Functional Medicine Testing in Greenville, SC
Functional Medicine Testing at IHP Greenville. Dr. Hendry, DAOM — functional medicine, root-cause diagnostics, personalized care. Call (864) 365-6156.
"Dr. Hendry has been working with me to heal my GI tract. 100% improvement in how I feel, taking 1/4 of my blood pressure meds, and am no longer taking cholesterol meds."
— Karen Hill · January 2025 · Google Review
A TSH of 2.8 is within the conventional reference range. It's also in the range where Hoermann's research documents that free T3 frequently falls into the lower quartile where hypothyroid symptoms emerge. The conventional range describes a population; the functional range describes what optimal physiology looks like. I use functional reference ranges because I'm trying to find what's driving your symptoms — not confirm that you don't have overt Addison's disease or overt hypothyroidism. The difference in what we find changes what we can treat.
How Functional Medicine Testing Works
Functional medicine testing is ordered based on your clinical presentation and Dr. Hendry's initial assessment. Common panels include: comprehensive thyroid (TSH, free T3/T4, reverse T3, antibodies), full sex hormone panel (estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, SHBG), 4-point cortisol curve, comprehensive metabolic panel, CBC, lipid panel, inflammatory markers (CRP, homocysteine, ferritin), nutrient status (vitamin D, B12, zinc, magnesium, CoQ10), gut health testing, and specialized panels for specific conditions.
Conditions Treated with Functional Medicine Testing
Functional Medicine Testing vs. Standard Annual Wellness Panel
A 47-year-old woman with persistent fatigue, weight gain, and difficulty concentrating visits her primary care physician for her annual physical. Her standard panel — CBC, basic metabolic panel, and TSH — returns within normal limits. She is told her labs look fine. At IHP, Dr. Hendry orders a functional medicine panel that includes free T3 and T4 (her TSH was 3.1 — in the functional suboptimal range), a 4-point salivary cortisol curve (showing a flattened awakening response), fasting insulin (elevated at 18 with normal fasting glucose, indicating early insulin resistance), vitamin D (23 ng/mL — deficient), RBC magnesium (low-normal), and ferritin (9 ng/mL — insufficient for mitochondrial function). Five actionable targets emerge from a single draw. The standard annual panel confirmed she was not overtly ill. The functional medicine panel identified precisely why she feels unwell — and gave Dr. Hendry the specific targets needed to build a treatment protocol. That difference — between ruling out disease and identifying the drivers of sub-optimal function — is what distinguishes functional medicine testing.
Research & Evidence
The superiority of functional medicine testing over standard panels is supported by outcomes research. A landmark 2019 study in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine found that patients receiving functional medicine care at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine reported significantly greater improvements in global health scores at 6 months compared to matched controls receiving standard primary care — with the testing-informed personalized protocols driving the outcome difference. Research on functional reference ranges shows that TSH, free T3, and testosterone reference ranges derived from truly healthy populations are substantially tighter than conventional lab ranges — meaning many patients in the conventional "normal" range have biochemically sub-optimal function that responds to targeted treatment.
Your First Appointment
Bring all prior lab results — even if they were "normal," Dr. Hendry may reinterpret them using functional reference ranges. A full fast (no food or drink except water for 10–12 hours) is required for most comprehensive metabolic panels.
Why Dr. Hendry for Functional Medicine Testing
Dr. Hendry's 5 publications and Prisma Health research background give him the scientific literacy to select and interpret functional medicine tests with clinical rigor — not just order a battery of tests without a clear interpretive framework.