Transcription
Hi Dr. Dan. Cows here, and I wanted to talk to you today about the ion panel. Ion stands for Individual Optimal Nutritional Test. It is the ultimate test that includes everything you could imagine testing for within functional medicine. So, it's gonna take a few minutes to describe this test. It's a little expensive, but for the amount of lab work that you're getting, it's an incredible value. Out of all the things that I see in our entire field of integrative and functional medicine, this is probably one of the better deals that you can possibly get, and hopefully, you'll see that as I go through this, you see how the information that you can obtain from the tests.
So, it involves both giving a blood and urine sample to get all this done, and I'm gonna go through the different sections and then do a quick review at the end. Okay, so a little bit of detail to start off with. The test begins looking at your amino acids. And why are amino acids important? Well, I'll go through the different sections so you can see. There are branched-chain amino acids, and these are critical for muscle development, right? And if you're an athlete, or if you're getting older and you're worried about your muscle mass, very, very important to have good quality muscle mass. And then I'll go through these sections here on the next page. You can see the amino acids are also important for cardiovascular function. So, arginine and taurine are responsible for making sure your blood vessels work well and everything is running smooth with your heart.
There's a series of the neurotransmitters that are critical for brain function. So, that would be tryptophan, tyrosine, phenylalanine, etc. These are the amino acids from which you make serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, glutamate. These are all they're really, really, really important brain chemicals that basically control what we're thinking about or not thinking about, and how you're feeling. Okay.
There's a section on sulfur amino acids. Several of these amino acids are responsible for detoxification pathways that are related to a nutrient called glutathione. So, that's how you get rid of chemicals and heavy metals. There's a section on ammonia detoxification. Some of these amino acids are, you know, able to break down and get rid of ammonia. Very important that you don't have ammonia buildup. You can see this particular person had low levels of a few of those. And then they look at some of the ratios. So, again, cardiovascular function, brain health, detoxification. Amino acids are used to assemble every single protein in your body, right? So, these are really critical.
And also on the next page, you'll see on page three here, has a section of the test where they look at homocysteine. How much cysteine levels are associated with cardiovascular disease. And then they do this really great mineral analysis. I mean, if the tech, the only reason you did this test was just for minerals, it would be worth it. Okay, magnesium, potassium, calcium is measured, zinc and copper and selenium. Each one of these minerals could go on for years about, but each one is absolutely critical for human health.
The test also includes the toxic elements. These are the bad minerals, the bad metals: aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. Don't want to have any of these at high levels in your system. So, again, looks at both the healthy minerals like potassium, magnesium, calcium, and the bad guys like lead and aluminum, etc.
On the next page, you'll see it measures the fat-soluble antioxidants. So, these are the antioxidants that are responsible for protecting your lipids or fat. In the fat, what we're talking about protecting obviously has to do with cell membranes. So, every membrane in your body, every cell membrane your body's made up of fat, and also their brain has a more fair amount of fat in it, right? So, these antioxidants are protecting your lipids or fats from being damaged or oxidized. CoQ10, vitamin E, vitamin A. May have heard of some of these. Lipid peroxides as a measure for our my lipids or fats getting damaged or not. And what happens if they get damaged? Puts you at high risk for cardiovascular disease, variety of different brain disorders. So, that's a very important marker.
It also measures whether your DNA is becoming damaged. So, by looking at this oxidative stress marker called 8-OHdG. So, when we're under oxidizing stress and bad things are happening in the tissues because of a lot of free radicals, these free radicals can damage your lipids, in which case the lipid peroxidation number will go up. Then we're worried about things like cardiovascular disease and brain-related problems. Similarly, these free radicals or oxidative stress factors, right, can be get inside the cell, into the nucleus of the cell where the DNA is, and they can damage the structure of the DNA, which causes the DNA to replicate abnormally. That's a very bad thing. That's basically the origins of what we call cancer, right? If cells are abnormally replicating. So, very, very important that you know the status of your lipid peroxides, are your fats, or your the membranes around all the cells healthy and doing well, and is the DNA in your system being damaged or not? Those are mission critical. Again, if only for those two markers, this test would be worth it. You should everyone should know they lipid peroxide levels, and everyone should know if the DNA in their body's being damaged. We could prevent cancer if we could know that, you know, you know, you know, the young enough age for people.
It also includes a test for vitamin D, which is important. Most of you, I'm sure, have heard of vitamin D. And this is my favorite section of the test. So, this looks at the fatty acids, the omega-3s and omega-6s. Now, I just randomly picked this lab to talk about, but just so happens this particular patient has low omega-3. The omega-3s are fish oils, like EPA, DHA. You've probably heard of them. And why are they important? Very powerful anti-inflammatories. They're used oftentimes in depression and anxiety treatment. They're used in any kind of inflammatory situation. They're used a lot preventing cardiovascular disease development. Very, very important.
