Functional Testing
Show me the data!
As a nutritional therapy practitioner, I practice nutrition a bit differently. I take a holistic, functional approach to nutrition where I look for imbalances and deficiencies within the body to help identify the root cause of a person’s symptoms to know how to best support the body and its systems to help bring it back into balance. Through the use of a nutrient-dense diet, therapeutic supplements (not all supplements are created equal!), and lifestyle modifications specific to each person and their bio-individuality, one can do this and allow the body to function the way it was designed to. It’s at this point that optimal, sustainable health can even be possible, and one can begin to experience freedom from a life of chronic, debilitating symptoms where they are living a life that is actually thriving.
In order to do this, I use functional testing to gather data to help me understand what’s going on at the root level. Without these tests we’re merely guessing at what we may suspect is going on. That will only take us so far in being able to effectively improve your health outcomes. I don’t want to waste your time, or mine, with guessing... I want you getting well, sooner rather than later, so I test!
To help give you an idea of some of the tests I work with, I’ll explain a couple of them as I often get clients that have had other testing done prior to meeting with me and wonder how they differ. The GI MAP is a stool test used to understand what may be going on in a person’s digestive tract that you do in the comfort of your own home and send off to the lab using a prepaid FedEx envelope. It’s super convenient. This particular stool test differs from traditional stool tests with its unparalleled level of detail and specificity in identifying infection and pathogens that may be present because it uses the qPCR technique and DNA analysis of pathogens through amplification and hybridization. As a result, the GI MAP only requires one stool sample, whereas other stool tests can require up to three, making it nearly impossible for those who struggle with constipation.
Traditional stool testing, on the other hand, uses culturing or microscopy of a small section of a sample and can miss up to 50% of bacterial species… 50%! Since microbes can change in transit, culturing or microscopy may not accurately represent the microbial population at the time of collection.
Another benefit of the GI MAP is that the testing at the lab is fully automated, leaving less room for human error, and it doesn’t use any chemical agents during testing, so your results aren’t altered in the process. All of this plays a critical role in how I’m able to determine the most appropriate protocol for you and is what makes the GI MAP far superior to any other stool test.
Another functional test I often use with clients is what’s called the Mediator Response Test (MRT) to reveal food sources of inflammation. Regarding food sensitivity tests, you may already be aware that they can vary in accuracy, reliability, and consistency. The MRT tests for an inflammatory reaction against 170 foods and food chemicals. It’s more of an end result test in that it identifies what we really care about… is there an inflammatory reaction or not to a given food or food chemical? Other food sensitivity tests look for antibody levels or responses from specific mediators, but that can result in false positives as they don’t always equate to inflammatory reactions.
All this to say, without robust testing like these functional tests, we’re merely guessing at what may be contributing to your symptoms. Testing allows me to create an incredibly targeted, bio-individualized protocol specific to your needs, and retesting allows us to monitor how things are progressing. It’s a critical piece to how I support my clients in their health and healing journey in the most efficient and effective way possible.
To benefit from the use of functional testing with nutritional therapy support, you can apply to work with me here: