Optimize your health with Functional Bloodwork testing

But then there's things that go on on the inside of your body that you wouldn't actually notice unless you had blood tests done. Your body needs vitamin D to be able to absorb and use every other vitamin and mineral out there. And one of the main ones is calcium. So if you don't have enough vitamin D in your system, you're also not going to be absorbing a lot of calcium.

Hello and welcome to Beyond Diagnosis, a podcast to raise your awareness, decisions, and voice for alternative practices so you can take back control of your health. I'm Rita De Michele, your host, a mindset and empowerment coach, and the founder of the Onus platform. Join me each week so you can create the health of your dreams. I'm so excited to be having a conversation with Tiffany Spaulding from Simply Cultivated Health. Because if you feel frustrated and confused that your health isn't where you think you'd like it to be, and you keep being told that your blood work falls within the normal range, then you need to listen and save today's episode. Welcome to the show, Tiffany.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Oh, we're really excited to have you because this is such a, such an important area to actually start with people, isn't it?

Yes, it is. I always say that the blood work is the first step.

Absolutely, absolutely. Now, you work as a functional blood work specialist and you're a certified health and stress coach to find the root cause to people's health concerns. Can you explain to our listeners a little bit of what exactly is a blood— blood work— a functional blood work specialist? And what do you do?

So the main difference with functional bloodwork specialists is we see a person's body as a whole. It's not just we're focusing on this system or we're focusing on that system. Functional medicine understands that one system impacts the other system. So if you're having issues with your glucose levels, we're also going to look at your endocrine system. Or if you're having issues with your digestive, you know, digesting food and everything, we're also going to look at your lipid panels. You know, it's, it's all one system. So with functional blood work, we look at what's called optimal ranges. So when anyone goes to their doctor and they have their blood work drawn, the doctor is going to look at your lab markers, and he's going to look at what your results are, and you're going to look at a normal range, which is, you know, anywhere between here and here. Functional medicine uses optimal ranges, and that's a lot smaller of a range. So if you have any numbers that are outside of this range causing a problem or a concern, we can catch it a lot faster than a normal conventional doctor can. So it's, it's nice that way because you don't have to let the issues get as aggressive or, you know, horrible before you can start doing something about it. So that's what the difference is between functional medicine and like conventional allopathic medicine, right?

And just going back to when you said about— and that's something I always find really fascinating— is that considered that optimal range or average range Um, I think there's a lot of conflicting information out there that people are reading on the internet. There's a lot of misinformation. And the difference is what you're saying is average— what you get on a regular blood test, that average range which is broad across everybody— isn't necessarily that helpful to finding the root cause.

Correct. Yeah. So when doctors first started collecting blood to create these ranges, they used anywhere between 300 to 3,000 people. And these people weren't necessarily healthy because that, you know, that's why they were collecting the blood was to figure out what a range should be. So you're getting people for a thyroid panel who have Hashimoto's or hyper or hypothyroidism, and they used everyone's blood to create this range. That's why the ranges are so wide, because you had a lot of healthy and non-healthy people being used for this standard number system. So when the functional doctors came along and they started realizing, you know, we shouldn't let people get this bad, we should start narrowing it down. in catching some of these symptoms and problems before they further advance.

That is— yeah, I totally believe in that. If I can say a little, uh, story of my own experience, um, I had a half thyroidectomy. And every time— and I have lots of symptoms, and I've had lots of symptoms for many years, and I keep going and having a blood test done saying I don't think my thyroid Well, what's left on my thyroid is working that well, and I think it's supporting me. And I do the blood test, and I keep getting the same response all the time. Oh, but you're in normal. You're in normal range. You're slightly, slightly on the lower end of average. And I keep saying, yeah, but I just have all these symptoms. They go, well, no, you don't really qualify for any medic. I don't really want. I don't want to be on medication, but they go, you don't qualify. qualify really because you're within what we consider average or normal. It was only once I went to another doctor who— totally unrelated, I wasn't even talking about my thyroid. She asked about it, I told her, and she was the only one that said, yes, but what is normal or average for someone else isn't for you. And that's what you're talking about, isn't it? Yes.

Yes.

We have to start going down and seeing the person as an individual, not someone who just happens to fall into a parameter.

