718: The “Big 5” Lab Tests Everyone Should Run

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to The Cabral Concept. I'm Stephen Cabral, board-certified naturopathic doctor. Thank you for joining me today on this Total Wellness Tuesday, where I want to go over one of the largest questions we've been getting over about the last three months from health practitioners and also wellness clients alike. One of the big things, just from our community in general, the big question is, how do I know which lab test to run? And what are you calling your big five lab tests? So that's what I'm going to go over. And the reason is, I never thought about this, but on interviews, when I'm being interviewed, a lot of the hosts for those podcasts will ask me, what labs do you recommend? Or what do you keep referring to as your big five? Because I always call it my big five. So I want to go over that today. And the reason is that this, is that... I always had a dream of being able to essentially disrupt the health care space, which until now has really been the sick care space, meaning that we help people really just mask their symptoms, right? We look at your blood work, and if your blood work looks normal, well, then of course you're healthy, right? You have the absence of disease because everything looks good on your blood work, but that's not true. You have to keep in mind that your blood work on an annual basis when you have it run, it should look normal. If anything's off on that, then there's serious issues. Meaning that if you have high cholesterol, if you have higher levels of albumin, if your TSH is above a 2.5, if you have higher levels of homocysteine, if high triglycerides, any one of those things, if those are off, well, then you could have figured that out years in advance if you had run some subclinical lab tests. And what does that mean? Well, blood is a homeostatic fluid. That means that it's going to keep itself balanced for the most part by robbing from other parts of your body to stay balanced. Now, that isn't always the case with things like your lipid profile, which is your cholesterol. However, for the most part, it's always making sure that it's balanced. Now, the interesting thing is in functional medicine, which has been around for decades now, decades and decades, not just 20 years, but many decades, is that we're able to figure out what's going in the body, what's going wrong in the body from a root cause base level before it goes wrong and causes a disease. If you have a disease right now, meaning like an autoimmune-based disorder, or you have the high cholesterol, the high blood pressure, the high whatever, or the low whatever, is that there's always a reason why. Meaning that your body hasn't messed up, that there's some type of either deficiency, which means that you're either low in some type of neurotransmitter, amino acid, vitamin, mineral, anything, right? Anything that could be a deficiency. And it could have got used up because of stress, poor absorption, you name it. There's so many different reasons. Or you have a toxicity. Maybe you have an accumulation of one of the over 77,000. man-made chemicals in the environment, or you could potentially have some type of endotoxicity as well, which is like candida overgrowth, bacterial overgrowth, such as SIBO. You might have parasites. You might have heavy metals. It could be many, many toxicities in your body. Well, believe it or not, those won't show up on a standard blood test, but they do show up on other labs. And that is how we help people get well. So what I want to do today is show you exactly how we help people get well. This is going to help all the health practitioners out there, all the doctors. the acupuncturists, the chiros, the life coaches, the personal trainers, and you're able to then direct your clients on what to run. Or if you're a potential patient or you're just a health advocate yourself and you want to have these run, of course, we can help you with those. But you could also find a local health practitioner, local functional medicine practitioner or doctor or naturopathic doctor that you can say, hey, this is what I've been recommended. This is what I'd like to run. Are you able to run those for me? So that's always my goal. My goal is to give you the firepower, the education, and the content so that you are now educated. You know how to take back control of your health. When you do that, you literally can achieve anything you want in your life. I talked yesterday on a very special Mindset and Motivation Monday about why your dreams matter. But a lot of people aren't up for achieving their dreams, and they're not because they're on the energy. They're on the mood, right? They're low mood. They're depressed. They're anxious. They're overwhelmed. They're irritable. The vehicle, which is their body and their mind, isn't able to carry them through. It's not able to propel them on a daily basis to what they need to do to be successful in life, according to them. And again, there's no, the barometer for how successful you are is you. That's it. It's you. So what I want you to do is this, is I want you to get crystal clear what you want. I need to say, what do you need to do to get there? Well, what you need to do to get there is to transform your body. from a wellness-based level. And if you need to lose the weight, then lose the weight. You could do that. I really do. I really, I know that you can believe it. I don't think, I know you can do that because I've not met a person in my practice that hasn't been able to do that. Not everybody wants to, but those who want to can implement the plan. And that's what I want to show you today. How do you implement the plan though? You need a place to start. A lot of people have no place to start. So they're always guessing, like is this the right diet plan? Are these the right supplements? Am I getting enough sleep? Are my hormones balanced? What about my blood sugar? All of these things, there's always guesswork. So what I like to say is stop guessing and test. Take the guesswork out of it. You will save yourself not months, but most likely years of aggravation through trial and error. Because if you're gonna try out a diet plan, well, you really need to give it at least 12 weeks. But you only have four of those 12-week periods in a year. That's about it. So what you need to do is at least have a foundation, a place to start that's a little bit more bio-individual, that's an understanding of this is how your body is looking right now from a phenotype perspective, which means that essentially what's gone wrong in the body, what are your deficiencies, what are your toxicities, and begin to rebalance those. When you rebalance those, everything in life changes. Your body begins to heal, and it does so at a root. cause level, which means that it balances the true underlying homeostatic systems of the body. Your nervous system, your immune system, your digestive system, the pH of your body, the different compartments of the body, everything becomes rebalanced. When that happens, you have more energy, you have more vitality, more zest for life than you've ever had. At that point, you want to achieve amazing things in life. One, because you completed your first transformation. You saw you were able to heal your body. And if you're able to do that, the most important thing in your body, well, of course, you can achieve other things as well because you can achieve now anything you set your mind to. You just need a place to start. So that's what we're really looking for. So what I wanna do is, maybe you never run any of these again