Your Personalized Metabolic Profile
The status of your health is unique to you and to you alone, and there is no “one size fits all” approach to improving your health. There is no such thing as the one perfect diet or ultimate workout plan that applies to everyone. At Promotive Metabolic Health, every patient gets a comprehensive health assessment that details their unique health status. From this, we develop customized interventions suited to your specific needs and desires.
Getting to Know You
We start by getting to know you. What are your interests and goals? Why are you looking for physician-directed care? What health concerns do you have? What is your current diet? How much do you currently exercise? What activities do you enjoy? Understanding your personal hopes and motivations gives us the context to interpret your test results and provide recommendations that make sense for you.
The Science of Metabolic Health Restoration
True health goes far beyond the number on a scale. Our approach centers on metabolic therapy, which utilizes the detailed data from your profile to address the root causes of dysfunction at a cellular level. By focusing on restoration rather than symptom management, Dr. Hendrickson helps you build a physiological foundation that supports longevity, energy, and resilience against chronic disease. This is evidence-based care designed to make your body function exactly as it was intended.
Evidence-Based Lifestyle Medicine
Once we have established your metabolic baseline, we transition into the practice of lifestyle medicine. This is not about temporary diets or fads; it is about prescribing specific lifestyle changes — nutrition, movement, and stress management — with the same precision one would prescribe medication. Your metabolic profile allows us to tailor these interventions to your unique biology, ensuring that the effort you put in yields the specific physiological changes required for your long-term wellness.
What is Tested?
Blood and Urine Testing
- Blood Cell and Chem Tests:
- Complete Blood Count
- Basic Metabolic Panel
- Lipids:
- HDL(c)
- LDL(c)
- Triglycerides
- ApoB
- Lp(a)
- Iron Studies:
- Total Iron
- Ferritin
- Transferrin & saturation
- TIBC
- Insulin Resistance:
- Insulin
- C-peptide
- Fasting Glucose
- Hemoglobin A1c
- Adiponectin
- Inflammation:
- hs-CRP
- ESR
- Fibrinogen
- Liver Health:
- AST
- ALT
- GGT
- Alk Phos
- Kidney Health:
- Creatinine
- BUN
- Cystatin-C
- Urinalysis
- Albumin-creatinine ratio
- Supplementary Studies:
- Uric acid
- Homocysteine
- Vitamin D
- Vitamin B1, B6, B12
- Folate
- TSH
- T4
These tests give us an excellent assessment of your overall metabolic health. Using these test results we can assess your individual insulin sensitivity, cardiovascular disease risk, and liver and kidney health. We can also detect abnormalities or deficiencies that need further evaluation to improve your long-term health.
DEXA Scan
Your DEXA scan shows us four important characteristics: your total amount of lean tissue and muscle, your body fat percentage, the proportion of that fat located in and around your internal organs (visceral adipose tissue or VAT), and your bone health as measured by its density.
These four characteristics help us determine the most effective approach to managing your long-term health. Lean tissue is metabolically active, helping us burn fat and manage our blood sugar, as well as helping us perform normal activities. Body fat percentage tells us what portion of your weight comes from excess fat. A portion of body fat is visceral fat, and this can interfere with the normal function of our organs, causing or exacerbating diabetes, cholesterol issues, and other complications. Some people can carry extra body fat without it interfering with their overall metabolic health, while others may be relatively lean but what fat they do have is concentrated around their organs and drives metabolic disease. Until we know how much fat is present and where it is concentrated, we cannot set meaningful weight goals. Finally, bone mineral density tells us the health of your skeletal system and your future fracture risk which helps set appropriate exercise goals.
Cardio Pulmonary Exercise test
This test measures the amount of oxygen your body takes in and how much carbon dioxide you exhale during exercise. The ratio between these two measurements tells us how well your body burns fat and helps us determine your optimal exercise intensities. It’s common to think that exercise has to be exhausting to be beneficial. “No pain, no gain” has been the saying for decades. However, constantly exercising at high intensities leaves you exhausted and hungry, and inevitably leads to burnout. The truth is that to be the healthiest you can be most of your workouts should be only moderate intensity. We want to maximize your body’s ability to burn fat and to do it on a sustainable, regular basis. This test shows us exactly where you burn the most fat, and building your exercise routine around this will ensure maximum health benefits.
Why Choose a Data-Driven Approach?
Guesswork is the enemy of optimal metabolic health. By utilizing advanced metrics like DEXA scans and Cardio Pulmonary Exercise Testing, we eliminate uncertainty. This section of your profile provides clear, actionable insights that allow us to track progress objectively.
Precision
Target the specific physiological markers that need improvement, from visceral fat to mitochondrial efficiency.
Prevention
Identify and address risk factors for cardiovascular and metabolic disease before they become symptomatic.
Sustainability
Create a routine based on your body’s actual fuel usage, preventing burnout and fatigue.
Empowerment
Understand the "why" behind every recommendation, giving you full control over your health journey.
The Path to Optimal Metabolic Health
Achieving optimal metabolic health is a dynamic process, not a one-time event. Your initial profile serves as the compass, but your journey requires ongoing navigation. We analyze how your body responds to specific inputs over time, allowing us to refine your plan as your physiology improves. This continuous loop of assessment and adjustment ensures that you are not just preventing disease, but actively optimizing your physical and cognitive performance for the years ahead.
The Difference Between Lifespan and Healthspan
Modern medicine often focuses on lifespan, simply keeping you alive. Our goal is optimizing your healthspan—the years you spend feeling vital, capable, and free from chronic disease. By correcting metabolic imbalances today, we are protecting your future quality of life, ensuring that your later years are defined by activity and independence rather than the management of decline.
From Profile to Practice: Membership Options
Your personalized metabolic profile provides the map, but our memberships provide the guide. To fully implement these findings and maintain your trajectory toward wellness, we offer structured membership tiers designed to support you. Whether you need ongoing monitoring, frequent consultations with Dr. Hendrickson, or regular re-testing to track your metabolic adaptation, our memberships ensure you have the physician-directed support necessary to turn this data into a lifetime of health.
Your Metabolic Profile
Once we have established your personal goals and gathered your test results, you will receive a comprehensive summary that serves as a blueprint for your physiology. This report details your individual metabolic health status, translating complex data into clear, customized recommendations to improve your health. We follow this analysis with a dedicated 30-minute session with Dr. Hendrickson. During this consultation, he will review the summary with you line-by-line, explaining the findings in context and answering any questions you may have. This ensures you not only understand your current health status but leave with a clear, actionable plan.
Further Readings
General Overview of Metabolic Health
- What Is Metabolic Syndrome?: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/metabolic-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20351916
- Understanding Metabolic Health - Hopkins Medicine: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/metabolic-syndrome
Research Studies
Role of Metabolic Pathways in Aging: https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article/61/6/1315/15367/The-Critical-Role-of-Metabolic-Pathways-in-Aging
- Only 12% of American Adults Are Metabolically Healthy - UNC Study: https://www.unc.edu/posts/2018/11/28/only-12-percent-of-american-adults-are-metabolically-healthy-carolina-study-finds
Mental Health & Metabolic Health
Metabolic Psychiatry - Stanford Medicine: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/11/metabolic-psychiatry.html
- Link Between Metabolic and Mental Health - Medscape: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/metabolic-and-mental-health-closely-linked-2024a10006gz?form=fpf