Self Testing Levels

I managed to recover my health with food and supplements and did so without ever testing my nutrient or toxin levels.

In the past 10 years I’ve run 3 tests. Two urine and a DNA test to look at the status of my genes. One urine test was before my health crashed and all I remember is low b12 and b6. The other urine test looked at mercury, iodine, selenium and a few other things and was several years into my healing journey.

7 years ago I was waking up on the floor having seizures, forgetting who I was and having a hard time getting off the couch or out of bed most days. It’s been a rough ride with lots of ups and downs but in most ways I’m in better shape now than I was before falling for a flu jab and watching my health pack it’s bags and leave me.

This experience has allowed me to see how health works in very interesting ways which has helped me share with others how this stuff potentially works.

Reverse engineering levels

I figured out how my levels work by experiencing changes in the way I felt or digested as I introduced or removed various nutrients at various points of my healing. I get into some details about how I figured this out in a few other write ups whyiodine.com/pulse-dosing whyiodine.com/low-and-slow whyiodine.com/selenium whyiodine.com/selenium-continued

As I was doing this I was also learning how people read various nutrient levels from various tests. I started to notice a pattern between what I was experiencing and how people were using test results to navigate the same terrain.

I eventually caught onto something really interesting which leaves a lot of people either confused, or misguided by their results.

We’re probing a broken system

When we run these various tests, only cells that are able to function are able to influence the results. It’s almost like asking a room of 20 people watching sports “who wants more chicken wings?” Some people will respond, but others are in a trance and didn’t even hear the question. Your test doesn’t care about the people that did not respond, you asked a question and listened for a response. So if 4 people respond and all 4 said yes to more chicken wings, that’s all the information we have.

Ok that was a little abstract, but stick with this for a minute. I have to explain a few things before we can continue with this example.

One of the main ways iodine helps most people is likely due to its ability to allow us to kill off old defunct cells. This is called apoptosis and although cells are being destroyed, it’s a very important process. We rebuild cells all day long, so being able to properly destroy and recycle them is very important. If we can’t get the old broken stuff out of the way, we can’t rebuild with new.

So we have to think about what’s going on here. Our nutrient tests are not much different than asking a room of potentially catatonic sports viewers “who wants more chicken wings?” which means we have no idea how many cells are not responding.

But if iodine is capable of helping people by killing off defunct cells, which is what can potentially cause crazy detox if we take too much, doesn’t that mean most of us are going into this with a ton of catatonic cells? How many of our cells are actually responding in these tests?

Broken cells don’t talk

Our lack of wellness is a direct result of toxins that are stuck in our cells as well as the lack of proper nutrients that should be in place of those toxins instead. These toxins might be there for various reasons including infection, trauma, high toxic loads, radiation, poor nutrition, congenital toxicity, etc etc etc.

But what happens if we test only our functioning cells and they indicate that most of our levels are normal? This is rather common and causes people to go “why do my results look fine yet I feel like complete ****?”

This tells us that the few cells we have functioning, happen to have enough nutrients to continue running in some type of balance right now. But this doesn’t really mean much because the reason we feel like crap is due to having a ton of broken cells. And the cells are broken because in some way, they are missing nutrients that aren’t showing up on the test results.

Broken cells don’t talk, or function. Our test isn’t looking at broken cells. The test only gives us a very small window into our metabolism.

HTMA (Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis) tests can see a bit more because our hair shows some history. But not many people know how to run or read HTMA properly while really digging into what the results mean and actually building a plan to get out of the situation.

This is why iodine is so important

As we research iodine we should begin to realize it’s a very important nutrient with roles in a lot of our health and wellness.

But it’s benefits cause it to become rather confusing. When we take iodine, it can make us feel like crap. Why is this?

It’s all the same thing. We feel like crap because we’re trying to use more cells than we have available. The amount of cells we have available depends on which nutrients we do or do not have right now. And the amount of these nutrients we do or do not have depends on how many functioning cells we have.

Without iodine, the broken cells are stuck and we’re left with only a fraction of our abilities. But as we add iodine, we have to actually clean up those broken cells.

As we add iodine, we start using the few functioning cells we have in order to catch up on a backlog. As we add more iodine, we increase the demand on these few cells, which is why most people benefit by going slow and continuing to learn about nutrition.

