Are Blood Tests Enough? Why Cellular Testing Might Be Better | Justin Roethlingshoefer

When you look at intracellular testing or in the cell testing, you're looking at what's getting from the freely flowing states of the blood actually into the cell in a usable form. So you could have high levels of vitamin D, high levels of vitamin K, high levels of iron, high levels of B12 in the blood serum, but you don't have the cofactors, you don't have the enzymes, you don't have the regulating status to get it from the cell, from the serum into the cell. So your body still thinks you're dysfunctional and def. This is the ownit show where we tell stories of how everyday people made ownership theirs. Hey guys, welcome back to the Own it show. I'm your host, Justin Ralph, and he shower. And if you guys are new here, this is where we tell stories of people who have made ownership theirs and really realized a life that is different. And so if this is your first time here and maybe you're listening to this podcast because somebody tossed it over to you, hopefully they love you and but maybe you just stumbled upon it, I'd love you to leave a review. I'd love for you to share it with somebody if it makes an impact on you. Because today we're diving deep. Over the past couple days, we've been really talking about how can you take ownership of a lot of your behaviors and habits? And what does this mean? How can you personalize it? We've talked a lot about hrv, we've talked a lot about sleep quality. Even some of the guests that we've had on over the past couple of months have really dove into this in a very unique and expertise way. But what we're diving into today is cellular micronutrient deficiency. And when we talk about cellular micronutrient deficiency, we really need to realize and understand that it's not about just one thing. And I really want to help you understand today what cellular micronutrient deficiency is all about. Why is it important? What does it look like? What is the difference between cellular testing and serum testing? Why can't I just do a serum test? And why can't I just get these, this whole mountain of supplement, supplements to actually solve my problem. But what does it actually start to look like? And why does this matter? And so that's what we're diving into today. That's what we're really making sure that we can give you some level of ownership and a new level of understanding on so that you can go from a state of knowing what maybe is necessary to truly understanding it because when you get to a level of truly understanding it, that is when you can push forward, that is when you can create change, that is when you become convicted. And that this is something that I have to do. This is something that is necessary to get me to the next level. And so again, welcome to the own IT show and let's go. So when we think micronutrient testing, when we think micronutrient deficiency testing, there's a couple things that we have to start to lean into. There's a couple things we have to really lean in and actually start to ask ourselves and understand and why is it important to measure intracellular testing or intracellular nutrient status versus extracellular nutrient status? Now, you might have heard the difference between blood, just blood testing in general, 10x health. Get blokes the test from your doctor inside tracker. This is all serum testing. And what ends up happening is when you look at serum testing, this is what's allowing us to understand what's freely floating through the blood. When you look at intracellular testing or in the cell testing, you're looking at what's getting from the freely flowing states of the blood actually into the cell in a usable form. So you could have high levels of vitamin D, high levels of vitamin K, high levels of iron, high levels of B12 in the blood serum, but you don't have the cofactors, you don't have the enzymes, you don't have the regulating status to get it from the cell, from the serum into the cell. So your body still thinks you're dysfunctional and deficient in it. And so the reason that it's important to measure intracellular nutrient status versus extracellular or serum testing is because for every biochemical reaction needing to sustain life, like energy production, cellular repair, detoxification, growth, protein synthesis, genetic expression, all of these things occur inside the the cell. And so measuring nutrient levels outside the cell tells you nothing about what's going on intracellularly, where metabolism takes place and ultimately where micronutrients do their job so we can realize how important this actually becomes. So I want you to imagine yourself for a second that you have a car and it has a full gas tank. The gas tank and the gas gauge says full. But for whatever reason, perhaps the fuel line is broken, could be a perfect example. But the fuel is not reaching the engine. Thus your car will not function. The engine won't turn over, you'll turn the keys, you've just gone to the gas station, you just put it in, meaning you just took in and put Supplements in your body. You just put food into your body. It's not like you're starving, but your cells are like that engine. It doesn't matter if there's gas in the tank or, or nutrients in the serum. If you cannot get the gas connected to the engine inside the cell, it won't drive, it won't work, it won't operate, it won't go. And if the nutrients don't get inside the cell, the