Why Your Labs Are "Normal" But You Still Feel Terrible
This is hands down one of the most frustrating scenarios in modern medicine and I hear it from new patients almost every single week. You sit in a doctor’s office and carefully explain what’s been going on. The fatigue that coffee doesn’t touch. The brain fog that makes work harder than it should be. The hair thinning. The stubborn weight gain that doesn’t make sense.
The doctor listens, nods, and orders a standard blood panel. You wait. You hope. You think, Maybe this will finally explain it. Then the phone rings. “Good news! Everything looks normal. You’re the picture of health.” But you don’t feel healthy. You feel exhausted. Inflamed. Off. And you hang up the phone wondering if it’s all in your head.
Let me say this clearly: it’s not in your head. The problem isn’t you. The problem is how we define “normal.”
The Myth of the Reference Range
When you look at a lab report, you’ll see a reference range; that bar on the right side of the page. If your number falls anywhere inside it, you’re labeled “normal.” But here’s the part no one explains. That range is based on a statistical bell curve of the people who visit that lab. And who is getting labs drawn in 2026? Mostly people who are already stressed, inflamed, under-slept, and nutrient depleted. In fact, over 60% of adults now have at least one chronic condition, and more than 70% report ongoing fatigue or brain fog.
So when you’re told you’re “normal,” what that really means is: You look like everyone else. And everyone else is not doing great.
Normal vs. Optimal
In Functional Medicine, we don’t aim for normal. We aim for optimal, the narrow range where your body actually functions well, has energy, and feels like you again. Let’s use the thyroid as a simple example:
Standard medical TSH range: 0.5–5.0 mIU/L
Optimal functional TSH range: ~1.8–2.5 mIU/L
If your TSH is 4.5, conventional medicine will often say you’re fine. But functionally, we know your thyroid is struggling. Your metabolism is slowing, your energy is dropping, and your symptoms make perfect sense. This is where so many people fall through the cracks, not sick enough to medicate, but far from well. And it’s not rare. Up to 60% of people with thyroid dysfunction are undiagnosed, largely because their labs are technically “normal.”
Stop Waiting for Disease
Conventional medicine is incredible at acute care and crisis management. It’s designed to diagnose disease once it’s loud and obvious. Functional Medicine is designed to catch dysfunction, the quiet shifts that happen before disease.
We ask different questions:
Why is your Vitamin D low-normal?
Why is your ferritin sitting at the bottom of the range?
Why is inflammation slowly creeping up year after year?
Because your body whispers long before it screams. If your labs say you’re fine but your body says you’re not, listen to your body. It’s time to stop settling for average. Let’s find your optimal.