Dr. Amy Nett: I don’t remember which week we talked about this, but I think a few times it’s been mentioned sort of what our general workup is for essentially all of our new patients. Again, there’s going to be a little bit of variation, but the vast majority of our patients are going to receive the following tests. They’re going to receive a comprehensive blood panel. We’re going to talk about all of the markers we use when we get to the blood chemistry section of the course, but we do a blood panel. We do a SIBO breath test. We do SIBO breath testing because SIBO doesn’t always manifest with GI symptoms. Again, we’ve talked about high cholesterol or cognitive or neurologic issues as being manifestations of SIBO, so almost regardless of symptoms, if a patient is coming with any complaints, we’re going to think about running a SIBO breath test. We also run stool tests through both Doctor’s Data and BioHealth, and we also often run a hormone profile, and that’s through Precision Analytical, and it’s their complete hormone profile that includes both the sex hormones and also includes the Advanced Adrenal Assessment. Those are the primary screening tests. I don’t know if we can call them screening, but those are the primary tests that we use on all of our new patients.
We don’t normally run the SpectraCell micronutrient testing. I think micronutrient testing is very interesting, and there are a lot of nuances that I don’t want to go into detail here, and that might be a good question to pose to Chris during one of the webinars if there’s time to answer that, because certain micronutrients are best tested with intracellular levels, other micronutrients are probably best tested in blood, so I don’t think there’s one test that looks at how each individual nutrient is ideally tested and then tests each of those nutrients that way. I think we probably still have a lot to learn in terms of how best to test each individual nutrient, and we tend to take the perspective of recommending a nutrient-dense Paleo diet, so what our question is going to be is, are you digesting and absorbing your food so that you’re maximally able to access the nutrients in your food? Our question is, is there anything that’s increasing the demand for nutrients, anything that could be contributing to a nutrient deficiency? In theory, if we can calm inflammation in the gut and address any microbial imbalances, then micronutrient or nutrient deficiencies shouldn’t be a significant concern.
So SpectraCell micronutrient testing isn’t a regular part of our practice. Times I use it are probably mostly when I’m working with athletes who are really trying to optimize performance. We’ve done the diet and the gut pieces, and we know that they have a particularly demanding job or hobby. That’s probably when I’m most often going to use micronutrient testing.