in your life. Like you never run a lab test, that's okay. But you now will understand how the body works. And so that's what I wanna go over right now. Okay, so I'm gonna give you the big five, my big five right now. And a lot of, again, I work with a lot of health coaches, meaning like, I mentor them from the perspective of, I want to help them develop a successful practice and help them. And for me, that means helping people get well and transform their lives, but also do it in an organized fashion. And so I'm sharing with them these labs. And a lot of people, I speak at conferences, I speak on interviews, and they're always like, why are you giving away everything that you do in your practice? Why are you telling people all the labs that you run? Why are you telling people all the supplements? Why are you telling people all your protocols? And the reason is this, I'm a big believer in that the more people you The more people you give back to, the more enriched you feel, the more fulfilled you feel in life. And I've seen that come true. And so for me, I never want to hold back. If someone takes that and they copy it and they do whatever, good. I have no problem with that because I'm busy enough in life. I'm happy enough where I am right now that I don't need to keep trying to hoard it for myself. I want other health practitioners to copy me. I want them to then help thousands of other people who then... go on to live the lives that they truly want to live, that they can live out their dreams. That's what it's all about. So let's take it from the top. Two top labs I recommend as part of my big five. Big five means five labs I'm going to recommend, all right? But the two top ones are this. A lot of people don't understand this because it's very misunderstood. The hair tissue mineral analysis literally gives you all the mineral levels in your body. So what we're looking at with this is we're looking at how depleted are you with minerals? We're looking at your electrolytes. How's the energy system, the nervous system, the body functioning, your calcium and magnesium, your potassium and your sodium, meaning that those, if it's called a four high, if it's off the chart, well then for sure this person's extremely stressed, right? But what if you have a drop? What if you have a four low? Then this person's burnt through a lot of those electrolytes, that their body's not outputting the normal stress that we would like to see. And this correlates with becoming more depleted or adrenal-based fatigue. We can also look at all the other minerals in the body. Chromium that's used for blood sugar. Selenium that's used for thyroid. It's used for anti-cancer. It's used for detoxification. We can look at phosphorus. How well is the body breaking down protein? We can look at copper and zinc, which are supposed to be kept in ratio as well. Remember, everything in the body functions in ratios, in balances. We can also look at toxic metals, heavy metals, mercury, aluminum, arsenic, lead. Very important to look at because those toxicities can cause... autoimmune-based issues, nervous system issues, MS. Too much copper can lead to ADD, ADHD, fatigue, irritability, mood disorders. But we never look at those things. So vitally important, very, very important, an amazing lab test. Love that lab test. And it's also one of the least expensive. Now, the perfect partner, the perfect partner to looking at all of your mineral levels is running the organic acids test. All right? That is the test that you hear me speak about a lot. Because it looks at your digestive system. It looks at yeast overgrowth or fungal and yeast overgrowth, which is indicative of candida. It's indicative of intestinal permeability or leaky gut. It's indicative of bacterial overgrowth like Clostridium difficile in the body, okay? These are all things that we would not want to be overgrown, that they can then cause absorption issues and cause autoimmune-based disorders, then cause immune-based imbalance and cause inflammation, any number of issues, okay? The other big thing is that this organic acids test shows you your B12, your B5, your B6, your B2, your vitamin C, your biotin, your coenzyme Q10, your N-acetylcysteine. all of these levels in your body that can become depleted. So now on a hair tissue mineral analysis, we look at all of your minerals. And on the organic acid test, we look at all of your vitamins. So now we can look at deficiencies. We can truly see, is this person deficient in vitamins and minerals? Now, I'm talking about from a functional relative deficiency. Are you getting some? Sure. But is it enough to keep up with your body? It may be or it may not be. This is where functional medicine shines. It's actually where something called Orthomolecular medicine shines. Dr. Andrew Saul, Dr. Linus Pauling. Remember, how did I learn all of this? I did not create, I did not invent any of this. So sometimes if it sounds like I know this, this, and this, it's only because of an obsession of mine. It's only because I'm obsessed with the truth. And it's only because I'm obsessed with helping people get well, lose the weight, and live longer when no one else has been able to help them before. And I do that through having the education and background and travel and all that, but then also through running these labs. I do not guess. I look at the lab and it tells me on an organic acid test, what's your gut function like? What's your mitochondrial function like? What about the waste markers from serotonin, from dopamine, from norepinephrine? Not those levels, but the actual waste markers. How much waste is being produced from those? What about your glutathione levels? What about ketone and fatty acids? I look at all of those markers. I'm then able to tell. What's going on in this person's body? Even if they don't know what's going on, they don't truly know what's going on. We look deep inside of the body. Why am I also obsessed with this? This is how I got well. I got well through literally running these same exact labs I'm sharing with you today. Hilarious that 20 years ago, 20 years ago, almost to the day, 20 years ago, I ran these labs. After a couple years of doctors never being able to figure out what was wrong with me, the best specialists, right? What were they doing? They were running my blood work. They were running blood work only. And because they could not see anything wrong with my blood, except some elevated EBV, some elevated blood sugar, some elevated white blood cells, they couldn't figure out what was going on. It wasn't until I brought them some of these subclinical levels, which I'm gonna share in the next couple of labs, that they then decided to test for things like Addison's disease, myelagic encephalomyelitis, all of the other issues I'm explaining to you today. It is because of functional medicine that I'm here today. It's because of functional medicine that I have no voice right now because I have the pleasure and blessing to be able to work 10 hours a day. Seeing people from literally, I mean, over Skype, Australia, just today. So literally just today, spoke with someone in Columbia, spoke with two people in Australia, one person in the UK, and a couple other people in the US. That was my day. All around the world. Why am I able to do this? Because other doctors shared it with me. They shared me. the light of what they learned that I'm now able to do what I am today. And that's why I'm paying this forward. Let's move on to the next lab. The next lab in my big three. So those are my, if there was a big two, those would be my big two. If you can only afford two lab tests, you want to figure out what's wrong with you, you don't know where to start, hair tissue mineral analysis, organic acids test. We'll link everything up into the show notes today. Simply go to stephencabral.com forward slash 718. That is the place to go. You don't need to purchase any of these. You don't. What I want you to do, look at the lab tests, look at the lab companies, decide if you want to work with us, decide if you want to work with a local practitioner, or just get more education. You might not decide to do any of them. That's okay. You may not. You may not. And that's totally fine. But if you have the education, you at least now have the know-how and you know the right questions to ask the next time you meet with your doctor as well. Really, really important to me. Okay. Let's talk about the next test. Next amazing test is extremely underrated. And it's called the omega-3 test. The omega-3 test, let me just tell you this. If you have a saturation rate in your blood of 9% of omega-3s, you have a 90%, a 90% risk reduction rate of cardiovascular death and disease. 