Biomarker Test for Health
A biomarker is a measurement of a something in your body that gives you and your health care provider an indication of what is going on in your body or what problems can arise.
Getting the right biomarker test can help with getting the right diagnosis and treatment for your particular condition.
What is a Biomarker?
WHO defines Biomarkers as “ “almost any measurement reflecting an interaction between a biological system and a potential hazard, which may be chemical, physical, or biological. The measured response may be functional and physiological, biochemical at the cellular level, or a molecular interaction”.
The aim of biomarkers provide the clinician an indicator of possible reasons for the symptoms being presented in a patient. Examples of biomarkers are blood pressure, pulse.
“Surrogate Biomarkers” is a term that is used to define a strong relationship between a biomarker and and a health outcome, whether something is helpful or harmful.
For example, high LDL cholesterol and low HDL is an strong indicator of possible development of coronary heart disease.
Why keeping food record may not give accurate information
There are many reasons why just using food records to see if someone is getting teh right nutrition for himself/herself is not enough.
- People forget about what they ate.
- just because they are writing it down, they may change what they eat on that day since they know they are seeing a Dietitian/Nutritionist 🙂
- Not all foods used in food composition table have all their trace elements analysed. Many times, nutrient levels used in food composition table may be from analysis done in other countries.
- Also, with foods now coming from all over the world, soil quality, production processes etc also limit the accuracy of the food composition data.
The benefit of using a nutritional biomarker
At the end of the day, it is what your cell actually gets from food that matters. This may be dependent not only what you eat, but how well it is digested and absorbed and if your cells can use it.
The relationship between clinical biomarker and nutritional biomarker
A clinical biomarker helps diagnose the presence of a disease/medical conditions.
For example, the comprehensive thyroid test can show if you have hypothyroidism, graves disease or Hashimoto’s disease.
A nutritional biomarker can show which nutrients are either in excess or deficient to contribute towards the development or management of these diseases (for example, having low or excess iodine levels).
The relationship between clinical diagnosis of a disease and nutritional biomarker is complex and therefore at times a whole range of biomarkers (including nutritional biomarkers) can be used in diagnosis, management of health/disease status.
Note: Maximised Nutrition only focuses on nutrition related intervention as part of functional and integrative nutrition. The responsibility of changing medications is with the prescriber of your medication/treatment.
Biomarker Tests that are available through Maximised Nutrition are listed here.
References
1. Strimbu K and Tavel JA. What are biomarkers? Curr Opin HIV AIDS. 2010 Nov; 5(6): 463–466. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078627/
2. Pico C et al: Biomarkers of Nutrition and Health: New Tools for New Approaches. Nutrients. 2019 May; 11(5): 1092. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6567133/