Whether you’re having your annual routine well-check or seeing your primary care provider because of an illness, checking your labs is a common occurrence at Vitality Family Health. As part of our functional medicine practice in Oak Brook, IL, we want to make sure that “no stone is left unturned” when it comes to your health; this often means ordering labs or additional diagnostic testing during your visit.
Our patient-centered visits last anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes, which gives our providers the chance to understand more about you, your health, and your health & wellness goals. Usually, if you are dealing with a chronic symptom, such as fatigue, skin problems, depression, headaches, etc., one of our providers will start with a thorough review of the issue with you and will often recommend further testing to discover what could be causing your symptoms. If it’s been a while since you’ve had labs done, even if you are not sick or experiencing any abnormal symptoms, we suggest getting at least your annual labs done. Labs are a useful tool that will help your health care provider in Oak Brook, IL understand more about your current health and will further help them in partnering with you to develop a dynamic treatment plan that will start you on your path to optimal health. In addition to more familiar labs, such as a Comprehensive Metabolic Panel, Blood counts, Lipid Panel, Thyroid labs, Vitamin D, Ferritin, and Urinalysis, Vitality Family Health offers more comprehensive and specialty labs that allow a deeper approach to finding out if your symptoms are something more than just a surface-level issue (which is most often the case). These additional specialty labs include:
- HPA Axis/Adrenal Testing
- Food Allergy and Sensitivity Testing
- Micronutrient and Oxidative Stress Testing
- Advanced Celiac and Gluten Testing
- Extensive Cardiac and Diabetes Lab Testing
- Neural Antibody Testing
- Stool Testing
The way the current lab and health insurance situation is set up in our country, only the most basic labs are even deemed “medically necessary” and will be covered by insurance. This minimal insurance coverage allows for only basic and limited information to be used to determine important treatment decisions like starting medications or doing interventions. This situation also sets the stage for many patients to avoid having labs drawn at all to avoid the potential extra cost, even if they are experiencing declining health.
At Vitality Family Health, we eliminated this insurance issue altogether with our innovative direct primary care membership model and are excited to offer the important labs that will help you with your health at a much lower wholesale cost (dramatically better than what you’ll see when using your insurance or at any hospital or urgent care clinic). Vitality Family Health has the additional benefit of offering you on-site convenient lab draws. We also attract patients who usually want to avoid medications and interventions and who would rather work on diet and lifestyle changes to improve their health. Gathering more detailed information including more comprehensive labs is an important part of ensuring your success at reaching your health goals. We want you to understand exactly how you’re doing, what is going well, and what could be better so we can help you work on improving.
If you are experiencing any chronic symptoms and would like a more holistic and comprehensive understanding of the cause of your symptoms and help with finding long-term resolution, contact Vitality Family Health in Oak Brook, IL.