90% risk reduction rate. That doesn't, that means regardless of cholesterol, regardless of other things, if you get that to 9%, it's that impressive. Why? Because you've increased the anti-inflammatories in your body. So that remember, 50% of all people who have a heart attack have normal cholesterol. You might say, well, how can that be? I thought it was cholesterol that caused heart attacks. No, it's because one of the factors that no one tells you about is that inflammation. Inflammation can also cause nicks in the arteries. They can also cause blowouts in the arteries. They can also cause a constriction of the arteries. So even if you have some plaque, some cholesterol, it can make the space so small that causes a heart attack as well, or some type of cardiovascular-based decrease output. So here's the deal. You can test this. You can literally look at your omega-6s, which are more inflammatory to your omega-3s. And if your ratio is at least 5 to 1 of omega-6s to omega-3s, ideally 3 to 1, and you have a 9% saturation rate, which literally this data will show you, you've reduced your cardiovascular disease potential by 90%. I recommend every human being alive, especially men over the age of 40, to run this lab. Because if you're taking omega-3 or not, it will tell you. if you're taking the right dosage, if you're eating enough oily fish, or if you're vegan, if your omega-3 levels are high enough. And they may be because maybe you're taking in less arachidonic acid. All of that will be explained to you in this lab test. It is absolutely remarkable and not a lot of health practitioners are running this. So if you're a health practitioner and you're truly looking to help people, especially those with cardiovascular or inflammatory-based issues such as, well, anything, name any autoimmune disease, name any rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis. Any pain, any migraines, any headaches, any inflammatory disorder, check out this test. Remarkable. Okay. That was number three. What's number four? Food sensitivity test. But let me be very clear about this. I'm not talking about an IgE test. All right. An IgE test is also great. Why don't we run IgE in my practice anymore? Remember, my practice is always evolving. There's nothing wrong with running an IgE test, but an IgE food sensitivity test is this. If you eat a food, it will react. within minutes to hours in your body. This is what I tell people. Save your money on that lab and get more in tune, more mindful of what you're eating. So if you would eat something like mussels or shrimp and you got hives or your mood changed, you got lower mood, you got brain fog, you got a skin rash, you got itchiness on your ears or your belly or your cheeks, or your eyes start to run, they get a little watery. That is a very good sign of immunoglobulin E-based reaction, all right? You can figure that out on your own. Run a lab test that's an IgG, all right? Immunoglobulin G. This is a latent or delayed reaction. What does that mean? It means that if you're listening to this on a Tuesday when it first comes out, it means that foods you ate on a Saturday night or Sunday can actually be reacting on a Tuesday. I know that's hard to believe, but not all immune cells react all at once, all right? So this is a delayed response. And what does it show up as? It shows up as nonspecific inflammation. What does that mean? Well, it could be joint pain. It could be rosacea. It could be skin rash. It could be psoriasis. It could be itchy ears. It could be that headache. It could be fatigue. It could be the low mood. You name it. And that can all be from food sensitivities. I've seen that over and over with childhood-based issues. This is a great test also for kids. I've seen it with ADD, ADHD, autism, all of these base items. So what do I recommend? Well, I recommend for a day or two, eating some bread, eating some dairy, eating some eggs. eating some nuts, eating all the foods that you would like to test. Now, if you know you can't eat gluten, don't eat gluten for this test. That doesn't make sense. That's a food you already know you're sensitive to. Don't worry about how it shows up. All right? Eat the foods for a period of 24 to 48 hours. Do this lab test. Remember, these are all at-home lab tests. Why do I recommend these? Because I am literally trying to disrupt the health space. I don't want you to have to meet with a doctor. It's unnecessary now. It is unnecessary. I want you to be able to get this lab shipped to your home. I want you to be able to run the lab. I want you to be able to take back control of your health. I mean, that's your right. It really is. Who's to say you can't run that lab test? It's insane that doctors won't run vitamin D anymore, that they won't run homocysteine, that they won't run CRP, that they won't run all the markers we want to run. Why not? It's our health. It's our health. Why won't they? It's honestly, it's a shame. And it's a crime against people, I believe. And the last test, the last test as part of my big five is this, the thyroid adrenal hormone test. Why would I run this? It's because this, by the time you're feeling fatigued, by the time you're irritable, anxious, low mood, by the time your metabolism slows, by the time you have all of the different irritability, brain fog, the hard to get out of bed, the hard to fall asleep, all of those things, your hormones have already become dysfunctional. This lab test will show you that ahead of time, or it will take it and help you get back on track. So what does it do? Well, it goes beyond TSH. to look at your thyroid, which is essentially the thermostat for your body. It looks at your TSH, your T4. It looks at your T3. It looks at your TPO, the antibodies for Hashimoto's, okay? It also looks at vitamin D. So you don't have to ask your doctor anymore to run vitamin D. We'll do it, all right? Or another functional medicine doctor will do that. It looks at your insulin. It looks at your hemoglobin A1C. Now you know, is your body processing sugar well enough? Yes or no? Is that the reason you can't lose the weight like you want to? Is that the reason why you get hangry, right? Is that the reason why? You get low mood or irritable when you don't eat. It also looks at your cortisol during the day. Do you wake up with enough energy? Does it crash midday? Do you have too much cortisol at night and that's why you can't sleep? What about your estrogen to progesterone ratio? Great to do about five days for females before you get your period. What about your testosterone? Do