Why Your Blood Work Comes Back Normal, Yet You Feel Like Crap

Are you suffering from chronic fatigue, weight gain, joint pain, gut issues, hormonal imbalances, etc.? The list of symptoms is long and the first natural step is seeking help from a doctor! You want to lose weight. You want to feel better. You want answers. Your doctor agrees to run checkup blood work, but when he calls you in to discuss your results you’re being told: “Your blood work looks normal. You are healthy. Your symptoms are part of aging.” Maybe you should “eat less and move more, although you are already living a healthy lifestyle, restrict calories, and move your body. I hear stories like this EVERY SINGLE DAY. From desperate women, who want answers and who KNOW that there is a missing piece to their health and weight loss puzzle. I have been there too.

Let me tell you this. To this date, not one blood or lab work that I ran with my clients came back within normal ranges. Why? Because I am using advanced Functional Testing and applying Functional Ranges that indicate underlying reasons for chronic illness and weight loss resistance. Further, a general visit to the doctor’s office lasts around 5 minutes. He will not ask you about important factors such as diet & lifestyle, genetics, hormonal changes, etc., which can greatly influence your well-being. Worst case, he will prescribe life-long pharmaceuticals, which only act as a band-aid, without addressing the underlying issue. Masking the symptoms with drugs allows the disease to progress further in the body.

Functional Bloodwork looks for patterns and markers that spot trends toward disease so that those can still be reversed or halted. Not with drugs or surgery, but more so with a natural approach, like diet and lifestyle changes, herbs, or holistic supplements.

Before meeting with any of my clients, I review 8 pages on their health history (yes, before we even sit down together!) as it is crucial to not solely look at test results but to have an in-depth understanding of the person who seeks help. I truly believe in the importance of assessing a WHOLE person, rather than just a diagnostic label. This assessment is followed up by an hour-long health consultation (which you can book here) to dig deeper and investigate places that are commonly overlooked by conventional medicine. The goal is to get an understanding of why a person is experiencing a problem and then reverse engineer – which is impossible within a 5-minute consultation.

The Difference between Conventional and Functional Blood Work

The typical blood work conventional doctors run covers about 10-15 lab markers, which is not very comprehensive. Maybe they’ll run a CBC or complete blood count. A Complete Blood Count looks at your red and white blood cells and although gives helpful insights, it is not enough information on how the body is overall doing in terms of organs status, inflammation, digestive dysfunction, mitochondrial function, possible infections, electrolyte imbalances, blood sugar imbalances and so much more.

The scariest part? Conventional ranges are EXTREMELY LARGE because they are based on the average of the person who goes to the hospital, meaning the sickest of the sickest. The sicker a population gets the wider lab reference ranges become. The truth is, it has zero to do with optimal health and is not intended to either find the root of our person’s health concerns nor to catch imbalances before they become a diagnosed disease. Why would we want to wait until the damage is done, accept symptoms as normal, and wait for a full-blown disease to manifest?  It does not make sense, right? I agree! As Benjamin Franklin says it best: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. We want to look at ranges before they fall within the pathological range, to prevent developing a serious medical condition that can easier be reversed in the beginning stages.

Let me give you one example: Ferritin, a marker for iron storage, where the conventional range is anywhere from 10 to 200 — that’s a 190-point spread that’s still considered healthy and normal by most doctors. Whereas in Functional Medicine we want to see the marker optimally between 70-100.

Another very common example is thyroid function. While a conventional doctor typically only runs TSH (which by the way is not even a thyroid hormone, but a thyroid stimulating hormone), a functional thyroid panel involves TSH, Free T3, Free T4, Total T3, Total T4, Reverse T3, T3 Uptake, TPO Antibodies, and Thyroglobulin Antibodies. Big difference, right? A conventional doctor diagnoses hypothyroidism once the TSH reads above 4.5, whereas research shows that many people experience significant negative effects when TSH is as low as 2.5, especially when assessing functional metabolic health. A complete thyroid panel with functional ranges further allows us to assess of the WHY, the underlying conditions of a sluggish or overactive thyroid, such as impaired gut health, micronutrient imbalances, liver stagnation, etc).

How My Client Paola Reversed Hypothyroidism Within 6 Months

My client Paola, who is a cancer survivor and had her thyroid removed, had in the 11 years of working with her endocrinologist never run a Full Thyroid Panel. She suffered from typical hypothyroid symptoms such as stubborn weight gain, chronic fatigue, feeling cold easily, and heart palpitations. Paola became frustrated with her doctor as he claimed her symptoms as “normal part of aging” but she knew she was not intended to feel like this and that there was a missing piece to her health and weight loss puzzle. Via advanced lab testing, and customized holistic protocols that targeted her root causes, ALL of her markers that had been out of range went within 6 months back into the optimal range, without the use of any medication. She lost weight not only while walking though the protocols, but continuously drops more pounds afterward:

Pretty impressive right? Paola says: “After finishing my protocols with Shalin, I honestly feel like 100%. There is no brain fog anymore, my energy levels are ALWAYS 100%, so I can now take spinning classes.” You can learn more about her story here.

Now, with those insights, are you ready to run proper bloodwork? Do you feel like crap and want to address your body’s imbalances BEFORE they have progressed to a full range of symptoms? I’ve got you covered. You can order a comprehensive panel here - with includes the necessary markers that conventional doctors typically do not run. If you would like me to explain to you line by line in a 45 min consultation what your results actually mean, get your blood work order + an analysis here.

Remember, symptoms are only your body’s way of asking for help. They are very common, but not normal. Health is not the absence of disease, rather you feel your absolute best: amazing energy, great digestion, a healthy body weight, etc. Optimal health allows you to thrive in life, rather than managing symptoms! I’ve you are experiencing symptoms or want to look and feel better – it is time to take action!