Identifying Root Causes of Health Challenges
When it comes to identifying fatigue, chronic fatigue, and its part in your body and brain function, our office may do a little more than conventional doctors and traditional brain experts. Here’s why. Not everyone is wired the same, as illustrated in a textbook, and not every case is simplified as we read in the literature. Each patient is unique. Sure, we can run the same tests and have a plan for success, but each patient will eventually have different exercises, duration, and nutritional needs than another patient. People have differing lifestyles, genetics, epigenetic expression, and environmental factors playing vital roles in your health.
Over the first few visits, we test most of our patients for more than 60 causes of brain fog, declining memory, eyesight, declines in balance and coordination, headaches, and fatigue. We also check for structural deviations and metabolic conditions discovered through an examination and blood tests. We do this because most of our patients have more issues than just a rolled ankle. And, if you’re fortunate to have only a rolled ankle, the less you are inflamed, and the faster your brain can communicate with digestion, immunity, and blood flow, the faster you will heal. You could have hidden infections, hormone imbalances, blood sugar handling issues, blood supply deficiencies, anemias, inflammation, digestive inefficiency, and many other causes to your health challenges. Blood supply challenges lead to joint pain, headaches, fatigue, low digestion, and other issues that cause patients to seek help from a doctor.
Often, when memory is declining, or something such as a mild tremor develops, patients quickly seek an appointment with their doctor and demand tests. Our current standard of care is basic testing, a series of questions, and then ordering standard blood tests and possibly a brain scan or MRI. The unfortunate reality of these scans is that for most patients, it is already too late for the radiologist to diagnose any neurodegenerative disease, and the damage discovered is irreversible.
Luckily, there are metabolic, genetic, and other laboratory tests that help decipher the cause of your health challenges, and most of these tests show health event clues and details years, if not decades before an MRI shows any severe and irreversible damage.
The Importance of Vitamin D
Most Americans are not getting enough vitamin D, which is crucial to inhibiting cancer, heart disease, mental illness, recurrent infections, tooth and bone loss, including osteoporosis and autoimmune diseases.
Unless your vitamin D is over 100 nanomoles per liter, you probably need vitamin D supplementation. The reference range for most of the laboratories we use is an appalling 30-75 nanomoles per liter. Research shows vitamin D levels need to be at a minimum of 50-70 for normal function. If you have an immune condition or are autoimmune, you will need closer to 90 because you are using it up quickly and have the probability to lose it and lose it often.
I like to see each patient’s vitamin D register around 75 nanomoles per liter. Think of the millions of Americans who have 75 and are told that once they are above 35, they have normal levels. The reality is the minimum for proper function is 50. Furthermore, in the labs we use, they state your numbers are too high once you hit 75. Too high for whom? Name a part of the population that can’t benefit from high numbers? Kids need it for growth. As we age, we need it to decrease the potential of chronic conditions.
The research is clear. If we have adequate levels of vitamin D, above 75, cancer and heart attack rates are cut in half. Half! Is anyone reading the research anymore? By cutting patients off before they get to the therapeutic dose of vitamin D, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune conditions will continue to rise. Oh, and if I haven’t said it before, a deficiency in vitamin D also increases the chances of developing Alzheimer’s.