How To Talk To Your Functional Medicine Doctor About Your Labs

Instead, those of us in the functional medicine community look at people within the context of their environments to see how well they are functioning and to assess the big picture: what they eat, how they live, and how every aspect of their existence may affect them physically, emotionally, and spiritually. My goal is to get you actively moving toward health by helping you discover the foods, lifestyle habits, and other therapies that best nourish and meet your individual needs in the context of your life. This is your big-picture approach, and it begins with taking a good close look at how you live. With its personalized profiling, customized elimination process, and clear, organized reintegration of foods, the Inflammation Spectrum program can help anyone discover what may be best and worst for them to eat, take, try, and do. It resolves the internal battle between lifestyle choices and health needs by answering that ultimate question: "What do I need?" Let's illuminate your personal path to health.

Other than quizzes I provide in my book, The Inflammation Spectrum, another way to gauge where your inflammation levels are right now is through testing. Below are some of the lab tests that I run for my patients, to get a comprehensive perspective on where they are on the inflammation spectrum. Although you don't have to get any lab tests to get started tackling inflammation, you could ask your doctor to have some or all of these labs run to get a baseline on your inflammation before you start your journey. Having the extra information can motivate you to stay the course and make progress. A functional medicine doctor is likely to be your best source for some of these labs, as this testing is more comprehensive than is standard for conventional medicine. (I run and interpret these labs for people around the world, and so can your functional medicine practitioner.)

C-reactive protein is an inflammatory protein, and this test will show you how much of it you have. The high-sensitivity CRP test is also a surrogate lab to measure IL-6, another pro-inflammatory protein. They are both linked to chronic inflammatory health problems. The optimal range is anything under 1 mg/L. Higher levels are a risk factor for heart disease and can contribute to many other inflammation-based health issues.

This inflammatory amino acid is linked to heart disease, destruction of the blood-brain barrier, and dementia. It is also commonly elevated in people struggling with autoimmune problems. The optimal range in functional medicine is less than 7 μmol/L.

This lab is normally run to look at stored iron levels, but high levels can also be a sign of inflammation. The optimal range for men is 33 to 236 ng/mL; premenopausal women: 50 to 122 ng/mL; postmenopausal women: 150 to 263 ng/mL.

This panel helps assess the health of the gut, where around 80% of the immune system resides. By looking at bacterial and yeast overgrowths as well as inflammatory markers like calprotectin and lactoferrin, we can assess gut-centric inflammation.

This blood test looks for antibodies against the proteins that determine the integrity of your gut lining (occluding and zonulin), as well as bacterial toxins called lipopolysaccharides, which can cause inflammation throughout the body.

This array shows us if your immune system is creating antibodies against many different parts of the body, such as the brain, thyroid, gut, and adrenal glands. The labs are not meant to diagnose autoimmune disease but rather to look for possible evidence of abnormal autoimmune inflammation activity.

This panel is helpful for gluten-sensitive people who have gone gluten-free and eat a clean diet but still experience symptoms like digestive problems, fatigue, and neurological symptoms. In these cases, relatively healthy food proteins—such as gluten-free grains, eggs, dairy, chocolate, coffee, soy, and potatoes—may be mistaken by the immune system for gluten, triggering inflammation. To the immune system, it's as if the person never went gluten-free.

Methylation is a biochemical superhighway that regulates many of the functions necessary for a healthy immune system, brain, hormones, and gut. A process occurring about a billion times every second in your body, methylation needs to work well if you are going to work well. Methylation-gene mutations, such as MTHFR, are closely associated with autoimmune inflammation. For example, I have a double mutation at the MTHFR C677t gene; this means that my body is not good at managing an amino acid called homocysteine, which can cause inflammation in some people. I also have autoimmune conditions on both sides of my family, which is a red flag that I need to be even more careful of my place on the inflammation spectrum. You can't change your genes, but by knowing your genetic weaknesses, you can pay extra attention to supporting particular processes in your body to reduce risk factors as much as possible.

Our endocannabinoid system regulates everything from sleep, appetite, pain, inflammation, memory, and mood to reproduction. The cannabinoid gene CNR1 rs1049353 is a significant gene in this system, and changes to this gene are significantly correlated with food sensitivities and autoimmune-inflammation issues. Studies indicate that the gut nervous system is the main site of CB1 cannabinoid receptors.

Adapted from The Inflammation Spectrum: Find Your Food Triggers and Reset Your System by Will Cole, D.C., IFMCP, arrangement with Avery, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2019, Will Cole, Eve Adamson.