Intro to Formal Tests - blood tests, iridology, hair

[shelley]

Here's a parital list of tests you can have done to help you properly diagnose what's going on in your body.

Blood tests: A basic physical comes with a standard metabolic test, and anytime you see the doctor this basic metabolic test should be done. I highly recommend that you get this done once a year at last. That way, you can see what's going, find out what is normal for you and then spot any changes for the worse even before they leave normal reference ranges. It should be accompanied by a Urine Test too, which tells you a lot about how the kidneys are functioning, infections, things like that.

Live Blood & Dried Blood Analysis
This is the test that Naturopathic doctors use and it's really fun. They take a drop of your blood, put it on a slide, and the microscope is hooked up to a TV monitor and you watch your blood cells float around. As time passes, baddies will culture and get easier to see so you can actually see just how polluted your blood is with yeast, bacteria, protozoa. This test tells you just how polluted your body is overall, how hard your immune system is having to work to purify your systems, how healthy your red blood cells are. It takes about an hour, you can ask any questions you wish, and you usually get a piece of paper with various ratings on a scale of 1-4, 4 being bad.

The dried blood shows where your toxins have been deposited.

Iridology
This can be administered by anyone who has studied and received a license to practice Iridology. This test is highly subjective, relying on the knowledge and experience of the reader, their ability to spot patterns and compare them accurately to an Iris Chart. This test has been debunked many times and several people I respect highly, like Michael Tierra, used to practice iridology and gave it up as being worthless as he saw his patients get better and worse with no corresponding changes to their iris. Even Dr. Jensen never saw what the originator of the test said he saw, and Dr. Jensen studied many patients.

Stool Analysis

A stool analysis is a viable alternative for people who cannot find a practitioner who does the live blood test. However, stool analysis is not conclusive when it comes to parasites and even candida, because the larger parasites are experts at not getting caught and candida doesn't always end up in every stool. What a stool analysis will tell you that is great is your enzyme activity, whether or not things are getting digested properly. It will also reveal the by-products of candida if it doesn't find candida itself. In these respects it's a very good test.

Hair Analysis
A hair analysis test is the very best in terms of convenience combined with accuracy and ability to have the test run without having to pay for a doctor visit first - IF you get it done right away before starting supplementation, and IF you get the right kind. It clearly shows what's going on in your body in terms of mineral utilization and imbalances, heavy metals/poisons toxicity, for the previous month of your life.

If you want to properly pinpoint how to deal with chronic dis-ease manage nutritional deficiencies, a hair analysis is a great way to go, I highly recommend it. People who have gone off the information provided by hair analysis tests have cured all manner of otherwise difficult to manage ailments from acne, ADHD, bed wetting, to you-name-it! They were able to discover the key to the symptoms that plagued them for so long.

The trick to hair analysis is reading the results right. The results can be confusing. For instance, if your hair is high in zinc, that does not mean you're getting too much zinc, it means you're getting too little where it needs to go. Your hair doesn't need zinc, your eyes and protein breakdown/synthesis does! so an elevated hair zinc indicates a problem with digesting proteins which can lead to all manner of complaints, since proteins are the building blocks for tissues, hormones and enzymes.

Before you spend tons of money and time getting your amalgams removed, it's best to do a hair analysis first to confirm that your body cannot handle your fillings. Not everyone gets amalgam illness, only people with really wonky mineral distributions and deficiencies tend to absorb and retain toxic levels of mercury.

One of the services I'll be providing soon is an analysis of hair test results along with recommendations of therapeutic mineral supplementation. I've been reading up on what the gurus say and it's fascinating!

New Tests
New tests are being developed all the time but aren't readily available so I haven't mentioned them here. There are many machines that people are using, the ones from Germany tend to be the best. As always, with any new method, it's best to visit the practitioners who have the most experience. If you have a question about any offered where you live please feel free to ask. A lot of them seem hinky, such as the machines that measure your energetic levels/meridians, but some of them really are accurate. I especially like one called acu-cell, a way of measuring cellular pH and mineral distribution by sending electrical currents thru nerve channels.

[J F]

My chiro wants me to do B.I.A. testing (Bio Impedance Analysis). Anyone ever heard of this?

[shelley]

BIA is merely a test to determine your muscle to fat ratio, basically. It can differentiate where your weight is - in lean mass, fat or fluids. A lot of the high-tech, expensive scales you can buy for the home use it. I don't see the point your getting this test actually, the info isn't all that revealing really. The body will do what the body will do - you can't fool Mother Nature when it comes to our body types.

[intuitivegal]

I want to get a hair analysis, who should I ask,my homeopath or primary MD toorder this test? Can I order it myself from reputable lab? Where can I get more info on this test?

[shelley]

Just do it online - great smokies lab and lab tests online in the US can both help you out no problem.

http://www.gsdl.com/home/

http://www.labtestsonline.org/

check the UK posts in the Sources forum for UK tests.

[Em0723]

I thought I had read before that it was possible to go directly through the lab, but I wrote Great Smokies and they said all test kits had to be ordered through a physician. I hadn't checked lab tests online before, but I went on and didn't see hair analysis. Does anyone know if you can get this done without going through the a doctor?

Thanks!

[shelley]

oh blast, that's bad news. Sigh. And the two sites that do good hair analysis that Mercola recommends also require a health practitioner. Aargh! Okay everyone, let's keep looking!

[rally]

Order them through bodybalance.com, Great Smokies does the processing. I did a DHEA/cortisol test. It took about 3-4 days to come back online after shipping. Hair test I am still waiting on its been a full week.

[Invincible]

shelley

About hair analysis:

I'm going to send off my sample in around 3 weeks. Should I stop taking all my supplements for a while before taking the hair sample? (If so, for how long?)

At present, I'm taking:
Vit C/Emergen C
Cal/Mag
Zinc
Cod Liver Oil
Flax oil
Brewers Yeast
Chromium
Kelp
Milk Thistle
multi occassionally)
Primal Defence (occassionally)
Perfect food occassionally)

Thanks

[shelley]

My advice is keep taking them so you can see whether you're taking the right ones. If you've been taking them for a month, you already have changed your hair readings anyway, so might as well get the current readings and not try to find out what happened in the past.

[Invincible]

OK, thanks!

[vision]

HI rally have you yet to receive your results back? Was it helpful? Also do you feel that ALL the test are strong because my wife is thinking of getting a female (saliva test as well)

[vision]

Oh and Shelley if you happen to see this message was curious (based on info I provided) what test do you feel are necessary at this point from bodybalance. Thanks.

[vision]

Looked at bodybalance and they seem to make a big deal about melatonin which is intresting. Would order the test but still not sure if melatonin is the answer. Anyone ever had dramatic results or even some kind of results with sleep problems simply from supplementing melatonin?

[shelley]

You can give it a try, but I rarely find that supplementing hormones (outside of synthroid for thyroid) works the way one would think. Melatonin makes me wired.