Regular blood tests. In order to be proactive about our health, we need to invest in understanding how our body is working, and blood testing accomplishes just that.
Integrated Wellness offers a $49 health assessment complete with a blood lab and consultation. The following article explains the benefits available with blood testing: prevent disease, gain control over weight, and assess your overall health.
This article was adapted from the original article, which can be found here.
6 Reasons Why Even Healthy People Get Regular Blood Tests
1. Don’t wait for symptoms to learn you have a disease
What’s more appealing – stopping a preventable, chronic disease before it starts, or experiencing the pain and discomfort of symptoms and then merely managing the disease?
Routine biomarker testing gives you a regular check-in to see how your diet, exercise, supplements, and lifestyle are impacting your health. You can then take the necessary steps toward improvement.
2. Get an actual complete measurement
You can not assess your health merely by how you look and feel.
While our country’s addiction to processed food has been linked to the obesity epidemic, obesity and weight doesn’t always tell the whole story. TOFI or “Thin Outside, Fat Inside,” is a phrase growing in popularity and refers to the idea that not all that have damage internally signs of the damage externally. The reality, according to the documentary Fed Up, is that 40% of those that are non-obese still have issues such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Those issues can be found in biomarkers such as your Triglycerides, HDL and LDL cholesterol, blood sugar, HbA1c, as well as many others.
3. Comprehensiveness is key
If you can’t sleep because of noise in the house, you would try to investigate the source of the noise by searching all the most likely areas, and then once you found the source quiet it down.
In the same way, if you are gaining weight, you should consider investigating some of the most common causes. A common response to weight gain is to “eat less, move more,” but the reality is that unless you investigate, you can’t be sure why you’re gaining unexplained weight. Consider how high cortisol levels are linked to weight gain. Without a blood test, you maybe wouldn’t have discovered that high cortisol levels are caused by chronic stress and that while a little spike of cortisol is good in response to short-term stressors, it starts to become a problem when the body starts making too much, too often, and can lead to weight gain, according to the Mayo Clinic. With this knowledge, you would now understand that your health and weight could be improved by taking time to meditate or seek out relaxation programs, as a way to handle stress.
Having the complete picture of your health works to eliminate the guesswork and gets down to the brass tacks of the problem.
4. Maintain the necessary balance
Regular blood testing allows you to see whether your vitamin and mineral levels are optimal. These micronutrients play a key role in a healthy, functioning body – it’s not just about a scale and how your pants fit.
5. Because You are not “Everyone”
Everyone’s biochemistry is different – not one specific nutrition guideline works for every person.
So many factors have a role in determining a person’s reaction to their food intake, lifestyle, and habits – from insulin sensitivity to thyroid function to metabolism, every person requires individual guidance on improving and maximizing their health. Health management isn’t one size fits all – those are hats and ties you’re thinking of.
6. For an understanding on the progress of your health over time
Even if you live a healthy lifestyle, your body changes with time. Watching progress over time helps you keep on top of risk factors for some of the leading causes of death, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes or even cancer.
“There are certain markers, like triglycerides and testosterone in men over 40, that simply should be tested every year. I consider these two to be “leading indicators” of overall health,” says Dr. Edman.
