First off I want to say thank you guys for being so invested/interested/engaged with my posts about Tricore and all of the information I’ve gotten/am sharing. Its been a really cool journey for me and being able to share it with you has been really cool.
So the last meeting was all about food- and balancing out my intake of protein carbs and fats. Finding out my energy balance and matching that with the “right” amount of food. If you missed the last post check it out here.
This most recent meeting has been the most fascinating one so far, but also kind of frustrating (more on that later…) SO about 3 months ago, when I was in the thick of feeling really crappy and I had reached out to Chris about taking the first steps to getting better.. he gave me a list of bloodwork panels he thought that I should have run. I brought them to a primary doctor and had them order it. I had to give so much blood you guys.. like SO much. Their functional blood chemistry panel is super comprehensive, which I actually really appreciate. I have no issue with needles or blood or anything like that but after I gave the blood I was SO dizzy, lightheaded and nauseous for almost 2 full days– another reason why hydration is so important!
About 2 weeks later my results came back and my doctor said everything was normal- all of the values were in the normal range. Which at first you’d think well that’s awesome, right? Well yeah… but also I was confused and a little frustrated at why I felt SO bad if everything was fine. I got a copy of my results and brought them to Chris. He sent them off to his lead dietician that he works with, Beth… and she went to work analyzing them a little differently.
You see, what I didn’t know was, the ranges that doctors look at are very generic. The limits (the highs and lows that they set) are dependent on the area you live in. So for example, if you live in a place where diabetes is really prevalent- the numbers are way different than in an area where something like diabetes isn’t as common. So for me- they took my general info as a 29 year old female living in Naples Florida and compared it to others. Which is kind of frustrating because we are ALL individuals with different needs and requirements to be healthy. What I need as a 29 year old female vs. another 29 year old female might be 100% different. So what Chris and Beth did was take the information they knew about ME (my lifestyle, my fitness level, my daily energy expenditure etc) and set the ranges differently than the doctor to get a TRUE range of where I was at. This is super comforting to me because I went from feeling like a statistic at the doctor, to an actual human being.
So the meeting with Chris was a videoconference call with Beth for the clinical nutrition consultation. We kind of jumped right in to the report and she was really great at slowing down and explaining what the values meant and what exactly we were looking at/talking about. They analyzed SO many things; from my vitamin D levels, to my hormone levels, to everything in between. With the doctor- all of my levels were normal… however when Chris and Beth looked at my results, there were a lot of areas where I was deficient which TOTALLY validated how I had been feeling for so long.
There were a couple things that I predicted would be low (iron being one of them) but there were several things that I had never considered could be causing be problems (vitamin D being low, zinc being low, hormones being way off balance etc.)
This bloodwork and meeting with Beth was really eye opening. There is only so much you can do with balancing your nutrition traditionally– but the Functional Blood Chemistry Report and Clinical Consultation shows what you might need to add in as far as specific foods for your needs and/or supplementation etc. Beth also said something that was interesting to me- that people will sometimes (most times actually) just start taking supplements or multivitamins without ever knowing if they TRULY need them or not. Sometimes TOO much of something can actually throw off other biomarkers on your blood work and lead to more problems. So having the bloodwork be such a true representation of where you are, and be such a great blueprint for where to go in the future is awesome.
Chris and Beth really left no stone left unturned in the meeting and I feel so much better knowing that I am on the right path and can set up further meetings with my doctors to get things back to normal.
Knowledge is power, and having all of this information about my body and what it needs to feel my best is really empowering and I SO appreciate Chris and his team for being so thorough and helping me get back to 100%!
All Things Alexa 