Three years ago I went through round after round of blood testing until eventually I realised that the doctor was following a procedure laid out in a flow chart. Heck, he even showed me the flow chart. Two months and thousands of dollars of insurance deductibles later I was no closer to understanding the underlying cause of my fatigue, insomnia, brain fog and other symptoms. My doctor seemed somewhat willing to run any blood test I wanted but he held the results very close to his chest. Everything was normal, and the Google searches I made in an attempt to understand better my results yielded nothing useful. It’s not that sodium and potassium on a blood chemistry don’t mean anything, they do, it’s that you won’t ever be able to figure it out without some help. When I finally admitted defeat and looked outside the network of doctors willing to accept the insurance that was costing me a fortune and getting me nowhere fast, I found someone who wanted to run a urinary organic acids test. What is an organic acid? William Shaw, Ph.D., is board certified in the fields of clinical chemistry and toxicology by the American Board of Clinical Chemistry. Before he founded The Great Plains Laboratory, Inc., he worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr Shaw describes organic acids as “the stuff of metabolism”. Organic acids are surrogate markers that give valuable clues about what’s going on inside your body. Finally, I had a window on what was really going on. I don’t think anyone expected me to look at the result as a patient, but that’s what I did, and I was excited because now my searches started yielding useful information. Take for example vanillylmandelic, a breakdown product of epinephrine and norepinephrine, also known as adrenaline. Low levels of vanillylmandelic indicate little activity of a hormone that acts increases blood pressure, respiration rate, heart rate, increases glucose, and dilates the pupils, all for the purpose of enabling you to quickly and safely get out of a potentially life-threatening situation. Sounds a lot like adrenal fatigue, huh? But there probably wasn’t anything wrong with adrenal glands. In addition to low vanillylmandelic, I had (and have) high levels of HPHPA (3-(3-hydroxyphenyl)-3-hydroxypropionic acid), a metabolite created by certain Clostridia species of bacteria (C. sporogenes, C. caloritolerans, C. botulinum & others). HPHPA looks enough like dopamine to downregulate the activity of the enzyme dopamine-beta-hydroxylase, but not enough to have the other biological effects, leading to a derangement of neurotransmitter balance. Your gut can mess with your brain! The fix? A high end probiotic containing 50-100 billion CFU of Lactobacillus rhamnosus. I’ve honed in just one example of problems that can be revealed and fixed easily using organic acids. Besides offering the most complete and accurate evaluation of gut yeast and bacteria, the test also provides information on important nutritional markers, glutathione status, oxalate metabolism, and much more. Download my full result By all means, order an organic acids test for yourself, and I will help you understand the results but know that this test is a single tool in our chest that includes other tests and diet and lifestyle modification. Book a free consultation and Amelia will walk you through the testing process. Here’s the outline of this interview with Dr William Shaw, Ph.D. 0:00:16    Dr William Shaw, Ph.D is the founder of Great Plains lab. 0:00:23    Formerly a clinical chemist and toxicologist at the CDC. 0:00:46    Using mass spectrometry on urine would allow Dr. Shaw to measure virtually anything in metabolism. 0:01:33    Dr Shaw has been highly motivated from the beginning. 0:02:00    It's rare for someone to do an organic acids test and not find something significant. 0:02:59    Organic acids are the stuff of metabolism. 0:03:50    The metabolites from bacteria and other microorganisms have a profound impact