Which of the following best describes you?
- "I have a health challenge that I am eager to resolve because it is having a major impact on my life."
- "I am in good health, but I want to optimize my health so that I can feel even better, slow my aging process and even look younger, and also minimize the risk of developing degenerative diseases, especially the ones that run in my family."
In either case, "functional lab tests" reveal what is occurring in your body at a level of detail that enables you to take more targeted and effective action to take your health to the next level.
What Are "Functional Lab Tests"?
I'm using the term "functional lab test" to refer to tests that are used in the "systems biology" approach to medicine often referred to as Functional Medicine.
Functional Medicine differs from conventional medicine in that it is far more focused on identifying, understanding, and resolving the "root causes" of illness.
In contrast, conventional medicine generally professes to not know the causes of many illnesses or blame them on genetics,, and it usually offers only symptom management via pharmaceutical drugs.
When your conventional medical doctor orders lab tests for you, he or she typically starts with a Comprehensive Blood Count (CBC) and a Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (CMP).
And your doctor usually doesn't go much beyond the CBC and CMP because if the results look "normal", according to the reference ranges provided by the lab company, they assume that there is nothing else to look for.
Practitioners of Functional Medicine also use the CBC and CMP tests, but they go beyond that to include "functional" lab tests that look more deeply at things like metabolism, hormones, nutritional status, microbial organisms, and accumulated toxicants and metabolic waste products.
Why Use Functional Lab Tests?
In people with health challenges, the deeper look at the body's function helps identify "root causes" so that they can be resolved, using a rapidly-expanding universe of increasingly effective tools being developed in the world of Functional Medicine.
In apparently healthy people who want to further optimize and "bulletproof" their health, the deeper look helps us spot opportunities to increase physical energy and mental and athletic performance, optimize sex hormones, improve mood, head off illness before it develops, and slow the aging process.
Most of us only think about lab tests if we have a health challenge that we want to diagnose, but it is equally important to run lab tests even when you're feeling healthy.
Running functional lab tests even when you're not aware of any problems with your health helps you catch or prevent potential health issues before they develop further than they might have already developed without your realizing it.
And running functional lab tests helps spot you opportunities to optimize already good health so that you can perform and feel even better in all aspects of life.
The benefits of health optimization can include having more energy for exercise, work, relationships, travel, and hobbies, enjoying consistenly better moods with more joy, enthusiasm, and sense of humor; getting fewer colds and flus (or even none at all); sleeping better and being more resilient to stress; and slowing the aging process and even looking younger.
If you wait until you have a health condition, you may have missed opportunities to totally avoid that health condition by spotting early warning signs on lab tests.
And if you want to optimize your health but don't run lab tests, you're flying blind and just guessing at what your optimization opportunities are.
The smartest health enthusiasts and biohackers use functional lab tests to assess whether their health practices and biohacks are helping them or hurting them.
Whether you are using supplements or biohacks like fasting and cold plunges, there is a "right dose" for each person. Functional lab testing can guide you to the right dose of the right things for your body and avoid making the wrong choices that might actually be harming your body in some way.
What Do Functional Lab Tests Measure?
So what do these functional lab tests do? What do they measure that is different from standard conventional blood tests?
Functional lab tests looks "under the hood" to evaluate various systems and factors in the body, such as the gastrointestinal tract, nutrients, mitochondrial energy metabolism, the methylation cycle, hormones and neurotransmitters, detoxification processes, inflammation, and oxidative stress.
6+ Key Functional Lab Tests
Most of this can be assessed in substantial detail, using the 6 key functional lab tests listed below.
- Gastrointestinal microbiome and function test (stool test)
- Organic acids test (urine test)
- Micronutrient testing (blood test)
- Methylation panel (blood test)
- Hormone test (blood, saliva, and/or urine test)
- Toxic burden testing (blood and/or urine test)
If necessary, additional tests can look even more closely at the immune system, brain function (e.g. neurotransmitters), and more.
Genetic SNP Testing
While not technically a type of functional lab test, looking at genetic "single nucleotide polymorphisms" (SNPs) helps to identify vulnerabilities that can predispose you to health challenges.
Analyzing SNPs can help with interpreting what shows up in functional lab tests and unveil ways to compensate for these vulnerabilities.
Sometimes all that is required is getting higher amounts of certain nutrients.
Other times the use of certain botanicals, or the avoidance of others, can reduce the negative influences of genetic traits such as a tendency to produce a lot of inflammation, or a reduced ability to eliminate waste products and toxicants from the body.
Most Popular Functional Lab Tests
The two most popular functional lab tests used by practitioners of Functional Medicine are probably stool tests and urinary organic acids tests.
Stool tests assess the microbiome (microrganisms) and function of the gastrointestinal tract because Functional Medicine's understands that what happens in the gut influences almost everything else in the body.
Organic acids tests assess function in multiple body systems, including the gut microbiome, brain neurotransmitters, mitochondrial energy production, toxicity, nutrient status, methylation, and more
If I had to choose one functional lab test to begin with, it would probably be an organic acids test.
In the next post I will describe the organic acids test and what makes it a unique and cost-effective cornerstone of functional lab testing, whether you are trying to get to the root of a health challenge or just want to make the most of all of your hard work, investment, and dedication to your health.
If you would like to learn about my approach to resolving health challenges and optimizing energy, sleep, immunity, and more, download the Bio-Individual Blueprint Roadmap and watch the walkthrough video.