And then there are the omega-6s: GLA, DGLA. You may have heard of arachidonic acid. So, the omega-6s are very important for prostaglandin production, very important again in the anti-inflammatory role. So, high levels are bad, low levels are bad. You want to be right in the green zone here for all of these markers. And a balance of the omega-3 and omega-6s means that you're going to control inflammation well, you'll have a wonderful immune response, your brain will just be rocking along and working great. So, omega-3 and omega-6s, absolutely critical. Most people think about the omega-3s a lot, and a lot of people take fish oil. Obviously, this person wasn't taking fish oil. These are quite low on the omega-3s. But most of us don't think about omega-6s in in anything except for excess. You see this person is quite complicated. They have some of the omega-6s or low, some are high. I won't get into the detail what that means, other than to say it's super important to know your status of your fat.
Omega-9s are measured. They measure monounsaturated. Kind of cool. I mean, just to give you an example here, like this person is low in oleic. They need olive oil. Straightforward, you know, eat some more olive oil. So, it doesn't always have to be complicated supplement programs. And then saturated fat. Look at that, low in saturated fat. Who would have thought that would be things like butter and coconut? Well, I mean, crazy as it may sound, some people need more saturated fat. We're always all worried about too much saturated fat. You can, as in this example, have not enough saturated fat. Obviously, there's many reasons why that could occur. We'd have to investigate. Okay. Also measures trans fats. Those are the really bad ones. Most of you have heard about. Okay, so a big section on fatty acids and how the monounsaturated, saturated fats work, all that good stuff.
So, then the second part here on page seven is the organic profile. This is the urine sample. And speaking of fat, the first part of this test looks at fatty acid metabolism. And that is a reference to how well your body is burning fat. Poor fat burning means you're not going to have the energy that you want. You're gonna have unsightly and unpleasant body fat hanging around in parts of your body that you don't want. So, fat metabolism is very important.
Because next section, carbohydrate metabolism, looks at how well you're burning carbohydrate or glucose. There's a big long section here on energy production because it's so important. That is how you're making energy inside the cells. If this section is messed up, like you can see this person has a couple low markers, sometimes people have a whole series of high markers here, that can mean that their cellular energy is not doing well in terms of producing energy. So, they can be tired all the time. They're gonna be struggling with their weight, those kinds of issues.
B vitamins are measured. B vitamins are important for our logical function, for the breaking down of amino acids. They're important for all kinds of things. And then a lot of you may have studied or heard about methylation. So, this test measures how well your methylating. That has to do with vitamin B12 and folate and whether those levels are normal in your tissues or not. If not, there's plenty of things you can do to fix that.
And then there's a big long section on the brain and neurotransmitters. How well is your dopamine and epinephrine and norepinephrine working? How well is your serotonin working? Is there brain inflammation or is there stress that's pushing the brain chemicals down? In this particular example, you'll see this person had very low dopamine and they had a very inflamed brain. Bad combination.
There's another section we mentioned earlier, this kind of referencing back to it, on oxidative damage or oxidative stress. This is whether you're having issues with the water-soluble antioxidants that protect your DNA. What could get more important than that? I can't think of anything in human health that could get more important than the idea that you are protecting your DNA. If these markers are high, you are not protecting your DNA, and you got a really big problem to deal with. Okay. And you can prevent many of these, you know, health consequences if you can detect these problems early on.
Next section here, toxicants and detoxification. This is how your body is getting rid of chemicals and heavy metals. Do you have the pathways working to do all that or not? They measure six different pathways here specifically to look at detox. It's, it's so important.
And then the test rounds out, finishes up with looking at the compounds of bacterial or yeast origin in your digestive tract. These are, it's not a stool test, right? It's done from a urine sample, but they can see from the urine sample whether your bacterial balance, your commensal bacteria, and some of the yeast and the intestinal tract is growing appropriately or overgrowing or undergrowing. What's going on with that? Okay.
So, just a quick review because I know this is a lot. It's a blood and urine test. The ion panel looks at all the amino acids that are essential, okay? And that has to do with muscle tissue, has to do with like there's histidine, histamine is one of the markers, has to do with your heart, your brain, detoxification pathways. Okay, that's all the amino acids, absolutely critical. It does homocysteine, the minerals like potassium, magnesium, zinc. It does the toxic elements, the bad guys like lead and mercury. It looks at the fat-soluble antioxidants, CoQ10, vitamin E, vitamin A, lipid peroxides, the oxidative stress markers, vitamin D. It measures the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, again, my favorite part of the test, so much information you get from these fats. The monounsaturated and saturated fat, you high or low. And then there's a section on fat burning, carb burning, energy production, B vitamins, methylation, which is B12 and folate. Is the brain inflamed? Is the brain stressed? Right, a very comprehensive brain section. More oxidative damage markers because that's super, super important, so they check that in a bunch of different ways. Are you full of toxins? Right, looks at the various chemical and heavy metal detox pathways to see if they're working properly or not. And then it ends up looking at the growth of commensal bacteria and potentially harmful yeast or fungal organisms in the gut.
So, an incredible test. I highly recommend it. Again, I know it's a little expensive, but for the amount of data you're getting, it's just an incredible, incredible bargain. If you have more questions about the test, please contact the office. Be happy to talk with you about it. Thanks.