metabolic function doesn't happen. We ultimately end up in this space of nutrient depletion. And so when we don't have the metabolic function, it won't work, it won't drive. And if the nutrients can't get inside the cell, the metabolic function doesn't happen. And so one of the questions I often get is, can I have a high serum level but a low intracellular micronutrient status? And this is the thing that I think wakes a lot of people up. The answer is yes. And in fact, this is extremely common. So on this live that I'm doing a live stream through Instagram for everybody listening here, for everybody who is on the podcast, listening on the Own it show, we've got about 4,000 people that listen to this over the next week and a half, two weeks. And when we get to this component, every single one of us, each One of the 4,000 people has a low micronutrient status. That's what you have to understand. I have micronutrient deficiency right now. You have micronutrient deficiency right now. It's just to the level and the extent that it is. And so, in fact, nutrient deficiency is very common. But we have to make sure that we get to the root of it and we understand what it is so that it doesn't prolong over the course of time. There's many reasons that that a nutrient may be low inside the cell. Number one is that it's got poor transport of nutrients across the cell membrane, meaning that you might not have the enzyme required to get it from the serum into the cell. And if you don't have the actual components that take it from the serum and into the cell, you're going to be chronically depleted. Even though your functional medicine doc, even though your expert has given you all these supplements to take, or even though that you're doing all the things necessary, you don't have the enzyme to take it from the serum and put it into the cell. So that's number one. So poor transport of nutrients across the cell membrane, which is critical. Number two is cofactors needed to utilize the nutrients are missing or are low. Again, similar to enzymes. But co factors are things that bind themselves to the nutrient, the raw nutrient, the raw mineral, the raw amino acid, and, and help across that cell membrane. So if your enzymes are low or your cofactors are low, you still won't be able to get it from the serum into the cell. The third thing, malabsorption of nutrients into cells. Sometimes you just have a cell that does not absorb a certain nutrient. You might not be able to absorb vitamin D, you might not be able to absorb vitamin C, you might not be able to absorb vitamin K. And that's what we can start to find out from the testing. Again, we can start to understand what. Where is your break happening? Because we all have them. That's how we're built, that's how we're created. That's what just living in this world creates for us, is there's this malabsorption of nutrients into the cell. Again, not a bad thing. We just need to know so that we can ultimately operate in a different level. And then number four, circadian rhythms alter serum levels, but not intracellular levels. Hear that for a second. I did a whole piece on sleep quality and how do you optimize circadian rhythm and we could, if you want to go to that podcast, you can take a look. It was about two weeks ago that that was posted. But also if you go to ownitsleep.com you can get the whole PDF that I built for you guys on how to get the best night's sleep possible. So ownitsleep.com that's where you can find that. But circadian rhythm levels alter serum levels, not intracellular. So you can see high levels of fluctuation after poor night's sleep in the serum, but it doesn't impact what's happening intracellularly. So that again, is something critical. And then we have to realize, number five is that serum levels fluctuate with recent supplementation or food intake, not intracellular levels. So you could take a vitamin D supplement, a vitamin C supplement, and you could have high levels of serum, but you don't have the cofactors, you don't have the ability to absorb it, and you don't have the enzymatic activity and it won't get from the serum to the cell. And so we could be living in chronic micronutrient deficiency without even knowing. And so that is really, really important that we can actually start to understand and lean into making sure that we can really understand this Now a lot of people start to say, so, Justin, what's the difference between intracellular testing and then functional testing that maybe my functional medicine doc does? Well, there's a big difference. So intracellular testing simply means we are looking at the micronutrients that are measured inside the cell wall versus outside the cell wall in the serum. So we're looking at vitamins, about 25 of them. We're looking at minerals, about 22 of them. We're looking at amino acids, about 20 of them. We're looking at upregulating and cofactor enzymes, about 11 of them. And when we can understand that, along with the, the cellular inflammatory markers and the cellular antioxidant markers, we can truly get a good understanding of what's going on inside the cell. Now, when we understand what's going on inside the cell, it's very different when what people are measuring, when they talk about functional testing, because again, people have tried to throw all of these fancy words at you and put these exorbitant cost and structure pricing on this, simply to leave us in confusion. Because when we're measuring