Can't See The Forest For The Trees
We have so much information at our fingertips and we also have access to almost every medical test either through our health providers or if we have the means to pay for it. Pretty regularly I have people come and see me and they have already had a number of tests done either at the behest of another practitioner, or because they are looking for answers themselves having drawn a blank at their doctor. Sometimes these test results are really useful and sometimes unfortunately they have not been worth the money spent on them (this may be for a variety of reasons). There are only a couple of specific occasions or scenarios when I recommend someone to get testing done otherwise the majority of the time we are able to determine what we want to address by looking at a persons symptomology and going through their history. All the answers are in there somewhere.
Your system didn’t suddenly develop the problems it’s having. Typically these problems develop slowly over a period of years or even decades and the answer to why you’re having them lies somewhere in your past. For this reason issues cannot often be isolated by a test that you had a few weeks ago or that a practitioner is recommending to you now, the test just tells where you are now – not often how you got to that state. Furthermore depending on an individuals personality they can become fixated on the result of a test where something is high or low when it may be the case that that thing is not responsible for what they’re experiencing or it may only be a small part of a larger issue. In these cases fixating on one or two imbalances can be detrimental as they forget to look at the whole picture and how it all fits together.
A common example of this may be someone who is deficient in a particular mineral or vitamin even though they have a healthy or varied diet, or have a hormonal imbalance that they wish to rectify. In the case of a nutrient deficiency there are a number of things to consider as to how this could be involved in someone’s symptoms:
Is their nutrition balanced and healthy?
Do they have other deficiencies?
Are they able to absorb what they are putting in?
If they take a supplement to try and address this issue does it help with their levels, and with their symptoms?
If they stop taking the supplement do they reverse?
If they are able to absorb it could it be that their system has a very high demand for this mineral (or whatever) and is just blowing through their supply?
If the body has a higher demand why is this? Is this deficiency the problem in itself (very, very rare) or is there something driving this deficiency? (Fit back in with history).
All too often people stop after point 5 without taking the time to consider the underlying reasons of why their body is acting the way that it is. The other most common step to ignore is whether they are able to adequately draw nutrients out of their food and this will often be the case if they try to supplement and nothing changes. The last scenario which is another common one is that the nutrient deficiency is actually nothing to do with how they’re feeling it just happens to be something that they have found on a test and it seemed to fit with their symptoms but in fact that isn’t the problem.
This is why putting all the pieces together is important – symptoms, history, tests if they have them, as otherwise you can end up focusing on the wrong thing which happens all too often.
If you feel that you can identify with this topic or you have problems that no-one has been able to get the bottom of then contact us to see if we may be able to help you.
For those interested the test that I will encourage people to get is a DUTCH test if they have a history of estrogenic cancers in the family or have previously had cancer themselves. This allows you to see how someone is metabolising estrogen and whether the pathways they are using are the ones known to be linked to cancer development or whether they are using the “safer” ones. It is very important to know this information so you do not inadvertently drive a cancerous pathway if what you are doing is going to influence an individual’s hormonal balance.