Episode 373: Function Health Labs: How to Turn Your Results into Real Change
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Getting your labs done can feel empowering. FINALLY, you can have hard data about what’s going on inside your body.
But want to know the truth? Those results alone rarely create transformation. In this episode, Erin is talking all about Function Health, a direct-to-consumer lab testing company founded by Dr. Mark Hyman. She breaks down exactly what you get, and why it’s valuable if you’re serious about improving your health.
There can be major advantages of this kind of testing (think comprehensive biomarker panels, functional medicine interpretation, and the ability to track trends over time), but even the best labs won’t move the needle without a plan for integration.
Tune in to learn about Erin’s “Information + Integration = Transformation” framework, along with real-world client examples to show how coaching, mindset shifts, and consistent action are the true game changers.
In this episode:
The #1 misconception about comprehensive lab testing
How Function Health’s biomarker panels stack up against traditional testing and why Erin thinks it’s a smart idea for certain people
The key difference between conventional reference ranges and functional medicine’s optimal ranges (and why this matters for early intervention!)
Erin’s “Information + Integration = Transformation” framework for turning knowledge into lasting behavior change
How Erin’s client shifted from red flags in their blood work to coaching and lifestyle shifts to spark change
Resources mentioned:
Apply to work with us 1:1 here!
Applications are now open for the fall 2025 cohort of Funk’tional Nutrition Academy.
Episode 212: A Functional Medicine Approach to Labs
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Without effective and sustainable action execution, behavior change, it doesn't matter how many labs you run, it doesn't matter what type of labs you run or how good a treatment plan or a protocol is. Having labs doesn't translate to feeling better. 90% or more of people still need coaching and guidance. And so that's why I say just having these labs, as awesome as I think they are, as valuable as that data is, doesn't replace good functional medicine care because good functional care includes some degree of client centered coaching.
Welcome to the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast, spelled with a K because we do things a little differently around here. I'm your host Erin Holt and I've got 15 years of clinical experience as a functional nutritionist and mindset coach, creating a new model that I call Intuitive Functional Medicine where we combine root cause medicine with the innate intelligence of your body. This is where science meets self trust. Your body already knows how to heal and this show is going to show you how. If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health, be sure to follow and share with a friend because you never know whose life you might change.
Hey there friends. Happy August. By the time you're listening to this, we will be winding down the summer. So I hope you are enjoying the final dregs. Today we're going to talk about function and health. This is not a company that I'm affiliated with, it's just a company we're getting a lot of questions about. So I figured I would bring it to the podcast.
They are kind of everywhere right now. I'm sure you've seen some of their marketing. So a question that we're getting a lot in our inbox is hey, if I got my labs from Function Health, can I work with you guys? And we of course run blood work, we do lab testing on our clients, but if somebody comes to us with current labs already, then we can absolutely use what you already have. I'm also getting questions in my DMS about just my thoughts and my opinions on this, like is it legit? Is it a scam? Again, if you haven't heard of them, you probably will because their ads in their marketing is pretty omnipresent right now, at least in my feed my algorithm. So since this question keeps popping up, I figured we will talk about it today. The TLDR of it all is that I really love it. I think it's a really good idea. I think it is a great value for what you get and I will explain the ins and outs of exactly what it is in Just a second.
I love that it's making blood work more accessible for people. And I think that if you're somebody who's in good health and you want to continue to optimize your health, stay in good health, I think it's a really great way to track your markers. And also it doesn't replace functional medicine care. And that is absolutely not what they're proposing to do, to be clear. So this isn't a criticism against the company. It's more so to educate on the consumer side of things. Just getting these labs done, just getting this blood work done is not functional medicine in and of itself. So that's my little quick and dirty teaser.
Now let's get into the nitty gritty. What is Function Health? It's a company founded by Mark Hyman and I think it's brilliant. To be honest with you. I'm like, damn, I wish I had thought of this. I wish this was my company. I'm like into the idea. You pay an annual membership of 499 and then you get two blood draws per year. So the first blood draw looks at over a hundred biomarkers and then the second one is three to six months later.
And that's not looking at as many, but it's still a very comprehensive look. So it's examining heart health, cholesterol markers, thyroid autoimmunity markers, immune regulation, looking at immune cells, female health, male health. So looking at some hormones, metabolic stuff like insulin, blood sugar, C peptide, leptin, nutrients, nutrients. It's also looking at liver, kidneys, brain health. It's screening for some environmental toxins. And then also Lyme and Epstein bar screening. And again, this is all through blood. So that's what it is.
And then here's why I think it's a good idea. And again, I am not affiliated with this company. This is not an ad. I'm not receiving any money from the company. I've had no contact with the company. This is just like my raw dog opinion. So some of the pros, as I see it. One is it makes these labs a lot more accessible to the average person.
