Introduction to Blood Chemistry

February 1, 2022 By Leanne Vogel March 3, 2022

Standard blood work has A LOT of answers in it. Unfortunately, most people see it as a diagnostic tool. But it is far more than this! Using functional ranges, we can glean various answers from a standard panel that can help us understand our health and overall needs, cellularly.

Let’s paint the picture we’re all too familiar with…

You go to the doctor, they run a standard panel, and you sit across from them (feeling not so great, sure that the test is going to show something….) and they say, “everything looks good here.”

And instantly, your heart drops.

I’ve been through this, countless times. It wasn’t until I was introduced to functional blood chemistry that I learned…

… Allopathic practitioners use REALLY wide ranges (basing it off the sickest of the sick. Meaning, if you’re not super sick, everything is going to look “normal” when it’s far from)

… The markers they use are for diagnostic purposes only (Meaning, if you don’t have a disease, they’re not going to see it)

… Those same markers can mean OTHER things, functionally

So, we go the route of functional medicine and spend around $400 in testing (each time) to determine what could be wrong. You may have heard of some of these such as DUTCH test, GI map, OAT test.

Problem with this: most functional tests focus on tissues and organ systems not what the cells are doing. Cell health (seen in blood work) is the farthest up the “chain” of the body.

Trying to find answers in organs/tissues can be busy-work at times. Why? Because every tissue is made up of cells. Fix the cells, the tissues are fixed, the organs are fixed, and the symptoms cease.

Where do we get answers on cellular health?

In blood work.

Benefits to using blood as a functional marker of your health:

• Cells are how the whole body communicates and sends information. If there’s an issue, you WILL see it on a cellular level
• Blood testing is a foundational piece to the puzzle to know what to do next and what needs support
• Doctors already run CBC (with differential) and CMP-14 (comprehensive metabolic panel) which are the 2 top tests for gleaning answers from your blood work! If you’re only going to get some info, this is it
• Results are quicker than functional testing
• Tests are less expensive than functional testing

You have SO many answers in your standard blood work panel sitting in that folder on your desktop right now.

In the series to follow, we will cover:

• answers you can glean from blood work
• how you can understand your blood work, yourself