28/01/2026
“My labs are normal… but I don’t feel like myself anymore.”
Yes I hear this all the time.
And usually it’s followed by confusion.
Self-doubt.
Or the quiet implication that if nothing obvious is showing up on paper, then maybe what you’re experiencing isn’t real, or isn’t important enough to keep looking at.
Here’s the part that doesn’t get said often enough:
“Normal” labs don’t always mean normal physiology.
Many reference ranges are built on averages, take thyroid for example.
And those averages come from people who were unwell enough to be tested in the first place.
So yes you can absolutley land “in range”
and still have a body that’s struggling to function well.
I also learned this the hard way.
Years ago, I had an enlarged thyroid. A scan showed a nodule that needed investigating. I walked into my appointment with a full A4 page of symptoms, things that were destroying my quality of life, every single day.
The conclusion written on my discharge summary?
“Asymptomatic thyroiditis.”
Because my TSH (the only test run then) was in the normal range.
That A word sure felt like a kick in the guts.
On paper, parts of my picture looked acceptable (blood results).
In my body, they absolutely were not.
That experience changed how I think about health forever and when I realised I had exhausted the medical system, changed my trajectory.
It made something very clear to me:
test results are just one small piece of a much bigger story.
They don’t capture nervous system strain.
They don’t reflect long-term stress load.
They don’t show how resilient, or depleted your system actually is.
Your experience matters.
How you feel matters.
And you deserve to be heard.
When something feels off, that’s information,
even if it doesn’t come back highlighted on a report.
If you’ve ever been told everything looked “fine” while your body was clearly telling a different story, you’re not imagining it.
And you’re not alone.
If this resonates and you’re tired of being told everything is “normal,” my inbox is always open.