Anybody can get their hands on this blood work. You don't have to wait for insurance to deem you worthy of getting access to health information. There's no kick pack from your GP or your pcp. There's no trying to arm wrestle for a full thyroid panel. I believe that we shouldn't be gatekeeping people's medical information from them. But the insurance model is set up in such a way that that is oftentimes what happens. I think that if you want access to certain information about your health and your body, I think you should be able to access it. Number two, it's very comprehensive.
So this blood work is way more than just a comp panel and a cbc. It's looking at a lot more. Number three, a pro is that these labs are being looked at through a functional medicine lens. Now, I talked about this way back in the day, episode 212. I talked about how the functional medicine interpretation of lab testing differs from the diagnostic testing done in conventional medicine. But I'll quickly summarize it here. Conventional lab reference ranges are based on a bell curve, where 95% of people tested, they fall into a clinically normal reference range. So if you can imagine a bell curve, the bulk of people that are tested are falling into clinically normal.
Obviously, the big issue with this is that if we are testing the average population in the average population in modern day is not exactly the picture of health, then we're basing our healthy or our normal normal ranges on a not so healthy population. And this is part of the reason why we see so many people being told by their conventional health providers that their health is normal despite having ongoing symptoms. Now, in functional medicine, we understand that just because somebody does not have an identifiable diagnosable disease does not mean that they are necessarily healthy. It does not mean that their health is optimized. So you can think about functional lab reference ranges as optimal ranges. We're looking for a tighter, smaller range. And anything outside of this tight range is considered sub optimal. So it gives us clues that, hey, something's going on with the physiology of this person that's out of balance, even if they're not all the way at the point of a diagnosable disease state.
So that way it gives us the opportunity to intervene. We can address the underlying dysfunctions, ideally before it gets all of the way to that state. So we're looking at things more preventatively and through the lens of optimal function. So we can look at basic blood work, basic lab work. We're just looking at it a little bit differently. And then number four, what I think is cool about function, health in particular, is that it's a way to track your biomarkers in one place. Now, we just talked about the conventional range that is usually screening for disease. We talked about the functional range screening for optimal function.
Something that's not often discussed when it comes to labs and blood work and biomarkers is that then there's your baseline there's your baseline. What's normal for you, and that's why getting blood work done one to two times a year can be really helpful to plot out so you can see shifts in your unique physiology.
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Okay, so those are all the reasons why I think it's great to get comprehensive blood work done regularly. Now let's transition into some things that I want you to think about.
This list isn't necessarily cons or drawbacks. It's just more things to be aware of if you're considering a membership like that so you understand what you're getting and then also what you're not getting with that 499 annual fee. And the biggest thing that I want folks to understand is just because you have the data from the labs doesn't mean you know what to do with it. So it's like, okay, cool, I have all this information now what? And so Function Health does provide a clinician summary. It's a written summary with like explaining, hey, this is what we're seeing. And it also gives some nutrition and supplement recommendations. Now I have seen some of these reports from our clients and as a client I would have some follow up questions. I would read this report and I'd be like, okay, now I have like 32 next step questions for myself and I do think that that is one of the benefits of working one on one with a practitioner.
You can have back and forth exchange and ask all the follow up questions that you need. And I really think that that's why we have people seeking us out after they receive the labs in the report. So that's why I say it's not a replacement for functional medicine care. Because functional medicine is more than just labs and supplement recommendations. Right? We all know this by now. I, I understand that it is definitely a way that it is practiced sometimes, but when it is practiced that way, just here's some labs, here's some supplement recommendations that's not really much different than the conventional approach that we claim to be so different from. Now there's a quote on their website and it says, gain unparalleled depth into each biomarker with insights distilled from thousands of hours of expert research with top doctors make changes and
It's very, very cool that you can track your progress, you can track your changes. I love that it's a big pro of doing this, but it's the make changes part of that statement that I really want to drill into. And I'm going to use an example from something that I saw on Instagram recently. It's an account that I follow at Dr. James D I N I C. Oh my gosh, I wish I could say his name. It's very, very long. I've practice this podcast and I could not do it.
But that's his handle. I love his work. And this is the post. It's one slide and this is the whole post. Ready? How to become unrecognizable. Three eggs per day, three liters of water, two teaspoons of salt, 45 minutes of walking. Four weightlifting sessions per week, 30 to 50 grams of protein per meal, eight hours of sleep. All you have to do is execute.
That's the whole post. Okay, one slide. It reminds me of the line from the Steve Forbert song Cellophane City, which is such a bop. It is such a bop. He says, there's no secret, nothing. It's all on display. And that's how I sometimes think about the access to information that we have. Like people are telling us the step by step process.
