As a Naturopathic Doctor, I find identifying risk factors early and evaluating a patient’s health history are important in my practice. I find that standardized bloodwork is often missed, and it’s no longer ordered as part of an annual check-up. Blood tests can serve as a valuable tool in identifying disease and monitoring risks.
Standardized blood work may assess and include a complete blood count, a lipid panel, kidney and liver function panel, nutrients, thyroid function, etc. Most of these can determine a person’s cardiovascular, liver, kidney and metabolic health through their blood chemistry.
What is more intriguing is when we can use the values in relation to each other, and map them out against what we know from a patient’s diet and lifestyle. This is why I love being a naturopathic doctor – I can take the time to assess and make recommendations to my patients. Standardized blood work is a snapshot of a patient’s health in chemistry across a period of up to 3 or so months. The results can be helpful to fine tune a person’s food and lifestyle choices, from when and what they eat to what type of exercises would work best for their body. How some of the blood work results can be used together can generate change in the way a person feels and impacts their wellbeing.
For those who have started their health journey, functional testing can be the next step in the process of investigation. Let’s say, you’re curious about your gut microbiome, well, there are some tests for that too. However, the cost of functional testing can be a turn off. I would start with standardized blood work and see where that takes you.
Talk to your health care provider about getting some blood work. Getting routine check-ups are an important step in living longer and better.
Dr Carole Chueng, ND