Are Your Labs Normal, but You Don’t Feel Great?
Have you ever gone to your doctor feeling tired, anxious, foggy or simply just not like yourself, only to be told all of your labs are normal? It’s frustrating but this is something I hear from patients time and time again and I even experienced this myself as a patient! Just because you have normal labs doesn’t mean things are optimal! In fact, standard lab reference ranges are designed to flag disease not to ensure you things are optimal so that you can thrive. This is where functional medicine comes in! We take a deeper dive into your health story and look at your labs from a different lens to see how they fit into your health picture. So if you’ve been told you have normal labs but you don’t feel right, keep reading!
Normal lab ranges vs. optimal lab ranges
Conventional lab ranges, like those at Labcorp or Quest, capture 95% of the “healthy” population in the US. I don’t know about you but the average person in the US, is not what I would consider optimal health. With this we get really WIDE reference ranges and if you are at the upper or lower ends of those range, even if your labs are “normal” you may very well be experiencing symptoms. In Functional Medicine, we think of things in terms of optimal ranges which are more narrow and targeted. They are rooted in research as well as clinic experience, focusing on lab values that support optimal health, longevity, and prevention of future disease. We look to identify early signs of dysfunction so that we can course correct before disease hits.
My favorite example, and one that I see commonly is iron deficiency and women. A normal lab reference range for Ferritin which is our iron storage marker, is 15-150ng/ml (some labs the lower end is 10ng/ml – yikes!!). In functional medicine, we have always thought that for cycling women, that lower threshold should be 50ng/ml, below that we often see symptoms – fatigue, hair loss, restless legs, and more. And in the past year or so we are actually seeing some medical societies changing their guidelines as well! The American Society of Hematology in 2023 put out a paper titled “Sex, Lies and Iron Deficiency” where they increased their cut off to 50ng/ml as well. And just recently, the American Gastroenterological Association recommend that 45ng/ml be the cut off to define iron deficiency. In my experience, many patients actually benefit from even higher iron stores like endurance athletes and patients who suffer from migraine where my goal for these folks is 70-100ng/ml. This is. great example of how normal labs, doesn’t even come close to what is considered optimal in terms of symptoms resolution.
How functional medicine can help
Functional medicine is all about personalized medicine and looking at how all of the body’s systems are connected. We take a holistic approach to try to figure out why symptoms are occurring instead of using a bandaid approach. Instead of stopping at “normal” labs, we dig deeper to give a personalized analysis of how they may relate to your age, history, family history, environment and lifestyle. We may also order advanced testing that digs deeper than traditional labs. By addressing subtleties, functional medicine can help restore balance before disease arises and get you to feeling like your optimal self. Because remember, health isn’t just about avoiding illness, it is about thriving and feeling good every day!
If you are looking for a Functional Medicine Practitioner, come see me at Well North Functional Medicine and book a free discovery call today!