Do you want “normal” health or optimal health?
“I’ve seen the GP, they say all my blood test results are normal”
I get that a lot and back in the day, that would have been the end of it, no further investigation or consideration required. Case closed.
But often those patients didn’t respond as I and they had hoped, so I got curious.
I started requesting the GP blood test results to see for myself what they had tested.
[Clinical Sidebar – NEVER request the notes yourself (ever). They invariably don’t arrive at all or take weeks to show up and then only after numerous phone calls and multiple patient signatures to give you permission. It’s a nightmare, don’t ever do it.
Here’s the smarter approach…
Simply tell the patient to ring their surgery reception, request a copy of the notes be left for them on reception and give a specific day and time they will collect. Then bring them in or post them to you. This not only prevents you having to do any paperwork or chasing, it also makes life easier for the GP and you get the notes much quicker. Bosh, sorted, you’re welcome.]
OK, back to the results… once I had them, two scenarios would be in play.
Scenario 1 – The GP simply hadn’t tested the things the patient or I thought they had done. In which case we were stuck because back then we couldn’t order the test and the GP wasn’t interested, so that was that, tough luck.*
Scenario 2 – The GP had tested the right things and reported them as “normal” yet the patient often had all the symptoms that would fit with that issue/deficiency and I was again left in no-man’s land.*
The challenge lay and still lies in the fact that the standard medical community views patient’s results through a black and white, binary lens. Either it’s so low or high indicating disease or it’s “normal”.
here’s no in-between or grey zone that might be giving the patient symptoms directly or stopping our adjustments working.
But think about it, you don’t get to a full blown disease state overnight. It can takes years to fully express itself and blood tests over time will show it, changing slowly as the patient’s suffering intensifies.
In some cases the patient’s results never reach extreme low or high levels so they are never diagnosed but are showing all the symptoms.
Or they get tested once or twice and because they were “normal” the GP refuses to test them again missing a diagnosis in evolution.
In the world of functional interpretation, we look at tests through the lens of shades of grey and always consider the patient’s clinical picture as a critical piece of information to be considered.
We don’t want our patients to be simply “not deficient” aka “normal”, we want them optimal.
Optimal gives them the best chance of our adjustments working by improving function in the Neuromechanical system and allows healing and remodelling to occur.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be revealing the most common “insufficiencies” that we can turn into optimals for real clinic results that will probably surprise and possibly amaze you so stay tuned!
Speak soon
Simon
* Luckily these days blood testing is widely available and cheap so we order it for patients or they do it themselves directly with a lab. I then interpret the range in the context of the patient’s symptoms using the ACN functional blood test range guide. The patient gets a video from the IN health system library on the issues found and the diet/supplements needed. Simple and optimal.