As we continue to cleanup more of this mess, we will eventually have more cells available which gives us more energy in general as well as to clean more cells with. But we need time and lots of nutrition in order to rebuild and get to this next phase. Each of these phases may require going after a different type of toxicity, or even a trauma etc. We are almost like an onion with layers of toxins and trauma and emotions etc.

To add a little more confusion to iodine. Iodine can be one of the nutrients our cells require. In small amounts it’s a lot like other important nutrients our system might require in order to run properly. But once we take enough of it, it becomes a detox agent which starts to go after those defunct cells which can cause a mess.

So what do I do?

Have you ever tackled a large cleaning project like a garage or shed where there are several types of objects to move around, throw out, clean up, store etc? If we’re busy and do not have much time to go after this project, we can only go after small areas or we’ll end up taking on more than we can handle before we have to get back to our daily activities. As we spend more time out there and make progress, we’ll have a better idea how big the project is and what it will take to get it done.

We’re doing the same thing with healing in several ways. As we continue to chip away at nutritional information which allows us to continue expanding our understanding, our cells are slowly chipping away at a huge backlog of clean up while gaining access to more cells and abilities. They need time to rebuild and convert the nutrients we’re consuming and absorbing.

While we successfully progress, our levels will just about constantly be fluctuating. So unless we can test every few weeks and actually keep on top of all of the results, which I don’t think is feasible for several reasons, we may want to just learn how to slowly move through all of this. As we understand more about this, testing can help guide us much more than if we were only testing without any understanding.

Another confusing aspect a lot of people are missing is that as we progress, we are rebuilding functionality which allows us to make use of “new” nutrients. So a nutrient that may not have done anything for us in the past, or even disagreed with us, may benefit us now. This is actually what we’re going for. It’s as if we fixed something on our vehicle and now its time to investigate the next fluid level and the processes it depends on.

Are we even testing the right levels?

If we’re going to test, we should at least test the right things the right way in the right order.

But finding the right tests in the right order depends on what we are dealing with. And it also depends how much time and resources we have available for this. Some of us can run all the tests we need and buy all the supplements we might need, but others are only able to run one or two tests atm and then wait to see which supplements are best to try.

I have not been able to compile a decent structure on how to test properly. There are too many different tests that might not be available to certain areas of the world. And too many people have doctors that won’t run them anyway.

A few general things to keep in mind:

• If digestive issues are present, testing for gut biome imbalances and/or pathogens is important. H. pylori is a common infection of the stomach lining which can cause us a lot of issues if we do not resolve it.
• Blood tests are mostly useless unless we test the right things and know how to compare levels to each other to build a scenario of what might be going on.
• Unless someone understands a good bit about methylation and how our system uses nutrients, I do not see them making much progress with testing results unless they work with someone. Testing may seem like a handy tool, but it doesn’t make much sense if we do not understand a bit about all of this.

I was financially broke when I started this

My health had been crashing for months by the time I realized I needed to make this a priority. And although I assumed I was fine before my health crashed, I was not. So by the time I realized how serious the situation was, I was broke and out of work.

I was not able to start running tests. Instead, I researched as much as possible and made an attempt to buy a new supplement with each paycheck. It was slow at first but I was rather lucky and found a handful of supplements that were making me feel better. As I made progress I was able to research more and get back on my feet which allowed me to buy more supplements and books etc.

I still had a lot to learn with years of lot of ups and downs, but I realized I was likely on the right path by feeling these various supplements help me in different ways.

I started to catch onto something incredible

My understanding of the concept changed over time but I managed to build a visual of how our system works in a really awesome way.

My visualization of this situation worked well in my head, but I was not able to figure out how to explain what I was seeing.

In 2019 I create this video in an attempt to explain what I was seeing. But as I figured out how to simplify it, it lost a lot of what I was attempting to explain.

I made several other attempts at this but they never made it far enough to show anyone.

And finally in late 2022 I was able to make my first video inside a new project I’ve been working on for a long time.

I built a model of some of the core pieces of our metabolism which allows me to explain how a lot of this works. Although this project is a bit complex, it should help just about anyone increase their understanding of what we’re going for with these various nutrients. These videos will be organized here https://methylate.me

More about me and my journey whyiodine.com/micah-coffey