Correct. Absolutely. And that's what I do when I'm looking at the blood work results, is I'm trying to figure out, you know, not necessarily what is the symptom that you're dealing with and how to correct it. I try to go deeper. I don't want to just fix the symptom. What is causing that symptom? What is causing you to feel the way you're feeling? So that's what I like to do. That's why I absolutely love digging into people's blood work, because it's a snapshot, you know, like a picture of what's going on inside your body. And all you have to do is just find the pieces to the puzzle and put it together and boom, you know, you can help somebody immensely doing that.

Fantastic. And just to give our listeners a little bit of an example of what we're talking about when we say, um, optimal or average range or whatever, let's— if you can, let's speak to something like, which is I think is the one that most people are concerned about, is like vitamin D. Most people go, oh, if you have a higher level of vitamin D, it's going to be so toxic. But others, and they give you this lower range, this safe range, and then you talk to someone like yourself or a functional doctor and their range is so much higher that I think it actually scares people because they're conditioned to think that there'll be toxicity if it's above this lower, this lower level. Can you speak to that? And as one of those examples—

That was the perfect example. That's actually the one that I like to use the most. So spot on. So A normal range for vitamin D is anywhere between 100 nanograms per milliliter all the way down to 30 nanograms per milliliter. So, 30 to 100, that's what they tell you is normal. But I'm telling you, if you're below 70, you're not going to feel good. The body needs vitamin D for every single cell function in the body. So, your body's constantly using it. It's constantly using it for everything. So if you're allowing yourself to go down to that 30 mark at the very bottom, you're just— you're not going to feel good. You're going to run really slow. You're going to be really fatigued. You're going to be tired, and you're not going to understand why, because guess what? You fall within that normal range. And so that's one of the first things that I tell my clients to do is to raise their vitamin D levels. Now, to speak at the toxicity. People think because vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that you can't ingest a lot of it. But what they don't realize is that it takes an immense amount of vitamin D to raise your level. So if you're already somebody who's down here at the bottom of that spectrum, it's going to take a lot of vitamin D supplementation— supplementation.

That's a big word.

To where you need to be. So when, you know, I recommend to my clients, hey, I want you to take 25,000 IUs of vitamin D every day for a month, they start to get scared because they think they're going to get toxic. But there's— for one month, there's no way that your body is going to raise its level so high that it's going to create something bad going on in your system because your body is at the same time using that vitamin D for every single cell function. So when I work with my clients, I dose them high. And then as we prolong in their plan, I start cutting it back because your body should start holding it then.

Right. That's really interesting. Can you speak to some of the Symptoms that people can experience from low— say, for example, let's use low vitamin D as the example because there's so many symptoms to so many things. But let's— we're using— we're talking about vitamin D. What are some of the symptoms that people can experience from low vitamin D even though they're in the normal range? What is considered the normal range?

So the things that you're actually going to feel personally, like I said, you're going to feel fatigued, tired all the time. You can't build energy. You're going to notice that you're going to have drier skin, brittle nails, brittle hair. But then there's things that go on on the inside of your body that you wouldn't actually notice unless you had blood tests done.

Mm-hmm.

Your body needs vitamin D to be able to absorb and use every other vitamin and mineral out there. And one of the main ones is calcium. So if you don't have enough vitamin D in your system, You're also not going to be absorbing a lot of calcium. So when I look at like my elderly clients and they start to deal with, you know, like osteoporosis or something like that, I normally tend to check their vitamin D levels because if they're at that lower end of the range with vitamin D, that tells me that that could be one of the reasons. So then we start upping their vitamin D levels.

Right. Within privacy and everything, is there a case study? Is there a case study of somebody that you have helped and you've seen dramatic change in their health by doing these sort of deeper blood panels and maybe using vitamin D as an example again, from where they were to where they are now? Is there any— is there a particular—

I mean, I have a lot of examples. I'm one of them. I mean, that was the reason I got into this. I also Had to, you know, I went to doctor after doctor. I was depressed. I was fatigued. I never had enough energy, you know, and my test results were always normal. There's nothing wrong with you. You fall within the normal ranges.

Mm-hmm.

