After reading about RDAs you might be wondering how to know if you have a deficiency and might need more than the recommended amount of a nutrient. This is where the tricky and often times frustrating world of lab testing comes in.
A logical thought would be to go to your doctor and ask for blood work. The issue with this is they are often measuring serum levels. What’s wrong with the serum? Our serum is very tightly regulated and takes a long time to see something out of range.
For example, magnesium levels in your serum have to be tightly regulated otherwise it could impact your blood pressure significantly. This is why our bodies will take nutrients from other places in the body in order to have a healthy serum level. By the time you see a deficiency on serum based blood work, that deficiency has likely been present for a very long time.
Another thing to consider is that minerals like potassium and magnesium are intracellular, meaning 99% of them are found inside our cells. Regular blood work is measuring outside of our cells.
So what’s a better solution? Measuring nutrients like red blood cell magnesium shows you how much magnesium is inside the red blood cell and is much more accurate. You can do the same for other minerals like potassium, zinc, etc. My favorite type of testing and what I think gives people the most information is hair mineral testing. It measures levels inside the tissue and is looking at your unique response to stress. You also get to see the optimal range, which you don’t get from blood work unless you’re working with a practitioner and they have this knowledge. The normal range for blood work is based on an average and again isn’t optimal, but normal.
If you’re unsure of whether or not you would benefit, consider taking my mineral imbalance quiz! If you are ready to start digging into your minerals with a hair mineral test check out the Master Your minerals course.
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