How do you know if you are getting the nutrients your body requires to maintain proper health? Many people assume that taking a multivitamin is all that is needed to provide the human body with the nutrients it requires. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. We regularly test patients who have been taking a comprehensive multivitamin and still find nutrients lacking. In today’s world of low-nutrient foods compounded with the increased stressors and toxins the body is subjected to, it has become more difficult than you would think to keep your body properly nourished.

So why are nutrients so important for your health anyway? What do they do? Isn’t eating food enough? Vitamins, minerals, fatty acids and specific amino acids are required in varying amounts by the human body so that is can produce sufficient energy, recover from illness and maintain health. The reason your body must have these on regular basis is because it cannot produce them itself; your body can’t make vitamin C, zinc, magnesium, selenium, etc. When they are not present in sufficient quantities, on a regular basis, the body is not permitted to perform the functions that is must in order to maintain health. Imagine your body did not have enough vitamin B6 on a regular basis; this would interrupt the hundreds of biological process that require B6 in order to occur. This would be somewhat like having to skip every 3rd breath or the heart beating only 40 times per minute when the body wants 60 beats per minute. The point I’m trying to make here is that being mildly or moderately deficient in nutrients won’t necessarily kill you, but your body would certainly work better if it had them in the quantities it needs. Again, nutrients are not “optional” everyone needs them in ideal amounts for the body to function properly. This is why functional medicine doctors spend so much time and effort assessing proper nutrient status in their patients; because without ideal nutrient levels, optimal body function simply cannot be restored or maintained.

Ok, we have now established that your body needs ideal levels of minerals, vitamins, fatty acids and amino acids in order to work properly. So how do you know if you have a deficiency? The best way to determine this is to look; and way we “look” is with diagnostic tests. Without actually testing, you really don’t know what you should be taking and how much you should be taking. You might assume that 200mg of Vitamin C is all that you need for ideal health, but different health problems or genetic variations may cause your body to need much more than this. Or you might believe you get enough tyrosine and tryptophan (these are amino acids; the building blocks of proteins) in your diet to make sufficient levels of dopamine and serotonin (these are brain chemicals; neurotransmitters). We frequently find patients who are struggling to produce enough of neurotransmitters to maintain proper bowel function and mental wellness.

The key concept I hope to convey in this article is that we all need proper levels of nutrients in order for our bodies to work properly. It would be great if our bodies could tell us directly we need more calcium or vitamin A or tyrosine; but it can’t. We can’t “sense” that our zinc and copper are out of balance (well I should say that most of can’t sense this).

The most objective, reproducible and reliable method we have to assess optimal nutrient status is by performing laboratory testing. Tests of this sort commonly involve urine and or blood tests; this is because some nutrients can only be assessed in the blood while others more easily evaluated in the urine.

If you suspect that you may not be getting the proper nutrition your body requires, you may want to consider sitting down with a functional or integrative medicine doctor to discuss the matter. We offer nutrition testing as well as other functional medicine-type tests at our Naperville office.

Ideal levels of nutrients are essential if you are trying to improve your health or manage a chronic illness.

If you would like more information about nutritional testing and functional medicine or Dr. Sexton go to www.napervilleintegratedwelness.com

Do your own research, inform yourself and ask lots of questions. When collecting information you MUST consider the source. There is no shortage of false, misleading, outdated, profit-driven and utterly biased information in healthcare today; even from the most respected sources.

This approach is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, mitigate, or prevent any disease. Why is this? The FDA enforces its position that these words can only be used with drugs. This approach does not use drugs, it manages nutritional deficiency. Under FDA guidelines nutritional deficiency management cannot be said to treat, cure, mitigate or prevent disease.