About Blood Testing
Blood is a key factor in analysing your health status because it is the transport mechanism for nutrients, oxygen and white blood (immune) cells for the entire body. It’s also an important communication medium for various components of our bodies – our organs, tissues, hormones and so on. For these reasons, it is a primary diagnostic tool for the medical profession.
Our naturopath agrees that testing blood is a key factor is assessing health. However, he believes it needs to be supplemented by other diagnostic tools, or important facets of the internal workings of your body may be missed. Your condition may therefore be misdiagnosed because the full picture is not understood.
If you don’t like hypodermic needles, you’ll be pleased to hear we use advanced equipment that requires only a finger prick of your blood.
Our practitioner says…
At Natural Pain Solutions our approach to blood testing differs from that of most doctors, because we are looking for imbalances and deficiencies rather than disease states. Also, if an abnormality in the blood is found, we focus on seeking to find and fix the cause of the abnormality, rather than using drugs to force the body’s biochemistry to behave differently.
For example, if your cholesterol is high a doctor is likely to give you a drug that forces the body to produce less cholesterol (e.g., statin drugs). Cholesterol, however, is in fact a soothing, healing substance that is naturally produced by the liver to clean and repair the cardiovascular system. Therefore the cholesterol itself is not the problem (unless it builds to the point where it’s physically clogging the arteries). The real problem is that the cardiovascular system is under stress – either through oxidation, toxins or pH imbalances in the blood – and as a natural consequence the body has increased its production of cholesterol to heal the stress. Normally once the cholesterol does its work and heals the area, the body will stop producing so much cholesterol and your levels will drop. However, if the state of stress is chronic – i.e., occurring over a long period of time – the body’s cholesterol production never abates, and eventually it builds up, hardens and can indeed block the flow of blood through the arteries.
Using a pharmaceutical drug to inhibit the body from producing cholesterol will indeed lower cholesterol, but it will not address the real problem. At Natural Pain Solutions, we use tests to identify the specific internal stresses, deficiencies and imbalances that are causing the body to increase its production of cholesterol. We then assist the body to heal the cardiovascular system by providing it with the nutrients our tests indicate it needs, and by helping our client to implement certain lifestyle changes to stop the problem from reoccurring. Once the root causes of oxidation, toxins and/or pH imbalance are corrected, the body realises that high production of cholesterol is no longer required, and so cholesterol levels naturally decrease.
Key Blood Chemistry Health Markers
We conduct in-house blood biochemistry tests using a Reflotron Clinical Chemistry Analyser. Using only a finger prick of blood, we can find out about a variety of health indicators, including liver function, cardiovascular functions, acid and alkaline balance, iron levels, cholesterol, kidney function and red and white blood cell function.
Available tests are as follows:
ACUTE PARAMETERS
Potassium
CK
Haemoglobin
Glucose
Creatinine
a-Amylase
Pancreatic Amylase
AST/GOT
ANAEMIA
Haemoglobin
Bilirubin
KIDNEY FUNCTION
Urea
Creatinine
Potassium
Uric Acid
Haemoglobin
LIVER FUNCTION
AST/GOT
ALT/GPT
y-GT
Bilirubin
Alkaline Phosphatase
LIPID DISORDERS
Cholesterol
Triglycerides
HDL Cholesterol
LDL Cholesterol
Glucose
DIABETES
Glucose
Triglycerides
HDL Cholesterol
Creatinine
GOUT
Uric Acid
Urea
Creatinine
Glucose
Cholesterol
Triglycerides
PANCREATITIS
Pancreatic Amylase
Amylase
MUSCLE FUNCTION (Myocardial infarction)
CK
Microscopic Blood Evaluation
At Natural Pain Solutions we conduct microscopic examination of living blood cells, in order to assess not only the health of your blood cells but also the environment within which your blood cells are circulating. This is a different kind of blood test to standard blood tests in that the practitioner and client both observe your live blood cells magnified on a video monitor (blood cells remain alive for approximately ten minutes once out of the body), enabling the practitioner to show you features of your blood that may indicate possible health problems. Live observation is an excellent way of seeing how well the red blood cells are transporting nutrients and oxygen to the tissues, and also how well the immune cells are functioning. This kind of analysis can identify a number of conditions directly affecting the blood (such as anaemias) and may indicate instances of:
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Organ / system dysfunctions
- Certain biochemical imbalances
- Immune system imbalances
- Leaky Gut syndrome (where the gut becomes inflamed causing the walls of the intestine to be more permeable, allowing leakage of proteins and other substances into the bloodstream).
The advantage of microscopic blood evaluation is that you are able to see the condition of your blood improve over consecutive consultations, as you undergo treatment and adopt our dietary and lifestyle recommendations. It can also be quite astounding and motivating to see your own blood cells magnified enormously and viewed on a large screen.
Our naturopath, Scott Hankinson, comments: “This is the only test I know that can show what’s going on in the environment of your blood in real time, and how various factors are interacting with each other.”
