officially diagnosed with a ‘disease’ and, therefore, warrant recommendation of a drug or other medical intervention.
Over the last 15 or so years, there have been significant changes in medical ranges for blood tests. In some cases the results have been changed from 15-60 to 10-65.
These ranges are often based on population averages. These new ranges correlate with overall poorer health in our country and the result is that now most disease states have to be even more advanced before a condition is now medically diagnosed as determined by medical and insurance guidelines. Regular doctors cannot diagnose or treat a condition before it is clinically documented because he/she has to justify treatment based on diagnosed testing. Waiting until a disease is advanced is like having a car problem and waiting until it won’t run anymore.
Catching problems early and avoiding problems and disease are the best ways to living a long, active and healthy life. Truly, the oldest living people have avoided serious and common diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc. Don’t get sick and don’t be sick are important and long term drug use for chronic conditions is only a band-aid covering a smoldering progressive disease process.
Drugs do not increase lifespan.
Drugs may delay or avert a premature death or “crisis” but is that the same thing as extending life? Cholesterol-lowering drugs, blood pressure meds are used so you don’t have a heart attack or stroke today. Antidepressants are used so you don’t feel depressed today. Diabetes drugs are used so you don’t have high glucose and have a seizure today.
Drugs taken for ongoing conditions and even acute diseases are to help avert a disaster or problem today. The underlying cause of the problem is rarely considered or addressed and then there are added sided effects of the drugs. Life is in the blood and most health problems and diseases will show up in the blood long before symptoms are noticed…before you feel bad.
Did you know you can have only 20% liver function and still be relatively symptom-free? By the time symptoms of liver disease present, it is often too late. The same thing goes for your kidneys. You can be relatively symptom-free with only 20% kidney function. You can be relatively symptom-free with only 10% pancreas function!! Proper comprehensive testing must be done, including investigational blood/hair/urine/etc testing to see metabolic problems, deficiencies, system functions, inflammations, and infections.
Ranges Matter
Taking a closer look when reading the blood test results is very beneficial. Instead of waiting for a marker to fall below 15 or rise above 60, some health experts, including myself, will look at a middle range, maybe from 25-50. This is then the guideline for monitoring a more optimal or healthy range. Test results of 15-25 or 50-60 are those results that aren’t yet ‘disease’ but are warning signs of developing problems. It’s often easier to treat people in these warning areas rather than waiting for them to fall outside of the standard clinical ranges. In essence, putting out the fire when you initially see smoke versus waiting for a full-blown fire to exist. Most people can tell when there’s a raging fire in the woods or a problem that is creating a lot of damage with the need for expensive crises care, maybe hospitalization, drugs, and prolonged recovery.
Current Medical Approach – Crises Care
Our current medical system is excellent at crises care – when conditions are ignored and diseases are not caught until they’re advanced. It’s like when you have a fall or a bad auto accident and end up in the ER. Regular medical doctors are great at getting you out of a crisis but they are not trained or have minimal training on how to actually restore your health, avoid disease and get you off of drugs. They have a poor understanding of how to really implement healthy lifestyle changes, nutrition, and other safe alternatives and remedies. Prevention to them means getting you on medication prior to even having a disease – “pre” – insert named disease of choice here. You don’t actually have the disease, but they want to keep you from getting it so you should start taking the medication now. How ridiculous. Thankfully there are alternative approaches that can make most drugs unnecessary. Now, I’m not saying that drugs are bad. If you have high blood pressure, you need to be on blood pressure drugs. I would rather treat a patient and deal with the effects of blood pressure medication than deal with the effects of a heart attack or stroke. With every patient I have the privilege of taking care of, it’s not my job to take them off of their medications. I didn’t put them on those medications, I’m not taking them off of them.
My goal in my office is to get my patients as healthy as they were before they actually needed the medication. If you are 50 years old and on medication, say for blood pressure, and have been for the past 5 years, all I have to do is get you as healthy as you were 5 years ago before you needed the medication(s). Something happened. Why are you sick now? What changed? This is why I do the comprehensive testing of the blood, hair and other more extensive testing. I want to seek out the “why“. I’m a DC, a Doctor of Cause.
A lady in her middle 50’s presented to my office a few weeks ago with persistent high blood pressure, hot flashes, and other menopausal symptoms and insomnia. She was taking Diovan for the high blood pressure and Tri-Est for the menopausal problems. These drugs were not working. The blood test showed mild anemia, mineral deficiencies and some mild inflammatory condition among some other minor findings. A lot of little problems can have big effects. I commonly do a hair test to check for toxic elements and she was extremely high in Arsenic, high in Lead and Aluminum. I also did a toxic element DMSA chelation urinary challenge. This test is used to detect those elements that are not easily eliminated or being eliminated in the hair. She had very high levels of Mercury and high levels of Lead with this test. These three very toxic heavy metals will cause hormonal problems and are known to cause high blood pressure. Obviously, none of the drugs addressed the real cause of her problems. As the level of toxicity increases in her body, her health problems will get worse too. Now that the real cause of her health problems is known, a program will be developed to safely remove and eliminate these from her body. Reducing exposure to these toxic elements is also important. I am confident, based on previous cases, that as her toxicity is decreased that her blood pressure, hormonal problems, and insomnia will resolve and in a few weeks she will no longer need the blood pressure drugs or hormone medication.
Comprehensive testing is key to identify serious and developing problems, develop natural therapy and vitamin recommendations and then testing should be used to determine the effectiveness of treatment. Taking vitamins without blood, hair and other objective testing is really just guessing. The nice thing about natural care and taking vitamins is that guessing and taking vitamins generally won’t make a problem worse and the side effects of vitamins, minerals, and most herbs are insignificant. However, there may be an underlying condition that is being missed, which is why at Advanced Body Dynamics I usually have very good results treating patients with a wide range of conditions, including MS, Fibromyalgia, Lupus, Chronic Fatigue, menopausal symptoms, diabetes, cancers and even some very rare conditions.
Regardless of the disease, the goal at my clinic, as it should be for all health care providers including medical doctors, should be to restore health. As health is restored, then symptoms and disease will improve and probably even disappear in time.
