Functional Blood Chemistry Physiology Analysis
What Makes the Functional Approach to Blood Chemistry Analysis Different
When you approach blood chemistry from the functional perspective, you gain a tool to identify and treat dysfunction before it manifests as a disease. Rather than wait for iron deficiency to become anemia or insulin insensitivity to become diabetes, Functional Medicine practitioners intervene early to avoid the negative health outcomes. Let’s explore some of the principles involved in FBCA.
Patient-Focused; Not Disease-Focused
In contrast to allopathic medicine’s focus on disease, the functional blood chemistry physiology analysis is a patient-focused one.
An allopathic practitioner looks to categorize a patient’s symptoms under a specific disease to deploy a specific treatment plan tailored to that disease. This approach begins with disease and works back to the patient. Functional medicine does the opposite; it starts with the patient and their concerns, then works towards treating those concerns.
By building a holistic, comprehensive picture of their patients’ health, functional medicine practitioners provide treatment plans tailored to the patient. Ideally, this helps to prevent the disease from occurring in the first place. Going even further, it helps to prevent states of dysfunction — that is, those states of imperfect health that fall through the cracks of disease diagnosis.
“Normal” Isn’t Optimal
If Functional Medicine differs from allopathic medicine in that it focuses on the patient rather than the disease, how is that reflected in blood chemistry?
Allopathic blood chemistry analysis relies on whether or not a given biomarker’s values are inside or outside of a lab reference range. These ranges are calculated based on the average values found within a sample population. Blood testing laboratories define “normal” as the values reflected in roughly 95% of their sample — the upper 2.5% and lower 2.5% are considered to be abnormal.
The problem here is that many practitioners only diagnose disease or dysfunction based on whether their patients’ blood tests fall outside of the broad range of values found within the 95% reference ranges. But these are statistical averages; not true markers of actual health.
Rather than say their patients’ blood biomarkers fall within “normal” limits that have very little to do with the individual's real health, Functional Medicine practitioners use blood chemistry analysis by looking at much tighter ranges. These functional blood chemistry ranges are empirically correlated with real health outcomes, and by tracking their patients’ progress toward or away from those ranges, practitioners help guide their patients toward optimal health — not merely “normal” health.
How Practitioners Use Functional Blood Chemistry Analysis to Treat Dysfunction
With the right tools and knowledge, practitioners use FBCA and functional blood chemistry ranges to recommend supplements, medication and/or lifestyle changes. If a patient’s fasting blood glucose is too high, for instance, the practitioner might recommend diet and exercise. On a follow-up test, the practitioner might observe that the patient’s fasting blood glucose is still high; since their recommended treatment didn’t have an impact, they might invest in further testing or modify their treatment plan.
Importantly, the practitioner would regularly test the patient’s blood to observe how their glucose levels evolve over time. FBCA is all about tracking trends. By taking multiple blood biomarker profiles, practitioners can see whether and how their treatment is making an impact.
FBCA also serves as a means of targeting future testing. Rather than recommend a battery of tests that run the gamut from mildly to majorly invasive, cheap to expensive, vague to precise, functional medicine practitioners can use a blood test — a non-invasive, cheap and informative test. If more testing is needed, the practitioner will have ruled out those tests that don’t seem likely to yield any pertinent results.
Call Dr. Walker at 575-223-4929 to order your test and health plan report of 200 bio markers.
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Dr. Walker’s bad and GOOD food list
Bad Food vs. GOOD food
Ten Bad Foods
Below are recommendations from Dr. Walker that everybody should limit or ELIMINATE from their diet
- Wheat
- Barley
- Rye
- Buckwheat
- Oats, Oatmeal – even if it says that it’s gluten free.
- Fried Food – nothing fried! You should boil, broil or bake and never more than medium rare for red meat.
- Oils – Oils oxidize when they come into contact with the air (become rancid). Since almost all oil is continually exposed to some air from the time it is produced, the process of oxidation has begun in even the freshest oil. These oxidized oils cause inflammation and cell damage. (Youngevity's essential oils are injected into the gel caps surrounded by nitrogen to prevent oxidation.)
- Well done red meat (IE No burned fats) – (rare or medium-rare is ok!) If you grill your food, try to have something between the food and the fire (like aluminium foil) so the juice doesn’t drip onto the flame and deposit dangerous things on the meat.
- Any nitrates added to meat – (ie: deli meats) tell your butcher NO NITRATES or NITRITES!
- No carbonated drinks of any kind within one hour before, during or one hour after meals.
- Skin of a baked potato (or yam, or sweet potato). If you boil a potato, you can eat the skins.
Good Foods
Dr. Walker is an EXPERT in medical nutrition and recommends the Good Food/Bad Food list to everyone. There are exceptions for diabetics regarding fruit/sugar. You must clean up your diet for good health and to absorb nutrients.
As a bonus, here are the foods that are GOOD for you, as recommended by Dr. Walker.
Proteins
- Eggs
TO COOK EGGS YOU MAY:- Poach; This is his number one choice because the water never reaches a temperature greater than 212 degrees.
- Scramble with butter over very low heat and only until they are just setting up. If you can hear them cooking it’s too hot.
- Soft boil with the yolk still runny. Some call them “2 minute eggs”. (Hard-boiled egg yolks with a greenish coating have had their cholesterol degraded.)
- Raw Eggs are good BUT you must increase your Biotin.
- Fish
- Chicken
- Pork
- Lamb
- Beef—rare/medium rare
- Mixed, Salted Nuts—no peanuts
- Beans
Grain Carbohydrates
Any carbohydrate (except oatmeal) that is “Gluten Free” is OK.
- Rice
- Millet
- Couscous (made from pearl millet only).
- Quinoa
- Corn (GMO Free)
Vegetables & Fruits
- Veggies
- Fruit
Dairy
- Dairy
Oils Fats and Sugars
- Salt - Salt your food to taste. To properly digest your food you need stomach acid and salt helps in the creation of stomach acid.
- Nut Butters—no extra sugar
- Lard (yes, lard!)
- Use Butter – Margarine is simply oil in a solid state. If you cook with butter, make sure the heat is low enough that the butter doesn’t turn brown in the pan.
Beverages
- 4-8, 8oz glasses of filtered water each day. Avoid soft plastic bottles.
- Coffee
- Tea
- Green tea
- Red wine
ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity)
20,000 ORAC points of anti-oxidants daily.
Foods high in ORAC – Blue berries, cinnamon, walnuts, curry, dark skinned fruits, unprocessed cocoa powder, acai berry, green tea, red wine (research for more foods high in ORAC).
Phytates
Examples of phytates:
Nuts, seeds, rice, beans, spinach, peas, lentils, legumes. Do an internet search to find more foods that contain phytates.
