Jake Carter (00:00):

Welcome to Health School, where we help health professionals create life-changing results for their clients and patients through functional medicine and nutrition, whilst equally helping them scale their business online and attract high value clients. I'm Jake Carter, your host and the founder of The Institute of Health. Make sure you sit back, grab your pen because we're going to dive in deep.

(00:21)
These are the dos and do nots of functional blood work. If you are a health coach, now it's really important to pay attention to the do nots because this will determine, first of all, how long your business will last and equally how far you can scale it. Now, the first one is that's really important for you to refrain from giving medical advice. That's not what you are trained to do. It's not what you can do. Avoid doing that. The second thing is that you shouldn't refer to yourself as a dietician unless you are as a doctor or a medical professional. But hey, this is for health coaches and you're neither of those who shouldn't be referring to yourself as any of that. You should also avoid diagnosing and equally avoid clinical judgment. If you think someone may have something, well, it's important that you refer 'em out to a trusted registered healthcare professional for them to accordingly diagnose.

(01:11)
On top of this, it's really important to avoid speaking in definitives. Avoid using language such as you must. You should. Instead, you can use words and terms such as studies have shown this. It may correlate to that. It may be beneficial doing this. Equally, you can never suggest or recommend a client stops taking medication. You can present them with published medical journals to show them a full understanding of what the medication may do to their body, but you can never coerce or tell them to stop taking medication. On top of this, you can't use blood work to scare pressure or manipulate clients into purchasing products or services. And then equally, we can't make nutritional supplemental or lifestyle recommendations solely on blood work alone because that may be misconstrued as giving medical advice or having clinical judgment. Instead. It's really important to use this as an adjunctive tool with your intake form, which is going to be a comprehensive list of subjective questions.

(02:16)
And then lastly, it's really important not to prescribe any specific treatment for medical conditions. Now, let's look on the other side. Let's look at the things that you can do if you are a health coach utilizing functional blood work. Now, first of all, calling yourself a health coach or a nutritionist isn't a legally protected title, so that basically means there isn't certain hoops and registers that you have to be on in order to refer to yourself as that. Secondly, we can recommend healthy dietary or lifestyle choices, and equally, it's really important to us to refer out whenever there are any concerns. A really good phrase to remember is when in doubt refer out. One thing that we teach inside the institute is understanding parameters of when we should refer out to a registered healthcare professional. Some examples of this may be when an individual is taking an extensive list of medications, when they're diagnosed with a chronic disease or dysfunction, when they have white blood cells less than 3.5 or any marker outside of conventional range.

(03:17)
On top of this, it's really, really important within your business to have a disclaimer about non-medical roles and that you are not a substitute for medical advice, and within that, you should also have legally approved terms of business and collect informed consent. If you are collecting blood work and sharing this online without informed consent, you may be liable in the future should your client want to take things further. On top of that, we should operate within the functional range, and the functional range should be guided from published medical journals, and it should sit within the conventional range, largely speaking, to make sure it's safe. It's important to respect professional boundaries. So if your client or patient has gone to a previous health professional, don't shit on them Equally, prioritize client safety. 

Remember, you must first do no harm, so therefore anything that you recommend or even how you speak to them can create harm. So you want to make sure that you can empathize and recognize the situation that they're in. Lastly, make sure you implement data security measures such as your website, HIPAA or GDPR compliance. These rules of how you can or can't operate will really determine the safety, security, and the success of your business. If you are a health coach, looking at introducing functional good work for your clients in your practice.