Disease prevention

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[UPDATED MAY 2022]

Introduction

When I first started working in ecological medicine, I often did the basic nutritional tests including vitamin levels, mineral levels and essential fatty acids. It soon became clear that anybody eating a Western modern diet who was not taking micronutrient supplements, was deficient in most micronutrients.

Taking supplements

My practice now is to recommend that everybody take a multivitamin, minerals, essential fatty acids, vitamins C and D in order to prevent common deficiencies. So I no longer bother doing basic nutritional tests in people who are not taking these supplements because I know what the result is going to be.

So the first port of call is to take good nutritional supplements. See Nutritional Supplements and also Groundhog BASIC – what we should all be doing all the time

Testing nutritional status

It takes up to six months for nutrients to replete and if by then people are still not feeling well, then is the time to do routine screening tests for nutritional deficiencies. I like to do functional tests of nutritional status, which I find much more useful than simply measuring levels of minerals. The tests that I would recommend are as follows.

This list is not exhaustive, but if all these results were completely normal and that person was taking my basic package of nutritional supplements, then it would make it unlikely that there was anything seriously amiss with respect to micronutrient status.

Increasingly, I now do screening tests for toxic stress such as Comprehensive Urine element Profile. There is no one single best test for heavy metal toxicity - some people are poor detoxifiers and so hair, blood, and sweat analysis may show normal results and toxicity may only be demonstrated by a challenge test such as Mercury- DMSA Provocation test.

People are much better motivated to do detox regimes if there is solid evidence of poisoning! Toxins can be removed in many ways - see Detoxification - an overview. My experience is that Detoxing - Far Infrared Sauna (FIRS) reduces levels of pesticides and VOCs and some heavy metals reliably well. As a very rough rule of thumb 50 FIR saunas will halve your toxic load.

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