you ever have ambition, drive, get up and go? Can you put off enough muscle? That's where DHGA and testosterone come in very, very important as well. These other five labs. test that I wish I was given right away as a 17-year-old kid, but I wasn't. I was given one option, test your blood. When that doesn't work, test more blood. When that doesn't work, go to a specialist, test more blood. When that doesn't work, be told that it must be all in your head. Be told that we can't figure out what's wrong with you, so you just have to go home and wait to see either you get more sick or you get better. That was my choice. And that's a horrible thing to tell anyone, to tell them that it's all in your head. It wasn't all in my head when I couldn't climb a flight of stairs without my heart rate getting to 150 beats per minute. It wasn't all in my head when I couldn't study anymore and I had brain fog all day. It wasn't all in my head when I sat at a desk and started to sweat during high school. Like, that's not normal. And it wasn't in my head when I was anxious, I was irritable. That wasn't me. I knew that wasn't me. That wasn't normal. It wasn't in my head when I could no longer play sports. That was not me. That's not normal. And that's not in my head. It wasn't in my head when all my joints hurt. When I couldn't press in right beside my belly button because I was in so much pain, but the doctors somehow forgot in medical school that, hey, that's where your small intestine is. Why don't we test for some small intestinal-based issues? Now I know I had SIBO. Now I know I had candida overgrowth. And that's why now I can run an organic acids test. These are lab tests that I eventually had run 20 years ago. That then allowed me to get on my path to wellness. It was a slow and steady journey. Now, without a shadow of a doubt, we can help people get well within a period of about 12 to 16 weeks. You don't have to work with me, but you do have to understand that if you want those types of results, it's imperative to run at least one or two labs. Now, again, I know not everyone's able to afford the labs and I understand that. So what I also tell people is if you believe that you have the candida, if you believe that you have the SIBO, if you believe you have the digestive function. Well, then you can just work on that. You can go after the candida bacterial overgrowth protocol. You can work on those things, or you can at least start to clean up your diet. You can do the exercise. You can do the lifestyle-based things first, and I'm okay with that. But for the people who really want to know and the health practitioners who really want to help their patients or their clients, this is the place to start. And don't let it all be about me, because it's not. This is about empowerment. This is about you taking back control of your health, your body. And that is why if you change your body, I honestly believe you'll change your life. I truly believe that. And here's why. I had no life. I had nothing. I couldn't wake up. I was exhausted until about 11 a.m. I had to force myself out of bed. I was irritable. I was moody. I had all I wanted to do was survive the day. It's not a life. And I want more for you as well. If that's the life that you're living right now, where you're just trying to make it through the day, just trying to make it through the week, it's not a life. You can't string together days and weeks and months and call that a life. It's not worth it. it's honestly not. I want to help you get the help that you need. What I'd like you to do is this. Simply go to stephencabral.com forward slash 718. On that specific page, I'm going to link to something called Dr. Cabral's Big Five Lab Test. On that page, you can look at all the different labs, meaning that I put the Big Five there, but then I also put links to the individual labs where you can take your time and read about each lab. and see if it's right for you. That's the truth is that I want you to do what's best for you. And if you decide to course to do one of the labs, two of the labs, or five of the labs, I'm going to personally read your lab results. I do that each and every week. I actually reserve my Mondays for reading all of the labs that come in. I read them all. And then what I do is I give those recommendations along with my health coaches, because my health coaches are phenomenal and they've done probably a... thousand themselves. And then what they do is they take those recommendations, they write up a plan that we've talked about for you, personalized for you. And then they spend 30 minutes or 60 minutes on the phone with you. and make sure that you understand, for the very first time, you understand what's going on with your body. And then after that, you get a plan that's customized for you that you can then implement. And then you get to email our team. You get to say, you know what? I'm confused about this. I need a little bit more help. I need a little bit more support. And that's what we want to do. That's what we want to provide for you. That's the truth is that at some point, someone has to do for you what I had done for me. And that's why I'm eternally grateful. I'm grateful for all of the doctors who... set me on the right path. And then of course, from my mentor, Dr. Pete, who was the one who said, you know what? You've done a good job so far. Other people have taught you a lot. You've read a lot of books. Now here's how to pull it together. I want you to combine the best of Eastern-based medicine with the best of orthomolecular medicine, the best of state-of-the-art functional medicine lab testing. When you do that, you'll be able to heal yourself. Then you'll be able to help other people. And that's exactly what I did. And now hopefully I'm able to pay that forward to you. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope this was helpful. I don't know if it was, but I really do hope it was. If there's any questions, please feel free to let me know. You can always write in. Even if you have a question on labs, just email support at stephencabral.com. We want to help. We really do. And if this show is helpful, please give me feedback. Just go to at stephencabral on Instagram or instagram.com forward slash stephencabral, and you'll be able to see my account there. Just go to today's post, 718. Check it out. Provide some feedback. Love to see if I'm even on the right track. Thank you so much. As always, please feel free to share this show with anyone you believe it could help. Thank you for just tuning into The Cabral Concept and welcome to 2018, everyone. By now, I'm sure you've probably heard how important it is to get enough vitamin D all year round to prevent serious health issues like bone loss, depression, weight gain, fatigue, energy metabolism, and even cancer. In my private practice in Boston, I try to make sure every person I work with has their vitamin D levels monitored during the winter or at least supplements for 2,000 IUs of vitamin D3 per day. That's why this month, as a valued listener, I would like to offer you a complimentary bottle of vitamin D3 with any order placed at the stephencabral.com store for over $99. And if you order while supplies last, I'm going to upgrade your order of vitamin D3 to a one-year supply at no charge. So head on over to stephencrowell.com forward slash store to shop all of your favorite at-home functional medicine lab tests, nutritional supplements, and all the everyday products I recommend in my practice. This is a limited time offer and it's my gift to you and also my way of trying to help you stay healthy and strong all winter long.