the mass, measuring the mass quantity of a nutrient in a cell, it's very different than measuring the function or performance of a nutrient within the cell. It doesn't matter how much of a vitam in or outside of that cell if it's incapable of utilizing that nutrient. Let me say that again. Let me truly help you understand that it doesn't matter how much of that nutrient is available in the serum. It doesn't matter how much is inside the cell if we don't understand how much can actually be used. So ideally, micronutrient status should be assessed both intracellularly and, and functionally. Measuring levels instead of function would be basically the same as measuring the amount of fuel in the engine. But ultimately discovering that the car still won't drive, still won't function because it didn't need gas, it needed oil. It needed the oil, and it needed actually the gas line to be reattached. That's what it needed to make sure that we could operate at a higher level. So gasoline levels would be fine in the engine, but the engine still won't operate, still won't function because it's. It doesn't have the gas that it needs. And so that's what we do when we do our testing through, is we truly look at both the intracellular level as well as the functioning of these micronutrient levels inside the cell. Now, if this is starting to convince you, if this is starting to convict you. If this is starting to get you interested and going, man, maybe I should take a look at this. You can go to ownittesting.com ownittesting.com to start to look into this, to get into your journey so that we can start to get this process going for you and really start to lean in and start looking at this. Now, again, something else that people ask me all the time, well, if serum testing is left less useful, why is it so common? And I love this question and I love when I get questioned and I get pushed on this. And the simple reason is because serum testing has been available for decades. It's been around forever. It's the way that we've always done it. It's normal and it's widely available, easy to perform, and quite frankly, really inexpensive. A simple serum panel, you're looking somewhere between 11 and 18 bucks. Really cheap, really inexpensive. And a serum test can run in any hospital or national laboratory because it's a commodity, it's non specialty, it's non specific, and it's very general in the type of blood test it is. Again, get blokes 10x health insight tracker, your regular doc. That is what they are doing. That is what they're putting you through. Again, because it's common, it's inexpensive and it's easy to administer and easily accessible. But it's not giving us the story. And the reason that we're just accepting this as normal is because it's scalable, it's handled by insurance, and you can do a lot of these things in a very easy way. So if we look back as far as the 1970s, medical literature demonstrated that serum tests will miss functional deficiencies and that intracellular nutrient function testing is more clinically reliable than serum. But the relative cost and availability of serum testing obscured the clinical superiority of functional testing. Again, this is crazy to me that dating back 55 years, 55 years, it was known that cellular testing was more beneficial and clinically reliable than searing. But the cost and availability of serum testing obscured the clinical superiority of cellular testing. Think about that. And that's just what we've accepted as normal. That's why normal is broken. And so in my book, the power of ownership. Redeem your health. Live life by design and relentless pursuit of normal. I'll put it in the chat here. I'll put it in the show notes the power of ownershipbook.com I talk about how normal is broken. And the way that we have to get past normal is choose something different. Choose Something unique. Choose something as unique as you are, because I want you to understand what's happening deep inside of you so that you can take ownership and you can get really specific. And so once we dive into this, we, looking back at this, we, we know now that functional and cellular testing is so much more valuable, so much more reliable, and actually is clinically reliable when it comes to this. But serum testing may still appear cheaper, even though functional nutrient testing is more clinically informative. And so we have to understand, okay, what are we really wanting to do? Why are we wanting to do this? But for those who really delve into the research, for those who really look at what the numbers are telling us, they, the notion of serum testing of nutrients being less useful at best and misleading at worst are highly substantiated. So again, I'm just going to say this. If you look at the research, when you look at the concept of serum testing, being able to look at the nutrients and looking at the information you're getting as being less useful at best and ultimately misleading at worst, that's what you're signing up for. That's what you're saying yes to. That's what you're accepting as your preventable health metric. Because here's what we have to understand as well. The medical system has been set up for two things. Number one, to fix things that are broken, and number two, to make large amounts of money. I think it does both of those things really well. If I have a bone sticking out of my arm, I don't want to do cellular testing. I want to go to the emergency room and get