Nutrition and Your Health
As we strive to maintain our health and wellness, understanding our nutritional needs can play a significant role in achieving our goals. Any Lab Test Now® offers convenient and affordable nutritional testing options to help you uncover vital information about your body’s nutritional requirements.
Nutritional Testing Options at Any Lab Test Now
- Basic Nutritional Panel: A comprehensive panel that examines 11 different components in your body to determine whether you’re getting the nutrition you need. This test is ideal for those looking to lose weight or suspect they may have a vitamin deficiency.
- Micronutrient Test: This test measures your body’s ability to absorb vitamins, minerals, and other essential nutrients. It helps to identify deficiencies that may be affecting your overall health and provides a plan for correcting them.
The Importance of Nutrition Testing
Nutrition testing not only guides you toward a healthier lifestyle, but it can also provide valuable insights into potential health issues that may not be immediately apparent. By understanding the deficiencies and imbalances within your body, you can make informed decisions about your diet and well-being.
What is Poor Nutrition?
Poor nutrition starts when you eat foods that do not provide the nutrients you need most. Low-nutrient foods include those low in fiber and vitamins, or high in fat, sugar, and salt. Processed and pre-packaged foods are some of the unhealthiest choices you can make. They are packed with added sugar, sodium, and fat. These ingredients make food taste better, but too much of them leads to serious health issues like obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you are under-eating, you could deprive your body of the nutrients it needs which may lead to anorexia or bulimia, two eating disorders that can cause a variety of dangerous health conditions.
Check Out These Food Facts:
- Diet is thought to be partly responsible for about 30 to 40 percent of all cancers, although diet alone is unlikely to be the “cause” or “cure” of cancer.
- Salty foods increase blood pressure. To balance sodium levels in your bloodstream, your body retains water to try and rid your body of the excess salt through urine. This excess fluid travels through your bloodstream, and the increased volume presses against your blood vessels to cause high blood pressure.
- Women who drank two or more diet drinks a day had a 29 percent higher chance of heart disease, a 31 percent higher chance of stroke, and a 16 percent increased risk of dying earlier than women who drank them less than once a week.
Convenience, Affordability, and Professionalism
With Any Lab Test Now, you don’t need a doctor’s order to get tested. Simply walk in and choose the lab tests you want, with work-friendly hours available for your convenience. Plus, our transparent pricing ensures that affordable, high-quality testing is within reach for everyone.
Take control of your health today with Any Lab Test Now. Visit our website to find a location near you or explore our wide range of lab testing options, including general health, DNA, drugs and alcohol, STD, and additional tests.
Don’t leave your nutrition to chance – unlock the secrets to your body’s nutritional needs with Any Lab Test Now. Your journey to optimal health starts here!
Detecting Deficiencies and the Connection to Covid-19
Balance is needed in all aspects of our lives. Work-life balance. A balanced diet. A positive bank account balance. It’s easy to hyperfocus on those aspects and forget or neglect one major component of your life: your body. The human body is complex, but one way to help your immune system stay strong is by maintaining a good balance of micronutrients. These include things like vitamins, minerals and amino acids.
With the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the world and flu season just around the corner, maintaining a healthy balance of micronutrients is more important than ever before. A lack of certain micronutrients may put you at greater risk of contracting one or both of these viruses as well as other illnesses. Vitamin, mineral and antioxidant deficiencies have also been shown to contribute to chronic degenerative processes such as arthritis, cancer, Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Let’s take a look at some of the most important micronutrients connected to your immune system.
Vitamins
Half of Americans may be deficient in vitamin D. This is especially true in areas where it is difficult for people to get enough sun exposure in the winter months. Vitamin D has shown to be vital to bone growth, cell growth and neuromuscular function. Lower levels of vitamin D have also been shown to increase the risk of viral respiratory tract infections.
A partner to vitamin D in terms of immunological health is vitamin A. Vitamin A works in your gut, which is where many people first lose their immune tolerance. Having an intolerant immune system can lead to a wide range of illnesses. Vitamin A works to protect your gut’s immune response by increasing antimicrobial peptides and helps fight off germs and bacteria in the body.
Minerals
Zinc is commonly thought of as the white cream lifeguards smear on their noses to protect themselves from sunburn. However, the micronutrient form of zinc is crucial to many aspects of your health. It plays a big role in immune function and its ability to fight inflammation.
Up to 75 percent of Americans may not be meeting their recommended levels of magnesium. Magnesium is a co-factor in more than 300 enzyme systems that support the immune system. Researchers believe a lack of this important mineral may cause the buildup of calcium in the muscles lining the airways of the lungs, causing them to constrict, making it more difficult to breathe.
Amino Acids
Amino acids are compounds that combine to make proteins. A deficiency of dietary protein or amino acids has long been known to impair immune function and increase our susceptibility to infectious disease.
Glutamine is one amino acid that is a vital building block of protein and the immune system. The most common cause of a glutamine deficiency is physical stress. When the body is taxed by physical stress, blood and muscle concentrations of glutamine are rapidly depleted as the body is unable to reproduce this amino acid fast enough to meet its needs.
Antioxidants
Antioxidants are molecules that fight free radicals in your body. Free radicals are compounds that are linked to multiple diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer — if their levels become too high in your body.
Several environmental factors, such as exposure to pollutants, alcohol, medications, infections or poor diet, can lead to an antioxidant imbalance.
