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While on most occasions, Nutrition Response Testing and Advanced Symptom Analyses provide all the information necessary to determine the underlying cause of your condition, performing certain lab tests may sometimes be necessary. In fact, Dr. Chong recommends all new patients at least get simple blood testing done (see below) to "cover our bases" and make sure we don't miss anything. Afterall, such tests do provide certain types of information that can only be obtained through these means.
Advanced Blood Chemistry Analysis
While the standard blood chemistry analysis being performed by the majority of doctors out there is certainly relevant and important, it is only being used to rule in or out the possibility of disease. However, as many people out there are well aware, you don't have to have a diagnosable disease to feel sick.
This is where Advanced Blood Chemistry Analysis comes in. This approach allows Dr. Chong to screen for signs of both true disease pathology, as well as a number of different functional health conditions. Functional health conditions are those in which a person does not feel well, but does not show any pathological signs of disease. A classic example of this would be fibromyalgia. While it is certainly an accepted medical diagnosis, there are no blood tests that can be used to diagnose it. In other words, a person with nearly crippling fibromyalgia could very well have a blood test in which NO NUMBERS fall outside of the reference range!
Does this mean nothing's wrong? Of course not!
The analysis Dr. Chong will do first looks at what numbers fall outside the laboratory range. However, these results are then plugged into a tighter range of numbers known as the functional range. Numbers that fall outside of this range are not used to diagnose disease, but can indicate the presence of a number of different potential imbalances in the normal function of your body.
Dr. Chong considers this approach to blood test analysis as the single most valuable method of health evaluation that he uses in his practice. While other testing is often times necessary for certain people, this set of tests gives the most amount of information at one time.
Functional Laboratory Analysis
Dr. Chong's use of diagnostic analysis does not stop with blood chemistry evaluations. While will refer his clinical patients out for standard tests like x-rays and MRIs when necessary, he also frequently uses a number of other tests which collectively fall under the category Funtional Lab Tests. These tests are typically done at specialized labs who focus only one these sorts of tests.
Functional lab tests are a great way to gain extra information about your health condition, that standard tests, even including blood tests, might not reveal. Dr. Chong's goal with every case he evaluates is to get as much information about his patient or client that he can, before developing a plan. The less stones that remain unturned, the better.
Some examples of the Functional Lab Tests Dr. Chong routinely performs include:
Salivary Hormone Testing
Comprehensive Stool Analysis
Advanced Urine Analysis
Heavy Metal Testing
