I had a major wake up call about 3 years ago with one of my pro athletes. We were getting his baseline blood work to set up a nutritional regimen for his training program. I had been working with him for 6 years prepping him for different events and his cholesterol was always perfect! Well not this time! His cholesterol was WAY out of range so of course I panicked. We decided to do a second test just to see if the results were a fluke and sure enough they came back pristine. We figured out that a huge organic ribeye with every inch consumed (including the fat) 2 nights before the first test was the culprit. From that moment on I decided I needed to see a trend in cholesterol elevations before I pushed anything but dietary change and spot checking.
As a doctor I love to be your one stop resource for testing your nutritional deficiencies and monitoring your blood work in order to keep you naturally healthy and living your best life. I am also not naive! I know you are going to try that fad diet or cleanse your friend told you about! I just want you to be safe. Did you know that I can create orders to spot check your cholesterol for $5 plus the blood draw fee? If you are pretty healthy and want to play around with your diet to see how your body responds let’s use objective data! A cholesterol panel is $5, a complete blood count is $4.50, and a blood chemistry is $4.50. With the $25 blood draw fee that’s less then the cost of some people’s copay. Why not try that diet for a week or two and then check in to see what it is doing to your blood? Not all doctors agree with me so you may get varying opinions even within the Revolutions team of doctors on this tactic. However, I personally am happy to do this as I have with my athletes preparing for events. If you are interested in a spot check just schedule a short 15 minute check in appointment with me so I can be clear on your goals and we can order appropriate testing. This does not mean I will take over your chronic and long term care case, but I have no issue with ordering a spot check for you as long as I know your goals.