By Channing King
Have you been told your lab tests were normal, yet you still felt lousy?
If so, you’re not alone. Many people with health issues turn to lab tests for answers, but when their lab tests tell them they’re “normal,” they leave their doctors’ offices wondering if it’s all in their heads.
A major factor for this occurrence is that patients are often evaluated by lab values, rather than functional values. In this article, I am going to attempt to explain to you the differences between lab values and functional values.
First, in relation to blood work, let’s talk about lab values. These are the typical values evaluated medically. Lab values are very wide. They are computed by taking the sick people that visited the lab the year before and comparing those numbers to yours. Therefore, in order to be declared to be suffering from an ailment, your values must be worse than those with health issues the year before. This causes problems for people that have health issues that are not extreme enough to fall within the lab values. These patients are typically told their health is normal. However, they still feel and function poorly.
Next, let’s talk about functional lab values. All blood markers have a functional value that they need fall within. Functional values are taken from the Endocrine Society and are much more specific. They are not wide values like lab values, rather, they are narrow values to help pinpoint specific health problems. Some patients have had normal lab values who had very poor function, so we had their functional levels checked and discovered areas that needed to be addressed.
In order to properly help a condition, the functional values must be assessed, and in order to improve, the functional values must be supported.