One of the big things, just from our community in general, the big question is, how do I know which lab test to run? And what are you calling your big five lab tests? So that's what I'm going to go over.

And the reason is, I never thought about this, but on interviews, when I'm being interviewed, a lot of the hosts for those podcasts will ask me, what labs do you recommend? Or what do you keep referring to as your big five? Because I always call it my big five. So I want to go over that today. And the reason is that this, is that...

I always had a dream of being able to essentially disrupt the health care space, which until now has really been the sick care space, meaning that we help people really just mask their symptoms, right? We look at your blood work, and if your blood work looks normal, well, then of course you're healthy, right? You have the absence of disease because everything looks good on your blood work, but that's not true.

You have to keep in mind that your blood work on an annual basis when you have it run, it should look normal. If anything's off on that, then there's serious issues. Meaning that if you have high cholesterol, if you have higher levels of albumin, if your TSH is above a 2.5, if you have higher levels of homocysteine, if high triglycerides, any one of those things, if those are off, well, then you could have figured that out years in advance if you had run some subclinical lab tests.

And what does that mean? Well, blood is a homeostatic fluid. That means that it's going to keep itself balanced for the most part by robbing from other parts of your body to stay balanced.

Now, that isn't always the case with things like your lipid profile, which is your cholesterol. However, for the most part, it's always making sure that it's balanced. Now, the interesting thing is in functional medicine, which has been around for decades now, decades and decades, not just 20 years, but many decades, is that we're able to figure out what's going in the body, what's going wrong in the body from a root cause base level before it goes wrong and causes a disease.

If you have a disease right now, meaning like an autoimmune-based disorder, or you have the high cholesterol, the high blood pressure, the high whatever, or the low whatever, is that there's always a reason why. Meaning that your body hasn't messed up, that there's some type of either deficiency, which means that you're either low in some type of neurotransmitter, amino acid, vitamin, mineral, anything, right? Anything that could be a deficiency. And it could have got used up because of stress, poor absorption, you name it.

There's so many different reasons. Or you have a toxicity. Maybe you have an accumulation of one of the over 77,000.

man-made chemicals in the environment, or you could potentially have some type of endotoxicity as well, which is like candida overgrowth, bacterial overgrowth, such as SIBO. You might have parasites. You might have heavy metals. It could be many, many toxicities in your body.

Well, believe it or not, those won't show up on a standard blood test, but they do show up on other labs. And that is how we help people get well. So what I want to do today is show you exactly how we help people get well.

This is going to help all the health practitioners out there, all the doctors. the acupuncturists, the chiros, the life coaches, the personal trainers, and you're able to then direct your clients on what to run. Or if you're a potential patient or you're just a health advocate yourself and you want to have these run, of course, we can help you with those.

But you could also find a local health practitioner, local functional medicine practitioner or doctor or naturopathic doctor that you can say, hey, this is what I've been recommended. This is what I'd like to run. Are you able to run those for me?

So that's always my goal. My goal is to give you the firepower, the education, and the content so that you are now educated. You know how to take back control of your health.

When you do that, you literally can achieve anything you want in your life. I talked yesterday on a very special Mindset and Motivation Monday about why your dreams matter. But a lot of people aren't up for achieving their dreams, and they're not because they're on the energy. They're on the mood, right? They're low mood.

They're depressed. They're anxious. They're overwhelmed.

They're irritable. The vehicle, which is their body and their mind, isn't able to carry them through. It's not able to propel them on a daily basis to what they need to do to be successful in life, according to them.

And again, there's no, the barometer for how successful you are is you. That's it. It's you. So what I want you to do is this, is I want you to get crystal clear what you want. I need to say, what do you need to do to get there?

Well, what you need to do to get there is to transform your body. from a wellness-based level. And if you need to lose the weight, then lose the weight.

You could do that. I really do. I really, I know that you can believe it. I don't think, I know you can do that because I've not met a person in my practice that hasn't been able to do that.

Not everybody wants to, but those who want to can implement the plan. And that's what I want to show you today. How do you implement the plan though? You need a place to start. A lot of people have no place to start.

So they're always guessing, like is this the right diet plan? Are these the right supplements? Am I getting enough sleep?

Are my hormones balanced? What about my blood sugar? All of these things, there's always guesswork. So what I like to say is stop guessing and test. Take the guesswork out of it.

You will save yourself not months, but most likely years of aggravation through trial and error. Because if you're gonna try out a diet plan, well, you really need to give it at least 12 weeks. But you only have four of those 12-week periods in a year. That's about it. So what you need to do is at least have a foundation, a place to start that's a little bit more bio-individual, that's an understanding of this is how your body is looking right now from a phenotype perspective, which means that essentially what's gone wrong in the body, what are your deficiencies, what are your toxicities, and begin to rebalance those.

When you rebalance those, everything in life changes. Your body begins to heal, and it does so at a root. cause level, which means that it balances the true underlying homeostatic systems of the body.

Your nervous system, your immune system, your digestive system, the pH of your body, the different compartments of the body, everything becomes rebalanced. When that happens, you have more energy, you have more vitality, more zest for life than you've ever had. At that point, you want to achieve amazing things in life.

One, because you completed your first transformation. You saw you were able to heal your body. And if you're able to do that, the most important thing in your body, well, of course, you can achieve other things as well because you can achieve now anything you set your mind to. You just need a place to start. So that's what we're really looking for.

So what I wanna do is, maybe you never run any of these again in your life. Like you never run a lab test, that's okay. But you now will understand how the body works.

And so that's what I wanna go over right now. Okay, so I'm gonna give you the big five, my big five right now. And a lot of, again, I work with a lot of health coaches, meaning like, I mentor them from the perspective of, I want to help them develop a successful practice and help them.

And for me, that means helping people get well and transform their lives, but also do it in an organized fashion. And so I'm sharing with them these labs. And a lot of people, I speak at conferences, I speak on interviews, and they're always like, why are you giving away everything that you do in your practice? Why are you telling people all the labs that you run? Why are you telling people all the supplements?