So it wasn't until I started researching and that I came across functional medicine, and then I was, you know, able to follow some of the doctors and see their comparison of what, you know, lab ranges should be. And then I could compare my own. And I'm like, wait a minute, I'm way off. You know, I was down in vitamin D. I was at a 22. So that's 22 nanograms per milliliter. That's below 30. That's below conventional ranges. But they told me I was fine. So as soon as I started upping my vitamin D and taking, you know, those bigger doses, the 25,000 I use daily, Mm-hmm. I noticed that like my depression started to go away. My brain fog started to go away. I had more energy. Like I was just, I was just a completely different person. And so, you know, just to do something simple, like get enough vitamin D, that's crazy that people don't know that they should do that, you know? And that's, that's why I want to be out there telling people and helping them. And another myth that people hear with vitamin D is, well, you just got to go stand out in the sun. Well, one, if you don't live by the equator, you're not getting enough UV rays.

Okay, absolutely.

Second, like, all the pollution that's in the air, it blocks the UV rays. You're not getting enough vitamin D that way. You're just not. Unfortunately, we do have to supplement.

Um, it is, it is very much. And where from 22, what was the number when you started feeling So much better?

Probably more in the 50 range. I'm now at an 83, and I'm, I'm good there. But it took me a little while. It took me about a year. So when people worry about taking those higher doses of vitamin D, it took me a year to go from 22 to— I think my other test range was like 53. That took a year. And that's not even still within optimal range.

So— And that was supplementing every day?

Yes, every day.

I've heard also that a tip around vitamin D intake is to take it at night, because if you take it during the day and then you're out in the sun, it can negate the, you know, the supplement that you've taken. Like, what's the point of taking it if you're out in the sun? So the best time to take it is at night. Would you agree with that?

I have not heard that. I recommend my clients actually take it first thing in the morning because it is giving you a boost. It is kind of boosting your, your energy level and taking away that brain fog and the fatigue. I want them to be able to enjoy those benefits through the day.

So how does someone know if they're not taking a capsule, maybe they're doing a spray, just for our listeners who are interested now that we've gone down the vitamin D path, how do they know that they're taking the right amount? Because even on those supplements, they may be keeping you within that normal range. So how do you know what to do?

Well, unfortunately, unless I actually see somebody's blood work and I know exactly where they're at on the spectrum, I can't really give like a dosage or a recommendation. I would just say To follow the dosages that are on the bottle.

Yeah.

You can start with a higher dose. So like, like I said, you can get the 20,000 or the 25,000 IUs, follow the dosage on the bottle, and you're going to notice a difference when your body is building up that vitamin D. You're going to start noticing more energy. You know, like I said, the brain fog is going away. Somebody who may have been dealing with depressive thoughts, you know, they're going to notice that maybe they're not so depressed anymore. They're starting to be able to actually enjoy life.

Now let's go back and speak a little bit more to the work that you do. And can you explain to the listeners what tests does a functional blood work specialist do? What are the extra tests that they— that you do or send their blood out to that they won't receive from a conventional blood test? Like, you know, like, it's functional.

Yeah, that's, that's kind of the good thing about how I look at blood panels. I'm not asking for any special tests done. The ones that I use are actually pretty basic. Um, they can be the ones that the doctor would pull once a year when you go to your checkup. So, I like to use the CBC, which is the complete blood count, with a differential. I like looking at the complete metabolic panel. I like looking at the lipid panel, the thyroid panel, an iron panel. And if you can get a vitamin D, that would be good. If not, I can check in the metabolic panel and see where your calcium is at.

Mm-hmm.

Because like we said, if you do not have enough vitamin D, your calcium level will be low. So, I mean, those are just basic tests that the doctor can run for you at your yearly checkup. So I'm not asking for anything special.

So what are you doing that's different then?

I'm looking at it, like I said, through the functional medicine point of view. So I'm looking at the optimal levels and through my training, I have learned to figure out what each marker is actually telling you. So a good example is in the CBC, when you get the differential, it's showing you your white blood cells. Everyone knows if you have elevated white blood cells, you're more than likely dealing with an infection. If you get the differential part of it, that can actually show us what infection you're dealing with. So it can be a bacterial infection, it can be a viral infection, we can even see a parasitic infection in there. So that's where it's different because I'm not just looking at it and telling you if you're within range or outside of range. We can actually break it down and figure out what you're dealing with so that we can then go through and eradicate any infections and then help to heal your body from there.

Fantastic. Now, if someone comes to you with a chronic disease or They've got a whole lot of unexplained symptoms that they're not finding and they're not getting any help with from regular testing. And you've done the testing with them and now you've got all this data. Where do you take them from there? So you've got the data, you're presented with a client who's got a chronic condition, they haven't been able to get answers, frustrated. They want, you know, to get to the bottom of it, to the root cause. You've got the data. Where do we go? Where do we go from there?

