Functional Medicine Testing

What is functional medicine testing, and why is it important?

I often hear people say, “My doctor tested for everything”… But that’s just not possible.
There seems to be a misunderstanding about what regular testing is used for.

When you get a checkup at a GP, your regular blood work is designed to:
- Detect common, diagnosable diseases
- Flag obvious abnormalities – iron deficiency, poor liver function or high inflammation
- Monitor known health conditions

This is important, but not the same as testing your overall health and as there is no test that can check everything, this can’t be done. They can test more if there is clinical reasoning behind it, but because health is so nuanced, a lot can’t be covered under Medicare.

Naturopaths and functional medicine practitioners look beyond disease detection. We know symptoms and imbalances can appear long before test results fall outside the “normal” range.

That’s why we use functional medicine testing, which can:
- Detect early imbalances before they become disease
- Identify root causes of ongoing symptoms
- Guide your own personal nutrition and lifestyle to address your health concerns.

Functional medicine testing tests gain a deeper understanding of your health to address symptoms at their source.

So why is functional medicine important? Why can’t we just rely on regular testing?

Many regular tests only look for disease once it’s already established.
Take the thyroid as an example:
You can experience symptoms of low thyroid function well before a GP test will show anything outside the reference range. By the time it does, the condition is often advanced enough to require medication.

Functional testing can help find patterns in your health that lead towards disease if things stay the way they are going.

There is no test that can tell you if you are healthy or not. Health is subjective. But the more we can learn about what’s going on inside your body, the better our ability in keeping you in your best possible health.