Blood Work to get YEARLY

Like I explained in my Health Freedom Program, prevention & awareness are key when it comes to long term health.

From what myself, my family & my clients have experienced, doctors don’t usually want to run any bloodwork if symptoms are not present that correlate to said blood markers.

But wouldn’t it be great to know if you had cancer before it expressed outwardly & became a big problem?

Wouldn’t it be nice to track & understand cholesterol before it got too high?

Wouldn’t it be awesome to do something about a health issue when it’s in an acute stage vs. when it’s in a diagnostic stage?

That’s my mentality on the subject. I’d rather track my numbers over the whole length of my life & work preventatively on my health - so I can truly enjoy my life worry free, symptom free & catch anything serious years in advance.

Here a list of what your primary care practitioner will probably run at your yearly physical:

CBC w/ differential
Metabolic Panel
Lipid Panel
TSH ( & maybe T4 if you get lucky)

It’s rare that docs will order more unless some of the markers on those above panels are out of range… which takes more time & requires more blood draws.

At a minimum, I do recommend seeing your primary care doc once a year & getting some standard blood work done. Utilize your health insurance if you have it!

The Problem w/ standard lab ranges

Another problem with mainstream healthcare & standard testing is that the medical system is using very wide lab ranges. These lab ranges consist of the average of all the people that year that did the blood test. The sicker people get, the lower the “average” becomes. Average does not equal healthy. Isn’t it totally wild that their lab ranges are not based off of healthy people?! This info was a major wake up call to me.

I illustrate the lab ranges below.

What we need to do is use functional lab ranges to find what optimal for yourself is! When we see blood markers start to dip out of the optimal range & into the sub optimal ranges is when we can best do something about it. Waiting for your blood markers to get out of the lab ranges & into the alarm stages for a diagnosis is often times too late to do something holistic about the situation.

I’ve even seen clients blood work come back in the high alarm range & their doctor still says “everything is fine”. Has this happened to you as well?

As you can see from the example above, you can usually start to see some trending patterns before things get much worse & into a diagnostic state. A doctor would most likely not do anything for a score of 115, even though it’s technically high for this clients average over the past decade of time. A doctor would want her number to get above 140 (the technical lab range) before taking action. In my practice, a score of 115 would be outside the functional range & would warrant a deeper look into what the root cause may be.

This is the benefit of paying out of pocket for your labs & working with a professional to get your data into a functional analysis.

There is SO much to be extracted from your old labwork & looking for underlying patterns of dysfunction before they grow into a diagnosis.

Functional Analysis & Gathering More Data

The labwork I listed above that your doctor will typically do is just the beginning. My personal preference is to do a full comprehensive analysis (at least ONCE in your life but yearly is key to finding & knowing your personal optimal ranges). It includes all that I previously listed plus an iron panel, full thyroid panel, copper panel & more.

You can see my full list of markers that I consider a comprehenisve panel by clicking the button below. This is where you can also order your own bloodwork! Right now, this offer is only for those in the United States who have a Labcorp near them. You can search to see if you have a Labcorp near you by clicking here.

This comprehensive panel is what we call “extracellular bloodwork”. This type of bloodwork looks outside of the cells at what is currently inside your blood stream. This is technically a “snapshot in time” at what is going on inside your body.

There is also “intrcellular bloodwork” which looks insdie your cells at what is getting absorbed from the blood into the cells- which is where these nutrients go to do their job! There is a lot of nuance to the blood work analysis & I always recommend getting both extracellular & intracellular bloodwork for a full viewpoint as to what is happening inside your body.

If you want to learn more about functional lab testing & the blood work I mentioned here, I encourage you to watch my Health Freedom Blueprint video which explains it all in a bit more detail!

Testing Your Copper Levels: What you need to know!

Copper has been a hot topic in the wellness world lately & I’m seeing a lot of people promote very high copper foods & supplements to the masses. I fell for it too- taking the “recommended dose” of daily beef liver & unknowingly increasing my anxiety and mental health issues in the process.

Copper is a necessary element to our bodies (the RDA is 900mcg - 2mg/day) but are we making sure the amounts of this metal/mineral in foods match up to our own biological needs at a cellular level?

