What is the significance of the five nutrient tests?

The core meaning is actually to take a cost-effective "instant snapshot" of your body's nutritional status. You don't have to guess what's missing from ambiguous symptoms such as hair loss, drowsiness, and oral ulcers. You can directly use objective data to find the right direction for dietary adjustments and supplement selection, and avoid spending money on unnecessary supplements and possibly over-repairing them.

I met a girl who worked in operations a while ago. She went to bed at 1 or 2 in the morning every day for more than three months. Takeaways accounted for 80% of her three meals a day. Not only did she lose a lot of hair every time she washed her hair, but she was so sleepy at 2 or 3 in the afternoon that she couldn't open her eyes. She followed the trend and bought iron supplements and multivitamins for almost two months, but there was no improvement at all. It wasn't until she measured five nutrients that she discovered that her iron content It was in the middle to high range of the normal range, but vitamin D quickly dropped to the lower limit of the reference value, and zinc was also lower than the normal level. Later, she stopped iron supplements and replaced them with D and zinc supplements. She deliberately took 10 minutes at noon on work days to go downstairs to bask in the sun, and ate oysters and lean beef twice a week. In less than a month, she said she no longer had to rely on coffee in the afternoon, and her hair loss was reduced by almost two-thirds.

Of course, many people now complain that this test is an "IQ tax", and the reason is very good: the nutrient levels in the human body are dynamically fluctuating. If you ate oranges and kiwi fruit the day before, the measured vitamin C value may be high. It is indeed too hasty to decide on a supplement plan for half a year based on the results of one test.

In fact, both statements are valid. The essence is that everyone has different expectations for this test. To be honest, it is not a final "nutritional diagnosis book", but more like a "reference guide" to help you avoid detours. Most of the five commonly mentioned nutrients now cover fat-soluble vitamins A, D, and E and mineral elements iron and zinc. They are closely related to immunity, energy, skin condition, and hair health, which are the issues that ordinary people are most concerned about. The practicality itself is much higher than testing a lot of unpopular nutrients.

For example, you have been feeling dry eyes and rough skin recently, and you suspect that you are deficient in vitamin A. If you take a test and find that it is indeed low in the normal range, then you can eat more animal livers and orange-yellow fruits and vegetables, adjust it for three weeks, and then take another test. If the value comes up, it means that you have not eaten enough in your daily diet. If it is still low, consider whether it is a problem of absorption and metabolism. This is better than if you just take supplements for three months, and finally find that you are not deficient at all, or even exceed the supplement, which will cause a metabolic burden.

Especially for office workers who only eat takeout and have a very simple diet, couples who are preparing for pregnancy and want to adjust their physical condition, and people who are always prone to minor problems and have found no organic problems after repeated tests, spending a few hundred yuan for a test is much more cost-effective than buying thousands of useless nutritional supplements. Of course, there is no need to test frequently when there is nothing wrong. Generally, testing once every six months to a year is enough. If you eat a balanced diet and have no uncomfortable symptoms, there is no need to join in the fun.