Achieve Your Optimal Health: A Guide to Functional Medicine Assessments

In the world today, our country spends the most money on healthcare but ranks 37th in quality. One of the many reasons why this is true is that we spend most of our money on prescription drugs that provide symptom suppression, instead of treating the cause of the problem. Pain is not caused by an Aspirin deficiency, nor is depression due to a lack of Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft. This type of symptom suppression therapy can provide temporary relief. However, it causes many side effects and does not fix the underlying problem.

Finding the Cause

The human body is made of 100 trillion cells that all communicate and work together as a unit. When the communication between cells becomes disrupted, symptoms manifest to let us know something has gone wrong, much like the “check engine” light on your car. However, the body can have one symptom that is caused by many different things. For instance, headaches can be caused by muscle tension, toxic accumulation, food allergies, low blood sugar, infection, anemia, etc. Therefore, it is important not to suppress the symptom without finding the root cause. Would you cover your “check engine” light with duct tape without going to a mechanic to determine the source of the problem? Instead of duct taping your symptoms with pharmaceuticals you can find underlying causes to your health problems with a Functional Medicine Assessment (FMA).

A FMA is a comprehensive scientific assessment of your internal body that allows your doctor to see how efficiently your cells are functioning and determine your overall state of health. This in-depth assessment includes a personal and family medical history, physical exam, medical symptoms questionnaire, Solaris test, bioimpedance analysis, blood sugar analysis, urinalysis and a cholesterol profile.

Treatment

Your FMA will include an individualized treatment plan customized by your doctor. The interpretation of the data obtained from the Functional Medicine Assessment is crucial for the development of your individualized treatment plan. To optimize your structural, chemical and emotional well-being, your treatment may include therapeutic lifestyle changes such as dietary habits, aerobic/anaerobic exercise, nutrient supplementation and chiropractic care. Achieving optimal health depends not only on your doctor’s recommendations, but also on your commitment to following those recommendations.

Video Testimonials

The following are actual United Wellness Patients who agreed to share - in their own words - how treatment they are receiving helped them gain control of their bodies, lose weight and most importantly, feel better. Their results are typical and will work for you!

The Technology

Solaris

Solaris is one of the most accurate and technologically advanced instruments for monitoring your cellular health. Think of your body as a fish tank. If the water in the tank becomes polluted, the fish will slowly become sick and die. Now imagine your cells and organs as the fish and your body as the tank. Picture the importance of maintaining healthy internal fluids that our cells "swim" in daily. This is crucial to your quality of life. The cleaner your tank, the healthier you are. Solaris lets us know how healthy or polluted your tank is. It is here in these fluids that deterioration and sickness develops and grows.

Solaris measures six values in your urine and saliva. Saliva is used because it is an intracellular fluid that provides an overall picture and serves to represent the current state of the body’s internal cellular environment. Urine represents what’s being filtered and excreted by the body. By comparing what’s inside the cells, via saliva, with what’s being excreted by the cells, via urine, you can clearly see how nutrients and other elements are moving throughout the body.

The six values assessed by Solaris are:

• pH — indicates the acid- alkaline balance in the biological fluid
• rH2 — indicates the level of oxidation/reduction in the biological fluid
• Electrical conductivity (also known as resistivity) — provides information concerning the level of electrically conductive ions in the biological fluid
• Ammonia — indicates the amount of ammonia (a waste product of metabolism) in your body fluid
• Nitrate — indicates the amount of nitrate (a waste product of metabolism) in your body fluid
• Brix — indicates the level of simple as well as complex carbohydrates in the urine

This valuable information provides your doctor with information about your:

• pH level
• Antioxidant level
• Resistivity
• Cellular respiration
• Kidney stress
• Liver stress
• Adrenal stress
• Assimilation of nutrients
• Hydration
• Toxicity
• Protein digestion
• Carbohydrate digestion

Bioimpedance Analysis

• Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) Brochure (556 KB PDF)

Bioimpedance analysis (BIA) is a simple, noninvasive, in-office test that assesses body composition. Body composition is determined by measuring your body’s resistance (or impedance) to a harmless electrical current as it travels through water found in your muscle and fat. A BIA provides your doctor with the following information about your body:

• Lean Body Mass - Includes muscle and all non-fat tissue. The loss of lean body tissue is related to chronic illness.
• Body Fat - The amount of stored fat in the body. Excess body fat is related to chronic illness and increased risk to degenerative disease.
• Intracellular Water - The amount of water contained within the body's cells. Generally, an increase in intracellular water is associated with good nutrition in the cell and good health.
• Extracellular Water - Associated with unwanted water retention and a decline in health when in excess.
• Phase Angle - Associated with the health of body cells. The higher the phase angle, the better. Phase angles are generally low in critically ill patients and have been closely associated with mortality. A reduction in phase angle when measured serially in a patient has been associated with states of chronic or acute illness.
• Capacitance - Associated with the integrity of the cellular membranes made up of phospholipids (Essential fatty Acids).

These measurements allow your doctor to:

• Monitor acute or chronic disease
• Assess the potential health risks in obese patients
• Prescribe and track lifestyle changes
• Monitor malnutrition relative to eating disorders
• Assess the effects of nutrition and training in athletes and non-athletes
• Monitor body composition during weight loss (i.e. water loss, fat loss, muscle loss)

Cholestech LDX

The Cholestech LDX is an in-office blood test that provides your doctor with information about your:

• Total cholesterol
• High-density lipoproteins (HDL), also known as "good cholesterol"
• Low-density lipoproteins (LDL), also known as "bad cholesterol"
• Triglycerides
• Blood glucose (sugar)

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