Precise tests detect vitamin deficiencies

Vitamin deficiencies can cause many problems with overall physical health.

That's one of the biggest factors Northwest Health Group, 2701 N. Tenaya Way, nutritionist Trudy Ekstrom tells her patients. She now offers several new tests that make finding those deficiencies more accurate.

"Vitamins can prevent chronic illness," Ekstrom said. "These days people are going to the health food store, though, and they may not be buying what the body needs."

For the past several years, nutritionists have used an Intracellular Vitamin Analysis, which is a blood test that detects how white blood cells react to the presence of vitamins.

That test shows whether or not a person is deficient in terms of minerals, amino acids, antioxidants or fatty acids and metabolites. Ekstrom has added another test that is, according to her, "hot off the presses," and is even more comprehensive than the blood test and is taken through urine analysis.

"This one, called the Organix test, is going to give you a whole conglomeration of vitamins you should be taking if you're low," she said. "The other one deals more with amino acids."

Ekstrom said it may be necessary for some people to take both to determine what their levels of vitamin deficiency may be. But, she said, most people have at least some, despite a good diet because of the way food is grown and processed today. As soils have been used time and again on the same land, the vitamins in the produce we eat have diminished, she said.

"In July of 2002, the American Medical Association came out with a statement that said every adult in America should take a multivitamin," she said. "That's a big statement to make."

In addition to being a way to describe a problem that is already impeding the body's natural processes, Ekstrom said more and more people with a genetic predisposition to certain ailments are taking the tests in order to prevent future diseases.

"I have had people come in here who are 22 years old and say that their dad was diagnosed with colon cancer at 55," she said. "They say, I want to know what he didn't do so I can do it."

Neither test is cheap, as nutritional services are not covered by health insurance. But so many of her clients have seen grim diagnosis for people they care about that money becomes no object in the quest for better health.

" I have had a man come in and in a half an hour spend $700," she said. "He just came in and said 'I want to do all of it'."


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