Doctor Office-Internal Medicine, Sugar Land, TX, Southwest Houston

Cellular Level Nutritional Analysis
Suppression of the body's immune system function contributes to a cascading decline that leads to diseases such as
heart disease, arthritis, cancer, diabetes, and other chronic medical conditions. Most people may be deficient in
several micronutrients and not be aware of it, as the effects are often sub-clinical until the body is far along into the
degenerative process. These processes and deficiencies can contribute to disease processes and keep you from
obtaining optimal health.

Even if you eat a balanced diet, exercise, and take a multi-vitamin, you still may not be supplying your body with
everything it needs. There are many factors that contribute to your own specific micronutrient needs.

Absorption Variables
Although you may eat a healthy diet, your body may not
properly absorb needed vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and/or
other essential micronutrients, resulting in deficiencies that
lead to chronic illness.

Individual Metabolic Requirements
The micronutrient requirements for one person may be quite different than the requirements of another because each
of us is metabolically and biochemically unique.

Aging
As we age, our micronutrient requirements change. At age 30, your requirements are quite different from those
needed at age 40, 50, or 60. Often aging affects our body’s ability to absorb, metabolize, distribute, or excrete
micronutrients. Even the presence of chronic diseases that tend to be more visible as we age can impact how our
body uses the essential micronutrients, as can the very medications that treat those diseases.

Individual Lifestyle Demands
Excessive physical activity, many commonly prescribed prescription drugs, chronic health problems, smoking,
alcohol, and even sedentary habits all have an impact on our bodies micronutrient needs.

Spectracell Testing to Determine Nutritional Deficiencies
Levels of certain nutrients have historically been measured in the serum. Such serum measurements can fluctuate,
reflecting an individual’s nutritional status over a very narrow period of time. In addition, the body tends to “steal”
certain nutrients from the tissues to maintain normal serum levels as long as possible. Thus serum levels remain
normal until late in the total body deficiency of a nutrient. New technology offered by the IMASL through Spectracell
Laboratories measures the intracellular function of selected vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other essential
micronutrients within your white blood cells (lymphocytes). Since lymphocytes carry an individual’s nutritional history
for a period of four to six months, these new tests can reveal an individual’s nutrient status over a broader period of
time. The results obtained from these tests, therefore, will likely uncover deficiencies that standard serum tests would
likely miss. If these deficiencies are not corrected, the physiology of your cells is altered, and they could
impair your health by contributing to the development and/or progression of many chronic
diseases. With the advanced Functional Intracellular Analysis™ (FIA™) blood test, the guesswork
is taken out of potential nutritional deficiencies that would have often gone undiagnosed with
routine testing.

IMASL Creates a Customized Plan of Care for Your Unique Nutritional Needs
Once the test results are reviewed by one of the physicians at IMASL, you will be given specific recommendations for
repletion. Each deficiency will be explained to you and your supplementation will be monitored. Follow up testing will be
performed to ensure proper dosing and maximum absorption allowing you superior results.

Vitamins
Vitamin A, Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, Biotin, Folic Acid, Pantothenate, Vitamin D,
Vitamin E

Minerals
Calcium, Magnesium, Selenium, Zinc

Amino Acids
Asparagine, Carnitine, Glutamine, Serine

Antioxidants
Coenzyme Q10, Glutathione, Cysteine

Carbohydrate, Metabolism, Fatty Acids & Metabolites
Lipoic Acid, Oleic Acid, Choline, Inositol, Fructose Intolerance, Glucose/Insulin Metabolism

Click here for list of nutrition related articles written by Dr. Ford that may be of interest to your
specific nutritional concerns.