What is Normal?
I recently had my yearly physical done. For the past several years I had been feeling very...off. Brain fog, extreme anxiety, ADHD symptoms etc. I knew something was off with me, I just wasn't sure what. So I asked her to run some labs that she normally wouldn't run, including a hormone panel. When I got my results back and looked at them, everything was....normal. According to her. When I looked at my labs, I saw a very different story. Yes, all of my hormone ranges absolutely fell within the "normal" range, but they were all on the very low end of normal.
Normal vs Optimal
I did not just want to be "normal". I wanted to be optimal. As women, sometimes we have to be our own best advocate when it comes to medical professionals, and it's good to have an understanding of where lab values come from. So what is the normal range and where does it come from? If you test 100 people and you throw out the top 2.5% and the bottom 2.5% of the scores, what you are left with 95% of the scores or the "normal" range. This can include everyone from a 10 year old to a 90 year old, male, female, different races and ethnicities. No wonder it's so broad!
I can tell you from experience, being at the top or middle of the range is very different from being at the bottom. Oftentimes you can go to the doctor with obvious symptoms and get dismissed because all your labs are "normal". Ranges also change over time, and with an increasingly sick population, those values are getting even more skewed as the years go on.
Long story short, I showed my values to Randy, my medical director for my clinic, who took one look at them and instantly told me what I needed to do to bring my levels into the optimum range. One prescription and 2 supplements later, my brain fog, anxiety and ADHD symptoms have vanished, hopefully never to return again.
When we run your labs we are looking to optimize all functions in your body. The body has a great capacity to heal itself when given the optimal conditions to do so. Don't settle for normal. Strive for optimal. I want that for you too and I am here to answer any of your questions you might have on how to achieve that to help your brain function at its best capacity!
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