Micronutrient Test

Our micronutrient test measures 31 vitamins, minerals, amino/fatty acids, antioxidants, and metabolites – and how they affect cellular function in a person. Correlating micronutrient deficiencies not only slows aging and degenerative disease progression, it can also prevent as well as repair cellular dysfunction, and by extension, disease.

Assuming an 80-year lifespan, and three meals a day, we eat nearly 90,000 times in our lives.  Naturally we don’t have to worry about how the nutrients we eat actually make it from inside our mouths to inside our cells–we take it for granted that the process is working as it should.

However, there are quite a few intermediate stages of digestion involved in transporting food and minerals and vitamins, and if any are dysfunctional then the process will break down.

Traditional blood tests actually sample the plasma of the blood–the watery fluid mixture that suspends the blood cells themselves.  This will measure how effective your digestive system is at extracting the nutrients from the food we eat, and transporting them through the intestinal walls into the blood.  But this is only half the story–the assumption that whatever is in our plasma is necessarily in our cells is one which must be tested also.

SpectraCell (micronutrient) testing represents the most reliable, industry-leading way to determine what is actually reaching the cells themselves.

To do so, the test starts with a blood sample, as in a traditional test.  However, instead of directly measuring plasma levels of critical nutrients, the SpectraCell test goes one step further by extracting white blood cells from the sample.  These white blood cells are then broken up into a control group (which gets an optimal culture growth medium) and the test samples.  The viability (longevity of the cells, frequency and number of generations of divisions) of the control group is carefully monitored and used as a comparison for the test samples.

Let’s take an example of a common nutrient test: potassium.  One test sample of white blood cells is placed into a media that contains NO potassium whatsoever. Obviously they will not be as viable as the control group, because they are no longer able to absorb any potassium from the medium.  Their results are recorded.

The test is repeated again, but this time instead of a dearth of potassium, this time there’s no calcium in the media.  One by one, the entire list of macronutrients is tested and the results recorded.

The aggregated test results are first compared across SpectraCell (micronutrient) test results for ALL patients, to give a context to the scores.  Then they are put into graphical form and provided to the patient so that they can see first hand what is actually deficient in the cells themselves.  Hopefully, all levels are fine, but there are certainly patients (with “normal” blood plasma levels for test after test) who have felt vindicated that they finally have the data in hand which explains the way they’ve felt for years.

SpectraCell (micronutrient) testing can also measure telomere length, which provides a unique perspective into the degree of damage free radicals have caused to the inherent protective measures of your individual strands of DNA–a “chromosomal” age, if you will.  Only SpectraCell has the years of experience and collective data to provide accurate, reliable test results that can guide your health-preserving regimen.

A portion of this test is covered by most health insurance, however there is an out of pocket expense that will be explained to you when you make your appointment. Payment of that expense is required in advance.

It will take approximately three weeks for your micronutrient test results to come in.

This simple blood test takes approximately15 minutes. Cost can vary depending on your insurance. Please call the office for more details: 401-437-0120