Why are you telling people all your protocols? And the reason is this, I'm a big believer in that the more people you The more people you give back to, the more enriched you feel, the more fulfilled you feel in life. And I've seen that come true.

And so for me, I never want to hold back. If someone takes that and they copy it and they do whatever, good. I have no problem with that because I'm busy enough in life. I'm happy enough where I am right now that I don't need to keep trying to hoard it for myself.

I want other health practitioners to copy me. I want them to then help thousands of other people who then... go on to live the lives that they truly want to live, that they can live out their dreams.

That's what it's all about. So let's take it from the top. Two top labs I recommend as part of my big five.

Big five means five labs I'm going to recommend, all right? But the two top ones are this. A lot of people don't understand this because it's very misunderstood. The hair tissue mineral analysis literally gives you all the mineral levels in your body. So what we're looking at with this is we're looking at how depleted are you with minerals?

We're looking at your electrolytes. How's the energy system, the nervous system, the body functioning, your calcium and magnesium, your potassium and your sodium, meaning that those, if it's called a four high, if it's off the chart, well then for sure this person's extremely stressed, right? But what if you have a drop?

What if you have a four low? Then this person's burnt through a lot of those electrolytes, that their body's not outputting the normal stress that we would like to see. And this correlates with becoming more depleted or adrenal-based fatigue.

We can also look at all the other minerals in the body. Chromium that's used for blood sugar. Selenium that's used for thyroid.

It's used for anti-cancer. It's used for detoxification. We can look at phosphorus.

How well is the body breaking down protein? We can look at copper and zinc, which are supposed to be kept in ratio as well. Remember, everything in the body functions in ratios, in balances.

We can also look at toxic metals, heavy metals, mercury, aluminum, arsenic, lead. Very important to look at because those toxicities can cause... autoimmune-based issues, nervous system issues, MS. Too much copper can lead to ADD, ADHD, fatigue, irritability, mood disorders. But we never look at those things. So vitally important, very, very important, an amazing lab test.

Love that lab test. And it's also one of the least expensive. Now, the perfect partner, the perfect partner to looking at all of your mineral levels is running the organic acids test.

All right? That is the test that you hear me speak about a lot. Because it looks at your digestive system. It looks at yeast overgrowth or fungal and yeast overgrowth, which is indicative of candida.

It's indicative of intestinal permeability or leaky gut. It's indicative of bacterial overgrowth like Clostridium difficile in the body, okay? These are all things that we would not want to be overgrown, that they can then cause absorption issues and cause autoimmune-based disorders, then cause immune-based imbalance and cause inflammation, any number of issues, okay? The other big thing is that this organic acids test shows you your B12, your B5, your B6, your B2, your vitamin C, your biotin, your coenzyme Q10, your N-acetylcysteine. all of these levels in your body that can become depleted.

So now on a hair tissue mineral analysis, we look at all of your minerals. And on the organic acid test, we look at all of your vitamins. So now we can look at deficiencies. We can truly see, is this person deficient in vitamins and minerals?

Now, I'm talking about from a functional relative deficiency. Are you getting some? Sure.

But is it enough to keep up with your body? It may be or it may not be. This is where functional medicine shines.

It's actually where something called Orthomolecular medicine shines. Dr. Andrew Saul, Dr. Linus Pauling. Remember, how did I learn all of this?

I did not create, I did not invent any of this. So sometimes if it sounds like I know this, this, and this, it's only because of an obsession of mine. It's only because I'm obsessed with the truth.

And it's only because I'm obsessed with helping people get well, lose the weight, and live longer when no one else has been able to help them before. And I do that through having the education and background and travel and all that, but then also through running these labs. I do not guess.

I look at the lab and it tells me on an organic acid test, what's your gut function like? What's your mitochondrial function like? What about the waste markers from serotonin, from dopamine, from norepinephrine? Not those levels, but the actual waste markers. How much waste is being produced from those?

What about your glutathione levels? What about ketone and fatty acids? I look at all of those markers.

I'm then able to tell. What's going on in this person's body? Even if they don't know what's going on, they don't truly know what's going on.

We look deep inside of the body. Why am I also obsessed with this? This is how I got well. I got well through literally running these same exact labs I'm sharing with you today.

Hilarious that 20 years ago, 20 years ago, almost to the day, 20 years ago, I ran these labs. After a couple years of doctors never being able to figure out what was wrong with me, the best specialists, right? What were they doing?

They were running my blood work. They were running blood work only. And because they could not see anything wrong with my blood, except some elevated EBV, some elevated blood sugar, some elevated white blood cells, they couldn't figure out what was going on. It wasn't until I brought them some of these subclinical levels, which I'm gonna share in the next couple of labs, that they then decided to test for things like Addison's disease, myelagic encephalomyelitis, all of the other issues I'm explaining to you today.

It is because of functional medicine that I'm here today. It's because of functional medicine that I have no voice right now because I have the pleasure and blessing to be able to work 10 hours a day. Seeing people from literally, I mean, over Skype, Australia, just today.

So literally just today, spoke with someone in Columbia, spoke with two people in Australia, one person in the UK, and a couple other people in the US. That was my day. All around the world. Why am I able to do this? Because other doctors shared it with me.

They shared me. the light of what they learned that I'm now able to do what I am today. And that's why I'm paying this forward. Let's move on to the next lab.

The next lab in my big three. So those are my, if there was a big two, those would be my big two. If you can only afford two lab tests, you want to figure out what's wrong with you, you don't know where to start, hair tissue mineral analysis, organic acids test. We'll link everything up into the show notes today.

Simply go to stephencabral.com forward slash 718. That is the place to go. You don't need to purchase any of these. You don't.

What I want you to do, look at the lab tests, look at the lab companies, decide if you want to work with us, decide if you want to work with a local practitioner, or just get more education. You might not decide to do any of them. That's okay. You may not. You may not.

And that's totally fine. But if you have the education, you at least now have the know-how and you know the right questions to ask the next time you meet with your doctor as well. Really, really important to me. Okay. Let's talk about the next test.