Okay, so I can use a client case example here. Um, I had a female come to me and she was dealing with a lot of joint pain, a lot of fatigue, and she just didn't realize, you know, what's going on. Of course, her, her blood work was normal. So when I looked at the blood work, I could see that she had some inflammation in her body, hence the reason she's dealing with the joint pain.

Hmm.

But then I wanted to know, so this is where I like to dive. I like to go a little bit deep, you know, deeper. Why do you have inflammation? That's what I want to figure out. So I start with the CBC. Are there infections? It turned out she did have an infection. She had a viral infection. So if your body is trying to fight an infection, it's raising the white blood cells. It's, you know, your adrenals are being strained. You're all of a sudden you're fatigued, you have no energy. And because your body's trying to fight the infection, it's, it's building up this inflammation in your system. And then the inflammation is just going to attack the weak points in your body. So for her, it happened to be her, you know, her joints.

Yes.

So we start at the beginning. We start with getting rid of the infection. Once the infection is gone, then we go through with doing an anti-inflammatory, either a diet or, you know, a cleanse, anything to start bringing down and reducing the inflammation in her body. And then after that, we would do like immune support, or I would get her on maybe a protocol that would help her, her digestive tract, because there was obviously a reason that the inflammation was spreading through her body. So there's just— it just depends on what the root cause is.

Yes. And do you coordinate this with other practitioners as well, or do you work on it on your own? Do you recommend, uh, from the blood panel you see, you know, you really need to go and see another specialist or another practitioner? Is that something that you do as well? Can you refer people, or do you prefer to look after it yourself?

Right now, I work on my own. I don't have a problem if somebody can get their primary care physician to collaborate and we can actually talk together about it and toss ideas back and forth. I'm fine with that. I haven't come across a physician that'll do that yet, though. So if You if I can't. I just feel that that's that's wrong.

Great. I actually missed some of that. I'll say this on air because my internet dropped out. So would you mind repeating a little bit of what you just said? So Tiffany, how do you integrate, uh, someone's test results and all the data that you have, uh, with your stress and health coaching? And what was— what does that look like?

So after we look at the blood work and we find the underlying symptoms and then we find a plan of action, steps 1, 2, 3, then I go in because what people don't realize is another form of healing your body is the emotional side. I believe that emotions have a big, big role on our health. If you're dealing with a lot of stress, If you're dealing with a lot of anger, you know, just feeling unworthy, stuff like that, it can play a really, really big part on if your body is going to heal or if you're going to be sick. You know, it weakens your immune system. So after we get through the blood testing and we figure out how to actually heal the body physically, then I start helping them with their stress and areas of concern in that way. So that's, that's how we integrate that together.

Fantastic. And have you ever seen— have you seen with one of your clients, you've taken their blood panels, you've done the deep search, you've come down to the root cause, you start working on them with, I guess, supplementation and your protocol, and then you start with the health coaching and the emotional work Then you do another blood test. Have you seen a significant change in their data from when they started to when you started working with them on an emotional level, when they started actually dealing with a lot of the things that cause the stress in the first place?

Oh yeah. I mean, for sure.

What does that look like? Have you got a— can you explain? Can you tell our listeners What does that look like? And if you can remember any sort of significant numbers to sort of give a visual or an understanding of what that looks like.

Well, it's kind of hard to use numbers with that, but I can use— there is a client, she presented with having extreme stomach issues, heartburn, indigestion, always dealing with gas and bloating. And so So we figured out she— that, that could be a whole nother podcast.

Yes. Yes.

But when you're dealing with heartburn and indigestion and everything, it's actually due to having low stomach acid.

Yes.

Um, so after finding that out and working with her, trying to get her stomach acid and the enzymes back up, and then, you know, going through her whole treatment, we started doing some of the emotional work. And it turned out that she just had a lot of internal stress.

Anxiousness.

She has a lot of anxiousness about everything. And that can actually be one of the issues with somebody who has trouble in their stomach, because when you're, when you're anxious, it puts your body in a fight or flight mode. And then when your body is triggered with the fight or flight, all the systems in your body that are not necessary to do the fighting or the flight Actually get turned off, and one of those is digestion. So if you're constantly in a state of anxiousness or worry or concern, you're doing a lot of damage to your digestive tract. So once we worked through some of those issues, and I helped her figure out ways that she could not be anxious through the day, you know, meditation or journaling or you know things like that. Any anytime she she had an issue coming to her mind, you know you can. Reframe it, redirect it, different things that you can do. And after doing that for a while, she started to notice that she wasn't as anxious. Now, she hasn't had her blood work redone yet, but I'm excited to see what the numbers will be, because when she can start feeling it, then you know that you're actually fixing it.

