Chiropractic Diagnostic Tests

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Dr. Steve Minors of Rehab Effects in Austin, Texas and today we are going to talk about diagnostic tests and studies. There are hundreds out there that we as doctors refer people for depending on what the symptoms are and what we are trying to rule out. It is very important that we are aware of the various types of diagnostic studies that are available to us and that way it can help or better pinpoint what would be in the patient's best interest to receive as well as ruling out what the problem is. We can send a patient out for X-ray's, an MRI, a CT scan, blood work, a hair sample, or urine or saliva tests. Those three aren't extremely common and I want to talk a little bit more about those. The reason you would send someone for a hair sample for example is to rule out heavy metal exposure and to determine how much heavy metals are in the system. Also you can rule out other environmental toxins that way. Urine and saliva samples, you can do the same thing or you may want to perform a urine or saliva sample to rule out problems such as someone who is constantly fatigued and always aching and hurting and when you perform a neurotransmitter test with urine and saliva you can look at the neurochemistry such as things as Epinephrine, Neuroepinephrine, Dopamine, Serotonin, Glutamine, Glutamate, Agmatine, PEA, and those are all the neurochemistry or neurotransmitters that can then tell you more about what's going on with the body as far as its ability to function or its ability to handle stress. It will tell you what the adrenal glands are doing. The adrenal glands are the stress gland and what is going on with cortisol. The saliva part of it would be the cortisol portion and you would potentially do that at four times during the day. The reason for that is cortisol is what's called diurnal so therefore it is going to have optical ranges at different times of the day preferably at seven in the morning and then again at eleven or noon, five o'clock in the afternoon and usually between about ten and eleven o'clock at night and so you would want to take saliva samples during those periods of time to compare your cortisol levels to optimal levels. While blood tests can be fairly accurate and those appear to be the medical society's standard, urine saliva may be a better fit and better indicated for the patient and let me explain why. While a neurotransmitter profile on a patient for a urine sample of that is fairly easy to collect it would be the second urination of the day approximately two to three hours after you wake up and have gone and urinated the first time. When you do the blood work it's much more extensive, you would need to be there many more times during the day at the collection facility. It is extremely expensive and you can get basically the same information. Therefore, there are several advantages to urine and saliva versus blood work in this case. Another is that in some cases there are certain markers that you may be trying to rule out especially with adrenal function that you can pick up with a saliva sample that you will not pick up with blood work and therefore that is another advantage for saliva versus blood work."