Next amazing test is extremely underrated. And it's called the omega-3 test. The omega-3 test, let me just tell you this.

If you have a saturation rate in your blood of 9% of omega-3s, you have a 90%, a 90% risk reduction rate of cardiovascular death and disease. 90% risk reduction rate. That doesn't, that means regardless of cholesterol, regardless of other things, if you get that to 9%, it's that impressive. Why?

Because you've increased the anti-inflammatories in your body. So that remember, 50% of all people who have a heart attack have normal cholesterol. You might say, well, how can that be?

I thought it was cholesterol that caused heart attacks. No, it's because one of the factors that no one tells you about is that inflammation. Inflammation can also cause nicks in the arteries. They can also cause blowouts in the arteries. They can also cause a constriction of the arteries.

So even if you have some plaque, some cholesterol, it can make the space so small that causes a heart attack as well, or some type of cardiovascular-based decrease output. So here's the deal. You can test this. You can literally look at your omega-6s, which are more inflammatory to your omega-3s. And if your ratio is at least 5 to 1 of omega-6s to omega-3s, ideally 3 to 1, and you have a 9% saturation rate, which literally this data will show you, you've reduced your cardiovascular disease potential by 90%.

I recommend every human being alive, especially men over the age of 40, to run this lab. Because if you're taking omega-3 or not, it will tell you. if you're taking the right dosage, if you're eating enough oily fish, or if you're vegan, if your omega-3 levels are high enough. And they may be because maybe you're taking in less arachidonic acid.

All of that will be explained to you in this lab test. It is absolutely remarkable and not a lot of health practitioners are running this. So if you're a health practitioner and you're truly looking to help people, especially those with cardiovascular or inflammatory-based issues such as, well, anything, name any autoimmune disease, name any rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis.

Any pain, any migraines, any headaches, any inflammatory disorder, check out this test. Remarkable. Okay.

That was number three. What's number four? Food sensitivity test. But let me be very clear about this. I'm not talking about an IgE test.

All right. An IgE test is also great. Why don't we run IgE in my practice anymore?

Remember, my practice is always evolving. There's nothing wrong with running an IgE test, but an IgE food sensitivity test is this. If you eat a food, it will react. within minutes to hours in your body. This is what I tell people.

Save your money on that lab and get more in tune, more mindful of what you're eating. So if you would eat something like mussels or shrimp and you got hives or your mood changed, you got lower mood, you got brain fog, you got a skin rash, you got itchiness on your ears or your belly or your cheeks, or your eyes start to run, they get a little watery. That is a very good sign of immunoglobulin E-based reaction, all right? You can figure that out on your own. Run a lab test that's an IgG, all right?

Immunoglobulin G. This is a latent or delayed reaction. What does that mean? It means that if you're listening to this on a Tuesday when it first comes out, it means that foods you ate on a Saturday night or Sunday can actually be reacting on a Tuesday. I know that's hard to believe, but not all immune cells react all at once, all right?

So this is a delayed response. And what does it show up as? It shows up as nonspecific inflammation.

What does that mean? Well, it could be joint pain. It could be rosacea. It could be skin rash.

It could be psoriasis. It could be itchy ears. It could be that headache. It could be fatigue. It could be the low mood.

You name it. And that can all be from food sensitivities. I've seen that over and over with childhood-based issues.

This is a great test also for kids. I've seen it with ADD, ADHD, autism, all of these base items. So what do I recommend?

Well, I recommend for a day or two, eating some bread, eating some dairy, eating some eggs. eating some nuts, eating all the foods that you would like to test. Now, if you know you can't eat gluten, don't eat gluten for this test.

That doesn't make sense. That's a food you already know you're sensitive to. Don't worry about how it shows up.

All right? Eat the foods for a period of 24 to 48 hours. Do this lab test. Remember, these are all at-home lab tests.

Why do I recommend these? Because I am literally trying to disrupt the health space. I don't want you to have to meet with a doctor. It's unnecessary now.

It is unnecessary. I want you to be able to get this lab shipped to your home. I want you to be able to run the lab. I want you to be able to take back control of your health.

I mean, that's your right. It really is. Who's to say you can't run that lab test?

It's insane that doctors won't run vitamin D anymore, that they won't run homocysteine, that they won't run CRP, that they won't run all the markers we want to run. Why not? It's our health.

It's our health. Why won't they? It's honestly, it's a shame.

And it's a crime against people, I believe. And the last test, the last test as part of my big five is this, the thyroid adrenal hormone test. Why would I run this?

It's because this, by the time you're feeling fatigued, by the time you're irritable, anxious, low mood, by the time your metabolism slows, by the time you have all of the different irritability, brain fog, the hard to get out of bed, the hard to fall asleep, all of those things, your hormones have already become dysfunctional. This lab test will show you that ahead of time, or it will take it and help you get back on track. So what does it do? Well, it goes beyond TSH.

to look at your thyroid, which is essentially the thermostat for your body. It looks at your TSH, your T4. It looks at your T3.

It looks at your TPO, the antibodies for Hashimoto's, okay? It also looks at vitamin D. So you don't have to ask your doctor anymore to run vitamin D. We'll do it, all right? Or another functional medicine doctor will do that.

It looks at your insulin. It looks at your hemoglobin A1C. Now you know, is your body processing sugar well enough? Yes or no? Is that the reason you can't lose the weight like you want to?

Is that the reason why you get hangry, right? Is that the reason why? You get low mood or irritable when you don't eat. It also looks at your cortisol during the day.

Do you wake up with enough energy? Does it crash midday? Do you have too much cortisol at night and that's why you can't sleep? What about your estrogen to progesterone ratio? Great to do about five days for females before you get your period.

What about your testosterone? Do you ever have ambition, drive, get up and go? Can you put off enough muscle?