Dr. James is giving you a formula for success for free in one slide. And I can just about guarantee that this slide alone won't likely change that many people's lives. Why? Why? It's because the thing that creates the change is the last line. All you have to do is execute. And that's where people really struggle. That's where people need help, support, guidance. And I say this with 15 years of clinical experience behind me.
The information is out there. It's the implementation, the integration, the action, the execution that people really struggle with. That's why I created the IT Factor Framework for clinicians in fna, the Functional Nutrition Academy. I break things down into four different quadrants so we can assess where our clients are working because it makes a big impact how we coach them, like what their starting point is. But the framework is information plus integration equals transformation, transformation, results, outcomes, whatever you want to call it. And like I said, there's four different quadrants. A lot of the people that we're seeing right now fall into the second quadrant where they have a lot of information, but they have low integration or low action. So let's say they follow a Lot of wellness accounts.
They have a lot of health information. Maybe they've got a lot of different lab testing done. They had a food sensitivity test over here. They got blood work done over here. These are the clients that will often tell us, I know all the things that I should be doing, I'm just not doing them. And then sometimes they will even identify with self sabotage like I'm doing the things that I know I shouldn't be doing. And if you're a clinician listening, I'm sure you see some of this very same stuff with your own clients or patients. And if you're not a clinician, you might even recognize some of these patterns within yourself.
So what does this tell us? This tells us that it's not the knowledge or the information that will change your life or change your body or change your health. It's the action. And I'll even add to that. It's consistent action. It's not the information that will get you the outcome that you're looking for. It's integrating that information into real long lasting behavior change. There are some people that can just receive information or receive data and create their own transformation. And if this is you function, health is probably a slam dunk for you.
Get your labs, get a few supplement and nutrition wrecks and you're good to go. But like I said, this is not most people and I say this with love from experience. Okay? X.O.X.O. gossip Girl.
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Now seeing Labs could absolutely be the motivator for people to make change, but not always.
Some people really need to be coached through the change. And that's why integration is a process. So when I say information plus integration equals transformation, the second part isn't just one step step, it's a process. And that's what we're doing all the time in our practice. We help people apply that information to themselves. We integrate the info into strategies and then coach and support you through those strategies. Without effective and sustainable action, execution, behavior change, it doesn't matter how many labs you run, it doesn't matter what type of labs you run or how good a treatment plan or a protocol is this. Having labs doesn't translate to feeling better.
90% or more of people still need coaching and guidance. And so that's why I say just having these labs, as awesome as I think they are, as valuable as that data is, doesn't replace good functional medicine care because good functional care includes some degree of client centered coaching. And you can't coach someone through a one to two paragraph written response. You just can't. Oftentimes it's not just diet and supplements that need to change. Lifestyle needs to change. Ways of thinking need to change. Belief systems have to be identified and then they have to shift.
How you prioritize yourself needs to change. And that's why a protocol or recommendations are only as good as they can be coached. As practitioners, we hold space for you to discover your own truth, sometimes your own transformation. We interrupt the pattern when you're looping in, limiting beliefs and limiting narratives. We're there to lead you to a better direction when you feel lost, when you feel stuck, when you feel frustrated. We're there to allow you to progress at your own pace. I want to give a real world client example. This is somebody who's been working in our practice for at least 10 months.
Maybe we're closer to a year now, which is not typical. The average client is with us for about six months and she just needs more time. So that's not the norm for our practice necessarily, but it's the norm for her and that's okay. She's an exact example of somebody who had the blood work, she had the red flags in the blood work and she still wasn't making the right changes. She still wasn't making forward momentum. She needed support, she needed space, she needed guidance. She needed a human being holding her hand through the process, taking the baby steps with her, leading her through the baby steps. So just getting a bunch of labs back wouldn't have done shit for her.
She already had that. It didn't do anything. So labs love them. Data, I think it's important. Function, health. I think it's a really cool idea. And if you are somebody that needs to make real long lasting changes, it is not a replacement for true one on one guided, supportive functional medicine care. And I use that word care very very intentionally.
So if you are someone looking for this kind of support and care, you can absolutely apply to be a client of ours. We will link up the application in our show notes and if you're looking to be a practitioner that offers this kind of support and care, applications are officially opened for the fall cohort of the Functional Nutrition Academy. FNA is a 14 month mentorship and training for practitioners who want to think critically, apply functional labs with confidence and build a results driven practice that doesn't burn them out. You'll learn how to create context based protocols and be a really, really really effective and compassionate coach. That application is also linked up in our show notes so you can check it out there and I will see all you guys next week.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast. Please keep in mind. This podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. If you got something from today's show, don't forget, subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.