Where labs fit — and why the intake outranks them
Integrative You — and every product in it — was built on one belief: 90% of the clarity that produces outcomes comes from a highly detailed, investigative intake. A series of questions no one has ever asked you, through a lens that looks at all of you: health, relationships, business, purpose, and family.
Dr. Nicole has taught practitioners for 15 years and has always said the same thing: your intake should be so precise and so detailed that you are 99% sure what is going on with your patient before a single tube is drawn — and then the labs simply confirm your hypothesis. That curated intake framework is what these programs run on.
We still value labs. But almost everyone who finds us has already been told "your labs are normal" while feeling terrible. So we built the thing that goes beyond the labs.
1st
Your assessments
The most foundational and most predictive data we have. Life experience, symptom patterns, cycles, stressors, relationships, and values — the questions nobody else asks.
2nd
DNA / epigenetic testing
Not consumer SNP testing. We look at the stress being expressed on your DNA and your organ systems right now, which is what actually directs a protocol.
3rd
Precise blood and urine labs
Valuable when they are specific, tailored, and chosen by a doctor off your intake and DNA — not a template panel. In Private Concierge we routinely run markers most people have never had run, and that most MDs have never seen.
Three hard truths about labs
- A lab is a snapshot in time. It captures one moment, not your pattern. It can read differently tomorrow than it does today.
- A lab reflects your state, not just your biology. A stress response — road rage on the way to the draw, a skipped meal, a bad night's sleep — moves markers before the needle ever goes in.
- Labs are wrong more often than people think. Storage issues, processing delays, and human error are ordinary, not rare. Labs are a data point. They are not the gold standard.
We don't lean on stool samples for parasites. Parasites feed on a host — you. By the time they exit the body in a bowel movement they autolyse and break down, so by the time the sample reaches the lab it is very often confirmed negative regardless of what's actually living in you. A negative stool test has sent an enormous number of people home believing nothing is wrong. We assess parasitic burden through the intake pattern and epigenetic testing instead.
Lab work included?
Filter by what each program actually includes. No ambiguity, no upsell surprises.
- Health DecodeNo labs.
Blood / urine labs: Not included
DNA testing: Not included
The $47 entry point. A root-cause snapshot built entirely from the intake — no kits, no draws, no lab budget required.
- FoundationNo labs.
Blood / urine labs: Not included
DNA testing: Not included
Assessment-driven foundational wellness. We build your 90-day protocol from the intake framework — the part that produces most of the clarity anyway.
- DNA PrecisionAssessments + epigenetic DNA testing.
Blood / urine labs: Not included
DNA testing: Included (hair-based epigenetic analysis)
The assessments plus a hair-based epigenetic analysis reading stress on your DNA and organ systems. This is not consumer genetic SNP testing.
- Private ConciergeAssessments + DNA + doctor-selected blood and urine labs.
Blood / urine labs: Included — panels chosen by the doctor off your intake and DNA
DNA testing: Included
Five-plus data points assembled with 15 years of clinical expertise to solve the most complex cases quickly. Every panel is dictated by your intake and DNA results, which is why we often run markers you've never had run before.
Lab work questions, answered
Is lab work included in my program?
Foundation includes no labs — it's assessment-driven foundational wellness. DNA Precision pairs the assessments with epigenetic DNA testing (stress on your DNA and organs — not consumer SNP testing). Private Concierge is the only tier with blood and urine labs, and those panels are chosen by the doctor based on your intake and DNA results, not ordered off a template.
Do you do hormone testing, stool samples, and other functional labs?
Hormone, urine, and blood panels are part of Private Concierge, where the doctor selects them off your intake and DNA results. We deliberately do not rely on stool testing: parasites feed on a host, and by the time they exit in a bowel movement they autolyse and break down — so the sample very often reaches the lab confirmed negative even when there is a real burden. We read that burden from the intake pattern and epigenetic testing instead.
Why don't Foundation and DNA Precision include blood work?
Because 90% of the clarity that produces outcomes comes from the intake, not the draw. Dr. Nicole has taught practitioners for 15 years that a precise, investigative intake should make you 99% sure what's going on before labs confirm the hypothesis. Foundation and DNA Precision give you that clarity at a price that doesn't require a lab budget. When labs would genuinely change the plan, Private Concierge is where they belong.
Aren't labs the gold standard?
No. Three hard truths: labs are a snapshot in time; they shift with your state — even road rage on the drive to the draw changes markers; and they are wrong more often than people realize thanks to storage, processing, and human error. Labs are one valuable data point in a stack. Our stack ranks your assessments first, DNA/epigenetics second, and precise blood and urine labs third.
My labs came back normal but I still feel terrible. What now?
That's the sentence almost everyone says on their way in. "Normal" means "not diseased," not "well" — and a template panel was never built to explain your symptoms. Start with the free Compass or the Health Decode: better questions, asked properly, surface the root-cause pattern that the panel missed.
What kind of markers do you run in Private Concierge?
Whatever the intake and DNA results point to — which regularly includes markers most people have never had run, and that most conventional physicians have never seen ordered. That's the point: the panel is dictated by the clinical hypothesis, not by a bundle someone is selling.
How at-home Lyme tests actually work
Nearly every at-home kit is a finger-stick or mail-in serum sample run through the same two-tier CDC sequence a clinic would order: an ELISA screen for antibodies to Borrelia burgdorferi, and, if reactive, a Western blot to identify which specific bands are present. The kit isn't testing for the bacteria — it's testing for your immune system's response to it.
That distinction is the whole problem. If your immune system never mounted a strong response, or mounted one years ago that has since faded, the test reads negative while the infection persists.
The three ways an at-home Lyme test gives you the wrong answer
Too early. Antibodies take roughly four to six weeks to become detectable. Testing three days after a bite is close to useless. If you have an expanding rash and a known bite, that is a clinical diagnosis — treat it, don't wait for a lab to agree.
Too late. In long-standing infection the organism sequesters, the antibody response flattens, and the two-tier sequence loses sensitivity. This is where most of our patients sit, and where most negative results are wrong.
Too narrow. A Lyme-only kit says nothing about Babesia, Bartonella, Ehrlichia or Anaplasma. In our clinical experience co-infection is the rule, not the exception, and Bartonella in particular drives the neuropsychiatric picture people get told is anxiety.
The sequence we actually run
We start with history and pattern, not a kit. Migrating joint pain, air hunger, night sweats, ice-pick headaches, sudden rage or panic, and symptoms that cycle on a four-to-six week rhythm carry more diagnostic weight than a single serology result. Then we test the whole terrain: tick-borne panel through a specialty lab, mycotoxin screening (mold and Lyme overlap constantly), immune markers, and gut integrity — because a suppressed terrain is why the infection took hold and stayed.
For hair-based epigenetic screening of metals, parasitic and viral load alongside the serology, see the DNA health report. For the full clinical picture, read the Lyme disease pillar.
Lyme testing in New Jersey
New Jersey is one of the highest-incidence Lyme states in the country — Monmouth, Ocean, Hunterdon and Morris counties especially. Local exposure is so routine that a negative at-home test in an NJ resident with the right symptom pattern should raise suspicion rather than settle it. See Lyme doctor New Jersey for how we work with NJ patients across every county.