Using a Blood Test to Determine the Right Nutrition for Your Patients
NUTRITION
Stop Guessing, Start Testing: The Health of Your Practice Depends on It
James Cima
DC
Over the last four decades, I have seen many diets come into vogue and go out of fashion just as quickly. I have seen the high-fat, low-carb craze, and the high-carb/low-fat/no-fat craze. I have seen patients who do well on one nutritional program or diet and other patients who become sick on the same diet. I have watched nutritional gurus come out with their own books purporting that theirs is the perfect nutritional program for everyone.
My conclusion is that there is no perfect diet for every individual because nutrition is all individual. One person’s food is another person’s poison. Just like we aie physically different, we aie biochemically different as well. So putting everyone on the same diet is, to say the least, “insane.”
When my patients come into my office, they aie so confused by what they should be eating that they not only have developed an eating disorder, but they also have developed a mentally emotional disorder as well. They eat something and then feel guilty about what they ate, or deprived if they did not eat it.
I have gone to restaurants with people who spent a half hour grilling the waitress about how the food is prepared, where it came from, if it is organic, etc. Then at the end of the meal, they will eat a dessert that is worthless nutritionally and feel guilty about it.
Is this the way you want to eat?
Coming from an Italian heritage, eating is an enjoyable experience and a time for the family to come together and have a great time. We never questioned what we were eating; we just ate and enjoyed the family and food.
People are so confused about nutrition because of all the hype that comes with it. The more a person thinks they know about nutrition, the more confused they become. Why? Most of the information is built on fiction and lies from nutritional experts in the field who are interested in selling products or books. The information is so confusing that if I started to study nutrition today I would be lost.
So how can we, as doctors, determine objectively what the right diet is for our patients as well as our family members?
The answer is a blood test, and I do not mean the eat-right-foryour-type blood test, but a blood test that all professions would agree on. It should be a blood lab that all doctors use to assess biochemically what is going on with a patient. Instead of using drugs to mask the problem, why not use nutrition to repair and rebuild the body?
Hippocrates, the father of modem medicine, stated,
“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food. ”
Once you assess what a patient should eat based on the laboratory analysis, you now have a stalling point. We all cannot be vegetarians or meat eaters, so we have to determine the proper diet for each of us. A simple comprehensive fasting metabolic panel will tell you which one you aie.
When I first stalled to introduce nutrition into my practice back in 1979,1 asked myself these questions:
1. What would I need to know to improve my patient’s nutrition?
2. How could I do this scientifically and objectively, and not guess?
The interesting thing about postulating a question is that you already possess the answer.
To answer the first question, I would need to know two things:
A. What type of foods my patient would do well with (one person’s food is another person’s poison). We all come from different heritages, and for many generations dating back hundreds and sometimes thousands of years, we adapted (genetically and biochemically) to foods indigenous to that paid of the world where we lived.
So the foods that we planted, hunted, and gathered were what we adapted to eating. You cannot take a person whose heritage is Irish and was raised on meat and potatoes and put that person on a vegetarian diet unless you wanted to kill the person. The same thing applies if you aie Asian, Italian, German, Colombian, etc.
B. Is my patient digesting, assimilating, and metabolizing the food properly and then detoxifying?
Just like if your car is not running properly, either you have put the wrong fuel in it (food) or it needs a tune-up. In this case, your glands and organs aie malfunctioning, as is the case with patients who aie diabetic, hypoglycemic, have ulcers, or other metabolic disturbances such as a hypothyroid, hormone replacement, etc.
In many cases, your patients have both a problem with their diet as well as many of the conditions I mentioned earlier.
So how do you determine the proper diet, and when you do, how do you treat the metabolic disturbances that your patients now suffer from?
I have many patients who ai e allergic to certain foods and after they have a gluten reaction, they aie told to stay away from foods that aie beneficial to them. Because their body cannot process these foods properly, due to many of the conditions noted previously, they aie asked to stay away from foods that they need for their health.
There are many patients, for example, who need to eat meat but ai e asked to stay away from it because of their cholesterol.
Meat is not bad, but because of problems with their glands and organs, they cannot tolerate meat. If their body were functioning properly, they would do very well with meat. So you have to know the right foods and what your body is doing with them.
Once you determine the proper foods your patient should eat and how his or her body is functioning, you can put the right nutritional protocol into action and give them the right nutraceutical support.
The next question that I needed to answer was about how to do this objectively.
About a year later, I found the answer was a blood test.
A blood test will not only determine what sickness or disease you have, but it will also determine:
1. What foods aie good for you.
2. How your body is functioning biochemically.
The great thing about using a blood test is:
• 1. All physicians accept it—MD, DC, DDS, or ND.
• 2. It is objective rather than subjective. A follow-up test will determine if your cholesterol, glucose, liver enzymes, andJ or hormones have improved. A blood test is objective and scientifically proven. As a profession, we aie always striving to prove things in a scientific manner, and what better way than with a blood test?
3. You are analyzing the chemistry of the body with the chemicals of the body. I was taught to diagnose nutritional problems through questionnaires, muscle testing, iridology, and hair analysis. Although these methods work, not all professions accept them.
In the next three articles of this series, we will discuss how you can use your patients’ lab results to determine their nutritional protocol, diet, glandular, and organ imbalances, and what supplements to take to improve their cholesterol, sugar, thyroid conditions, or any other hormonal imbalances they may have.
Your practice will survive in spite of insurance and this ridiculous healthcare system because you will learn how to:
• Help more patients.
• Get more referrals.
• Increase the scope of your practice.
• Increase your income.
Dr. Cima has been practicing in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida since 1980. His specialties include nutrition, rehabilitation, andfunctional medicine. He is joined in practice with his daughter and son. For more information, you can contact Dr. Cima at www. cimasystem. com or you can call him at 561-627-3810 or 561-818-2972.