Absolutely, absolutely. And that really speaks to the importance of doing that emotional work and that mind-body connection. That it, you know, really, I, I can't stress enough, and I'm sure you can't either, that that connection, that what you're thinking has such a profound impact on your body in so many ways. And then someone like you can actually see, physically see in the tests, the difference that, that, um, working on your emotions makes to your, to your body. You can actually, you actually have the data there that can prove this, which is, you know, fantastic. That must be so good. So what else do you help— how else do you help people, like, especially with the health? And what sort of strategies do you give people for their emotional work? Because would that be a, a starting place? Would you start there, or do you always start with the blood?

I always start with the blood. To me, that's, that's always step number one because the bloodwork doesn't lie. I can start with the emotional. I can start with hearing your symptoms, but all of it's guessing.

Yeah.

I can hear, you know, that you're dealing with this or dealing with that. And I can guess that it, you know, like with that client, I could guess that it was messing with her digestive tract, but I didn't know for sure. So I always like to start with the blood work because I see it. It's right in front of me. It's confirmation. I don't have to second-guess it. And then once I can start helping them to reverse some of those things going on inside them, the root causes, then the symptoms down the line start to fade away. And then once we start getting— you want quick wins because then that's when the client feels motivated. They feel determined to continue working with you. So once they start getting those quick wins and they start feeling better physically, internally, then you can start working on the emotional side of it. And then you can show them, you know, the reason that you were dealing with these stomach issues is because you're so anxious all the time. So now that we've got the stomach straightened out for the most part, Let's work on the anxiousness. That way you don't cycle back into it. So I always start with the blood work.

Yeah, it is an important step. And Tiffany, what— who is your most common, if I can say common, client? Is it someone with a chronic condition that they're just not getting answers, or is it someone who's just starting to get those symptoms They keep going back to the GP and they keep getting told there's nothing there, but they— but the client knows that there's something there. Who is your most common client?

I'm going to say it's moms. Oh, it's moms that are super stressed out. They're dealing with the kids, they're dealing with the home. Maybe they're also working on top of that. They've gotta, you know, schedule the doctor's appointments and the dentist appointments and get the dog to the groomer, or— and they're just so stressed, and they just don't realize that the stress is just working at their body. You know, it's got their adrenals going crazy, it's got their blood sugar imbalanced, you know, it's causing a whole bunch of just havoc inside their body, and they can feel it. They can feel it. You know, they're tired. They can't sleep at night because their brain is thinking of 100 different things they've got to do the next day. And they go to the doctor. The doctor says they're fine. But, you know, they're not fine. And dealing with all of that, you know, they get emotional because they start thinking they're crazy. It's all in my head. I'm being told by a professional that I'm fine. But I feel this way. So it's just, yeah, I would definitely say moms. Moms are the ones that I see the most.

I can relate to that. Absolutely. You're just pulled from every which way and become so incredibly stressed. I certainly know that when my son was younger, that's when I started having all those digestive issues that you talked about because the stress level was so high. You know, trying to be everything to everyone. And I suppose also, you know, that's when all those, uh, emotional aspects come into it, depending where you fall in. Like a lot of people who end up becoming people pleasers and detach from their needs or for someone else's needs, it— that ends up having an incredible impact on, on your health.

Yes, it does. Absolutely.

Yeah. Tiffany, it's been so fantastic having you on the show and explaining what functional blood work is and the difference between that and just having a normal blood test done and finding the root cause. Finding the root cause is the most important thing, and I hope whoever's listening today really books in And has one of those deeper, more comprehensive tests done, because it'll take your health to the next level. If you want to connect with Tiffany, all her details will be in the show notes. And really do your health a favor and start at the root cause. Thank you, Tiffany. It's been such a pleasure having you on the show.

I've had a blast. Thank you so much for having me.

You're welcome. I would love to know what was the biggest insight or aha moment you got from this interview so you can now speak up, take action, and make informed decisions for your health. And if you like this episode, get instant access to your free ebook, Alternative Wisdom taking back control of your health at life-onus.com.