Rob Douglas, GP and medical director of Regenerus Labs, explains why functional testing and comprehensive health screening will help people remain healthier for longer.
Recent data from the Office for National Statistics contains a clear warning about the state of the nation’s health.
While life expectancy has improved over the past century, healthy life expectancy tells a very different story. In the most deprived areas of England, people can expect to spend around 20 fewer years in good health than those living in the most affluent areas. As a GP, I find that statistic more concerning than differences in lifespan alone.
The truth is, most people don’t come to see me because they want to live to 100. They want to have the energy to play with their grandchildren, travel, exercise, work, and maintain their independence. They want to remain physically and mentally well for as much of their lives as possible. In short, they want to live healthier for longer.
The challenge of chronic disease
The challenge is that our healthcare system remains largely focused on identifying and treating disease once it has become established.
While this approach has delivered extraordinary advances in medicine, it does mean that many of the conditions that now account for the greatest burden of ill health are ignored. These conditions are the ones that develop gradually over years, sometimes decades.
Cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, cognitive decline and many inflammatory conditions rarely appear overnight. Long before a formal diagnosis is made, there are often measurable changes occurring within the body. These processes often begin years before conventional diagnostic thresholds are reached.
Standard medical investigations remain an essential and appropriate starting point. We need to exclude serious pathology and identify medical conditions. However, conventional testing may not always identify the earlier physiological changes that may contribute to future disease risk or explain ongoing symptoms. It is not uncommon for patients to be told that their blood tests are “within the normal range, and not at high or low enough levels to indicate disease”. But the “within the normal range” does not always mean an optimal level for health.
Earlier intervention
Countries that are making progress in preventive healthcare increasingly recognise the value of earlier assessment and intervention. Rather than waiting for disease to become established, they are investing in screening programmes, risk stratification, integrated health monitoring and personalised prevention strategies.
The aim needs to be to identify problems sooner and intervene before they become harder, more expensive and more damaging to treat.
The UK has made some important advances in prevention, but much of our healthcare infrastructure remains reactive. Resources are understandably directed towards managing existing disease, often leaving limited capacity to explore why patients may be developing symptoms in the first place.
This is where functional testing can play an important role.
Functional testing is not a replacement for conventional medicine, nor should it be viewed as an alternative to evidence-based healthcare. Rather, it can provide additional information that helps clinicians understand how physiological systems are functioning before overt disease develops.
Assessments of metabolic health, nutritional status, gut function, hormonal balance and inflammatory markers can provide valuable insights when interpreted within the context of a patient’s symptoms, medical history and lifestyle. They can help identify patterns that may otherwise be missed and support more personalised interventions focused on nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress management and targeted clinical support.
As interest in these approaches grows, resources like Find A Practitioner are making it easier for patients to connect with verified clinicians and access validated functional testing such as the DUTCH Complete, Organic Acids Test (OAT) and GI360. They fill the gap where direct-to-consumer testing falls short on clinical guidance and results interpretation, and where the healthcare system has yet to fully embrace a preventative approach.
This systems-based approach reflects an important shift in how we think about health. Rather than viewing the body as a collection of separate organs and diagnoses, it recognises the complex interactions between different biological systems.
In practice, symptoms rarely exist in isolation and understanding these connections often provides opportunities for earlier intervention.
Closing the healthy life expectancy gap
An ageing population is often presented as a challenge for healthcare systems, but ageing itself is not the problem. The real challenge is the number of years people spend living with preventable ill health. The ONS data demonstrates that these years are not distributed equally across society. Those living in more deprived communities experience significantly fewer years of good health, with profound consequences for individuals, families and the wider economy.
If we want to narrow that gap, prevention must become more than a slogan. It requires earlier identification of risk, better health screening, greater access to personalised assessment and a willingness to look beyond disease management alone. It also requires empowering patients with meaningful information about their health before problems become entrenched.
Functional testing and comprehensive health screening will not solve every challenge facing the NHS. However, they represent important tools in a broader strategy aimed at helping people remain healthier for longer.