Co-enzyme Q10, or CoQ10 for short, acts as an antioxidant, which protects cells from damage and plays an important part in metabolism. Studies also show CoQ10 may help protect the lungs by reducing inflammation. That is important when dealing with any sort of respiratory issue.
Called a vitamin, vitamin E is considered a key antioxidant. It helps to keep cells from damage and is also involved in the body’s immune function. Vitamin E deficiencies often run in families.
Test Your Levels
So you see how important some of these micronutrients are to a balanced immune system — something extremely essential with the concern of COVID-19 and the rise of other diseases — infectious or not.
Are you curious about your body’s balance? Any Lab Test Now can help. Our Micronutrient Test measures your body’s ability to absorb different vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other essential nutrients into your white blood cells. The results will tell you which vitamins you are deficient in and which to focus on — thereby preventing any unnecessary spending on costly supplements for the wrong vitamins.
No doctor’s prescription is needed for this blood test, and you don’t need to fast.
Be at Ease
Any Lab Test Now wants you to be at ease when it comes to seeking out any type of lab work, including finding out your micronutrient levels.
We provide you a safe and clean alternative location for lab work. Each of our 185+ stores is sanitized several times a day, in accordance with the CDC’s protocols. Any Lab Test Now is a committed partner in helping you manage your family’s healthcare so you can make educated decisions that will directly affect your quality of life. We want to put your mind at as much ease as possible during the coronavirus outbreak. We are here to help.
Find your closest Any Lab Test Now store at www.anylabtestnow.com.
Setting Weight Management Goals for the New Year
It’s December and time has run out! Did you complete all of your 2017 Resolutions? It’s OK if you didn’t, but it’s time to think about what you’ll change in the upcoming year to reach your goals. There are many resources that can help you finally check off all your New Year’s resolutions, and one of those is the array of tests at Any Lab Test Now. If you’re concerned about particular health goals, like weight management, we are here to help you gauge your progress and learn what’s working and what’s not working so your 2018 resolution to-do list can get “to-done.”
This panel can help you identify issues with your body’s overall metabolism, which can be impacted by organ function, nutrient intake and activity level. By measuring your electrolyte level, kidney and liver function, and the overall composition of your blood, we’re able to tell if your body is performing optimally. There are several ways your body can get out of balance, which can keep you from losing weight or seeing results from your training. If you don’t want your effort to go to waste, make sure your body is performing at its peak with a Comprehensive Metabolic Panel!
What if you think your diet is perfect, but you’re still not seeing the results you want? Our Micronutrient Panel can tell you how balanced your nutritional intake is by showing you the overall balance of micronutrients in your bloodstream. Your macronutrients — protein, fat and carbohydrates— play a huge role in your diet, and they need to be consumed in large amounts. But your micronutrient intake matters just as much, and they’re needed in such finite amounts, that any deficiencies can have a profound effect on your overall health and wellness. Vitamins, minerals, fatty acids and antioxidants determine your energy levels, fat-burning rate, muscle development and many other aspects of your metabolism. This test can help you determine if you’re absorbing enough of these micronutrients for your body to perform at its best.
Men’s or Women’s Health Profile
This test takes a step back to examine your overall health. If your body is on the verge of a chronic health issue or has some unidentified health issue, it will inevitably lead to difficulty managing your weight. This is because the common symptoms of ongoing, chronic health issues, which can often include fatigue, muscle loss, weight changes, changes in thirst or urination, or mood changes, can impede your weight loss efforts. If you develop chronic health issues like thyroid problems, diabetes, heart disease or hormone imbalances, these can make it nearly impossible to feel your best.
New Year’s Resolutions aren’t always easy to accomplish. But just because your goals are taking a bit longer to reach than you might like doesn’t mean it’s time to give up. Each new milestone is a chance to change your approach and find something that will work better, faster or more easily than what you tried before. To get an inside look on how your body is functioning and find out how you can optimize your diet and training, find your local Any Lab Test Now today!
National Nutrition Month: Are you getting the nutrients your body needs?
In our world of fast-paced living, we understand how difficult it can be to eat healthy. On days where it seems like 24 hours isn’t enough, the idea of grabbing a #1 from the nearest fast-food restaurant seems like a good choice. Although it may seem smart at the time, our bodies depend on essential nutrients and those will not be found in the average “happy meal”.
Medical Daily recently referenced a study that researched the eating habits of Americans. Researchers from this study found that U.S.adults eat far more saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium than needed. They also found that most Americans do not meet their recommended daily levels of 10 essentialnutrients including vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin D, calcium and iron. Lacking these proper nutrients can lead to severe deficiencies causing serious health problems like anemia, osteoporosis, depression and other chronic diseases.
With March being recognized as National Nutrition Month by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Any Lab Test Now® is joining with them to promote the importance of making informed food choices and developing sound eating and exercise habits. One of the first steps you can take to Take Control of Your Health® is to determine if you might have a vitamin or mineral deficiency. Our Micronutrient Test will measure your body’s ability to absorb vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other essential nutrients. This blood test will be able to tell you if you have a vitamin deficiency and if so, will give you a plan for how to correct it. Schedule an appointment with your local Any Lab Test Now® this March and get a clear picture of your current nutritional profile to help jumpstart your plan towards a healthier future.
