Normal vs Optimal Lab Ranges: Ferritin, Vitamin D, and B12 in Midlife

From the video captions, as spoken.

Now, this is the piece that changes everything. All right? And it was the reason I was being told I was fine for so long. When you get your labs done, you probably get them in a portal. You can see, like, you look for green dot isn't in the normal range, right? Now, these ranges are built from an average population in our culture. This average population is a very already sick population. So, normal often means you are not sick enough yet to treat.

Optimal ranges asks a completely different question. Where do your lab results need to be for you to feel really, really well? Now, here's the tricky part. Most conventional doctors are not going to recognize functional medicine optimal ranges. So it's essential that you find somebody who knows this language. They already know the difference between normal and optimal because you can you can beg and get all the labs I recommend, but if your doctor interprets them through normal ranges, you're not going to get anywhere. All right. So, let's, let me make this a little more concrete.

There's 3 examples and see how each one connects straight back to the symptoms that we described earlier at, when we started this conversation and lab ranges. Okay. Ferritin. You've all maybe heard of ferritin. You may not be certain what it is. All right. Ferritin is your iron storage.

Now ferritin conventional normal ranges run from 15 to 200 but functional medicine practitioners who work with optimal ranges they want it between 70 to 100 and before a Woman is even going to feel like herself. All right? So often this is what's behind Midlife hair loss. Now there are actually about over 30 reasons, physiological reasons for hair loss for Women in Midlife. Ferritin is one of them. It is often what's behind this sense of fatigue that sleep doesn't touch. I worked with a right on the cusp, right between 15 and 200.

Her primary care doctor and her naturopath both told her, well, you're fine. Now she came to me so fatigued that from a short walk it meant spending the rest of the day on the couch for her. And she was so foggy that she thought she was losing her mind. Now, by the normal range is 17, that's technically normal. But she then needed a full iron panel and she needed a reason for the 17. All right, now ferritin also is something that can rise with inflammation when we have inflammation in the body. So an inflamed Woman can be iron deficient and still show a ferritin of 150.

So this is why we want full iron panels and not just ferritin alone. All right. Now, vitamin D. Your normal lab ranges will flag anything under 30 as low. Functional medicine, optimal ranges, target commonly, they want you between 50 and 80. Now, low vitamin D, guess what that can look like? Fatigue, low mood, colds that linger, getting frequent colds all while your labs print the word normal.

Okay? So that covers fatigue, moodiness, and just that run-down feeling of burnout. Now, B12. Conventional ranges accept numbers low enough to leave a Woman exhausted, foggy, and even with like tingling in her hands and feet and feeling cold. Now, functional practitioners want it much more meaningfully higher. So exhausted and foggy, fatigue and brain fog. Okay. Now, if you are between 40 and 60, or really 35 and 108, you should be able, I'm going to 'should' on us, you should be able to rattle off your numbers. You should know your numbers. What are your vitamin D levels right now? What are your B12 levels?

What are your iron, your ferritin levels? And has anyone done a full thyroid panel for you? Okay? You want to know yours and you want to hold your friends, your sisters, and your daughters to knowing theirs as well.