Foods like beef liver or animal organ blends have been highly glamorized as an “ancestral” food that is high in vitamins/minerals. While I do believe our ancestors ate organ meats, I’m not so sure they were taking several a day in capsules for months & years on end like many now are doing…. Doing anything in abundance is going to throw homeostasis off. Many are overloading on this.

In my practice, I’ve seen a trend of taking these things long term & resulting in it being retained at high levels in the tissues (brain, liver, adrenals, uterus etc). Add in the fact that we’re also eating lots of “superfoods” (like avocado, cacao, teas, leafy greens) & many are eating soy or going vegetarian/vegan- which are high copper diets.

Food is one area of exposure but so are copper pipes (drinking water), copper IUD & birth control use, organic produce sprays & swimming pool chemicals.

Understanding your copper utilization is an essential aspect of the health of your hormonal, mental, emotional & skin systems.

Mentally: Symptoms of high copper in the brain are anxiety, racing mind, rage, depression, moodiness, insomnia, brain fog, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, excessive weepiness, Alzheimers, Parkinson’s, Autism, ADHD, insomnia, OCD, etc.

Hormonally: Symptoms include fibroids, PMS, abnormal menstrual cycles, PMDD, migraines, infertility, estrogen dominance, endometriosis, PCOS, progesterone deficiency, adrenal fatigue, hypothyroidism, etc.

Physically: Symptoms can show up as nausea, fatigue, tumor formation, cancer, chronic fight/flight response, cellular oxidation & methylation problems, weight gain, migraines, jaundice, fatty liver, panic attacks, bloating, prostatitis, tinnitus, heart palpitations, hypertension, anorexia, ovarian cysts, miscarriage, hair loss, skin problems, yeast infections, joint aches/pains, etc.

Test, Don’t Guess

Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis

Testing the hair is a useful tool in examining what is being excreted from the body. It’s the least invasive & gives you a tracking of what is happening in your system of the past 3-4 months.  At times, when metabolism is low and the body is exhausted, excess copper (like other metals) won't show up in a hair test (though other indirect indicators can at least be used in the HTMA to determine the copper status). This needs to be utilized with bloodwork to get a full picture of your body utilization & status.

Blood Testing: Extracellular

The bloodwork you’re used to doing with a doctor tests for what is happening outside of your cells (extracellularly) & is currently being transported through your body. See my post on Free Copper Percentage to learn more about utilizing this tool.

Blood Testing: Intracellular

One of my favorite types of bloodwork is specific to looking at what is happening inside the cell. This checks your status over the past 4-6 months. Is it getting through the cell membrane to do it’s job? Is it in balance with the other Vitamins, Minerals, Amino Acids & Antioxidants? Let’s find out!

Restoring The Body From High Free Copper

Copper “detox” is not a do-it-yourself solution & is honestly needs to be a gentler, longer-term process based on balancing other organ systems & balancing other deficiencies or overloads.

If you do struggle with high free copper, the first step is to assess & know your numbers. I prefer to have both an intracellular view & extracellular view. Balancing all the other cofactor micronutrients is vitally important to balancing the full mineral & cellular metabolism.

To get one-on-one help, check out my Health Freedom Blueprint to see how to restore the full body in a customized & strategic way.

Pre & Postnatal Blueprint for Pregnancy & Postpartum

In my own pregnancy & postpartum journey, I wished for a way to optimize my health & my baby’s health.

Was I getting enough vitamins & minerals?
How much did I really need?
What about my MTHFR mutations?
How does that change my nutrient requirements?
I heard methylation is important for baby development but how do I know if I’m methylating well?

These were all questions I had that never got answered until much later in my own postpartum journey. I’m hoping that many more women now can understand & optimize this for themselves in this wildly important season of development & creation.

My midwife & doc did the standard bloodwork & “everything was fine” but it just didn’t feel like I was doing everything I could to enhance my pregnancy & postpartum period.

It’s time for women to have access to a custom nutritional protocol to follow through pregnancy & the postpartum period. No more guessing what you need supplement-wise or confusion about what foods are best for your blood sugar in this season.

Benefits of Optimizing Methylation

Methylation is a process that happens every second of every day throughout your body. It is important for gene regulation, detoxification, & cellular adaptability. Your organs, tissues & fetus development are dependent on these processes happening well & to their fullest potential.