that thing fixed. Because they can fix something that's broken. They're trained to do that. They're not trained to be proactive. In fact, that's not even what the system was designed to be. That's not what it was ultimately created for. That's your. And my job is to be proactive to understand this thing that we're living in. And so when we can now go from being proactive. Proactive to being reactive, and we're disguising reactivity as proactivity, saying, hey, go get your blood testing done. It's a serum panel. Go get your blood testing done, and let's be proactive in your health. No, all we're looking at is what's broken. All we're looking at is what's not working right. And so we're going to give you a pill, we're going to give you a prescription, we're going to give you something that's a quick fix that we can ultimately do surgery, do something, get you signed up for something that's going to cost more money. No, let's look at what's actually happening, because you can be totally fine, quote, unquote. This is my story. I was totally fine. My blood work, my serum blood work came back perfect. It was like the ideal. I had the six pack abs, I was racing, I was running, I was training, I was doing all the things. But I knew I didn't feel well. I knew there was something off. And it wasn't until I went and got a colonoscopy and an endoscopy, found an ulcer the size of a quarter in my stomach, found four polyps the size of my thumb in my colon, all precancerous, that they said, hey, if you continue this way, you wouldn't have seen your 35th birthday. And when I went and got my cellular testing done, I found out about it after I had 18 cellular deficiencies, 18 in which my body was having to adjust and maneuver and go through. And so because I was cellularly deficient in things, my body couldn't operate and do the things it was ne and it was just hanging on. And I was having all these symptoms that didn't show up because nothing was yet broken. But it would have taken something to ultimately break, which was a rise in alt or a rise in liver enzymes, or a rise in kidney enzymes, or a rise in a red blood cell or white blood cells that would have indicated some level of cancers. That's when they would have gone, oh, look, good thing we caught it. No, you didn't catch it. You're being reactive to what you've been ignoring for the last 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 35, 45, 50 years. And so now by doing cellular testing, now by doing true intracellular testing, knowing what you're dysfunctional in and deficient in at the cellular level, you can be informed, you can be empowered to actually have something created for you. No, that's not 19 supplements in a shoebox and says this is what you take. But rather what we focused on is actually custom compounding something just for you, compounding something that is built for you. Identifying the cofactors, the coenzymes, the, the enzymatic activation, the minerals, the vitamins that you're deficient in, creating it so that it can actually reverse the cellular dysfunction, reverse the cellular deficiency, so that you start to feel better, so that you start to feel empowered, so that you start to be able to optimize the way that you're functioning and the way that you're feeling again, if this is resonating with you is this is. If this is hitting a cord, go to ownit testing.com. that is where you're going to find your cellular testing. That's how you can get started. And literally for the first time, I'm so excited to say this. We are the first testing, coaching and supplementation company in the world that can now accept HSA and FSA to pay for this, meaning pre tax dollars that both you and your employer are contributing pre tax that you can now put towards this. This is as closest as you'll ever get to being able to take insurance to pay for something proactive. And we are so excited about this with the owner team. We are so excited about where we're going in being able to redeem the health of the world through educating, equipp, empowering people to take ownership of their health in a personalized way so that you can realize your God given potential. If I hope you share this podcast with somebody, I hope you take a re listen to this because it's so important to understand what the difference between serum and cellular testing is. It's so important to be educated and actually understand what's happening so that you can be empowered to do something that's for you, not rather just wait for something to break and then have it be a red arm alert and a red light alert. So I really, really encourage you to step into this, step into understanding what you're dysfunctional in, understand what you're deficient in, understand what's actually going on so that you can take ownership of your health, you can truly be proactive and fix the cellular deficiencies to step forward powerfully into taking ownership of your health. Because otherwise we're just waiting for something to break. We're just waiting for that car engine not to start, not to turn over. Because what's happening outside the cell is not reflective of what's happening inside the cell. And we have to be empowered, we have to be informed and we have to take your action on it. We have to take your solution to it. We have to move in accordance to what you need so that you can move forward different. Because remember, success is different. So own your different and we'll see you guys next week.