That's where DHGA and testosterone come in very, very important as well. These other five labs. test that I wish I was given right away as a 17-year-old kid, but I wasn't. I was given one option, test your blood. When that doesn't work, test more blood.

When that doesn't work, go to a specialist, test more blood. When that doesn't work, be told that it must be all in your head. Be told that we can't figure out what's wrong with you, so you just have to go home and wait to see either you get more sick or you get better. That was my choice. And that's a horrible thing to tell anyone, to tell them that it's all in your head.

It wasn't all in my head when I couldn't climb a flight of stairs without my heart rate getting to 150 beats per minute. It wasn't all in my head when I couldn't study anymore and I had brain fog all day. It wasn't all in my head when I sat at a desk and started to sweat during high school. Like, that's not normal.

And it wasn't in my head when I was anxious, I was irritable. That wasn't me. I knew that wasn't me. That wasn't normal. It wasn't in my head when I could no longer play sports.

That was not me. That's not normal. And that's not in my head.

It wasn't in my head when all my joints hurt. When I couldn't press in right beside my belly button because I was in so much pain, but the doctors somehow forgot in medical school that, hey, that's where your small intestine is. Why don't we test for some small intestinal-based issues? Now I know I had SIBO.

Now I know I had candida overgrowth. And that's why now I can run an organic acids test. These are lab tests that I eventually had run 20 years ago. That then allowed me to get on my path to wellness.

It was a slow and steady journey. Now, without a shadow of a doubt, we can help people get well within a period of about 12 to 16 weeks. You don't have to work with me, but you do have to understand that if you want those types of results, it's imperative to run at least one or two labs.

Now, again, I know not everyone's able to afford the labs and I understand that. So what I also tell people is if you believe that you have the candida, if you believe that you have the SIBO, if you believe you have the digestive function. Well, then you can just work on that.

You can go after the candida bacterial overgrowth protocol. You can work on those things, or you can at least start to clean up your diet. You can do the exercise. You can do the lifestyle-based things first, and I'm okay with that. But for the people who really want to know and the health practitioners who really want to help their patients or their clients, this is the place to start.

And don't let it all be about me, because it's not. This is about empowerment. This is about you taking back control of your health, your body.

And that is why if you change your body, I honestly believe you'll change your life. I truly believe that. And here's why. I had no life.

I had nothing. I couldn't wake up. I was exhausted until about 11 a.m. I had to force myself out of bed. I was irritable.

I was moody. I had all I wanted to do was survive the day. It's not a life.

And I want more for you as well. If that's the life that you're living right now, where you're just trying to make it through the day, just trying to make it through the week, it's not a life. You can't string together days and weeks and months and call that a life.

It's not worth it. it's honestly not. I want to help you get the help that you need. What I'd like you to do is this.

Simply go to stephencabral.com forward slash 718. On that specific page, I'm going to link to something called Dr. Cabral's Big Five Lab Test. On that page, you can look at all the different labs, meaning that I put the Big Five there, but then I also put links to the individual labs where you can take your time and read about each lab. and see if it's right for you.

That's the truth is that I want you to do what's best for you. And if you decide to course to do one of the labs, two of the labs, or five of the labs, I'm going to personally read your lab results. I do that each and every week.

I actually reserve my Mondays for reading all of the labs that come in. I read them all. And then what I do is I give those recommendations along with my health coaches, because my health coaches are phenomenal and they've done probably a... thousand themselves.

And then what they do is they take those recommendations, they write up a plan that we've talked about for you, personalized for you. And then they spend 30 minutes or 60 minutes on the phone with you. and make sure that you understand, for the very first time, you understand what's going on with your body. And then after that, you get a plan that's customized for you that you can then implement.

And then you get to email our team. You get to say, you know what? I'm confused about this. I need a little bit more help. I need a little bit more support.

And that's what we want to do. That's what we want to provide for you. That's the truth is that at some point, someone has to do for you what I had done for me.

And that's why I'm eternally grateful. I'm grateful for all of the doctors who... set me on the right path. And then of course, from my mentor, Dr. Pete, who was the one who said, you know what?

You've done a good job so far. Other people have taught you a lot. You've read a lot of books. Now here's how to pull it together. I want you to combine the best of Eastern-based medicine with the best of orthomolecular medicine, the best of state-of-the-art functional medicine lab testing.

When you do that, you'll be able to heal yourself. Then you'll be able to help other people. And that's exactly what I did.

And now hopefully I'm able to pay that forward to you. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope this was helpful. I don't know if it was, but I really do hope it was. If there's any questions, please feel free to let me know.

You can always write in. Even if you have a question on labs, just email support at stephencabral.com. We want to help. We really do.

And if this show is helpful, please give me feedback. Just go to at stephencabral on Instagram or instagram.com forward slash stephencabral, and you'll be able to see my account there. Just go to today's post, 718. Check it out. Provide some feedback.

Love to see if I'm even on the right track. Thank you so much. As always, please feel free to share this show with anyone you believe it could help.

Thank you for just tuning into The Cabral Concept and welcome to 2018, everyone. By now, I'm sure you've probably heard how important it is to get enough vitamin D all year round to prevent serious health issues like bone loss, depression, weight gain, fatigue, energy metabolism, and even cancer. In my private practice in Boston, I try to make sure every person I work with has their vitamin D levels monitored during the winter or at least supplements for 2,000 IUs of vitamin D3 per day.

That's why this month, as a valued listener, I would like to offer you a complimentary bottle of vitamin D3 with any order placed at the stephencabral.com store for over $99. And if you order while supplies last, I'm going to upgrade your order of vitamin D3 to a one-year supply at no charge. So head on over to stephencrowell.com forward slash store to shop all of your favorite at-home functional medicine lab tests, nutritional supplements, and all the everyday products I recommend in my practice. This is a limited time offer and it's my gift to you and also my way of trying to help you stay healthy and strong all winter long.

Transcript for:718: The “Big 5” Lab Tests Everyone Should Run

Transcript for:
718: The “Big 5” Lab Tests Everyone Should Run