With more specific blood testing, we can now see what is happening inside your cells over the past 6 months of time & how much of each vital vitamin, mineral, amino acid & antioxidant is getting inside the cells to do their job. (Regular bloodwork looks at what is happening outside the cell in a single instant.)

You’ll even get a printout of your own methylation cycle like the one shown here. You’ll know precisely what areas of methylation need support & specifically how to support them. No more guessing!

Customize your nutrition & know exactly what will fuel your body best

We’ll also examine your Metabolic Type & Food Sensitivities that lead to a lowered immune system. These two screenings will give you a customized nutrition plan that’s designed to give you energy, optimize your metabolic rate, fuel yourself at a cellular level & keep your blood sugar balanced.

Ability to Create a Custom Multi-Vitamin

We’ll use this information to craft your own custom prenatal vitamin based on exactly what you need & precisely what you DO NOT need. We don’t want to consume things we don’t need, as that can cause overloads & disrupt the balance of other vitamins/minerals. It’s clear that everyone is different & everyone needs different levels of certain foods & certain micronutrients.

With this package, you’ll have access to a custom compounded 90-day supplement in either capsule or powdered form. This makes it super simple to get all the nutrition you need!

In my experience, it’s easiest and fastest to TEST & NOT GUESS.

Having a plan that is custom to you & designed to get you optimal results is the future of personalized healthcare. You & your baby are worth the extra investigation to make sure you’re both getting what you need.

If that’s something you think you’d benefit from, you can access those lab screenings &
coaching support with the button above.

What is Your Free Copper Percentage?

With hormonal, behavioral & mental misalignments on the rise, I find the Free Copper Percentage (FCP) to be an important evaluation of the inner oxidative health of a person.

FCP is an indicator of the amount of copper that is not bound to the protein ceruloplasmin. When copper is not bound to its carrier proteins, it acts like an oxidative element (which essentially ages us & stresses us on a cellular level).

If the bile & liver aren’t working well to excrete it from the body, it gets transported to tissues for storage since it cannot stay circulating in the blood. This directly can affect the brain, liver, reproductive organs, adrenals, thyroid & much more.

How Does One Get High Free Copper?

  • Lowered Adrenal Activity

  • Impaired Liver Function

  • Sludgy Bile & Gallstones

  • Environmental Exposure: organic pesticides, pool water, copper pipes

  • Vegetarian/Vegan Diets: avocados, chocolate, nuts/seeds, spirulina, mushrooms, leafy greens,

  • Organ Meats, Lobster, Oysters

  • Supplements

  • Pyrolle Disorder

  • Micronutrient Deficiencies

  • Birth Control

  • Inheriting From Mother

Common Symptoms of High Free Copper Percentage

●  anxiety

●  tired & wired

●  easily upset and emotional

●  mood swings

●  mania/depression

●  anger and violence

●  mental illnesses (bi-polar, ADHD, schizophrenia, depression)

●  concentration & memory problems

●  strong self-criticism

●  headache/migraine

●  tiredness and exhaustion

●  insomnia

●  poor immune response

●  skin problems

●  hair loss

●  yeast infection

●  high estrogen (bloating, low libido, PMT)

●  joint aches and pains

Testing For Free Copper Percentage

The minimum testing requirements from a standard bloodwork perspective are copper serum, zinc, & ceruloplasmin. I also personally recommend a full iron panel & evaluating additional micronutrients. You can see my Add On Vitamin Panel & Comprehensive Panel here, which includes the copper evaluation basics.

With these measurements, FCP can be calculated, which commonly explains why those struggling are having such symptoms.

Lowing this FCP to a healthy place (8-15%) is a multifaceted task. Detoxing this additional stored copper needs to happen at a gentle pace in order to avoid copper “dumping” symptoms (which is pretty much all the symptoms listed above).

Detoxing an overload is one thing, it’s another to make sure copper is getting into the cells & is not actually a bioavailability issue at a cellular level. Again, we can tell how this is happening by looking at an intracellular micronutrient panel & comparing it to extracellular blood work & the Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis.

If this is something you think you might be struggling with & would like support, click the button above to see my process of looking at the full status of the health of your body.

You can also access getting regular blood work (that you can do from any Labcorp across the country!) by checking out my shop page. I recommend the Comprehensive Profile & the Add-On Vitamins/Minerals panel to understand your Free Copper Percentage.