Your doctor says everything looks fine, but you still feel terrible. The problem might not be your health but how labs define “normal.” Understanding the difference between normal and optimal could ...

Run-of-the mill? Middle of the road? Typical? The chance that you are correct is vanishingly small. If you're a clinician, like me, you get a LOT of medical questions. While we've all been asked to ...

When the U.S. wrestler and actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was in his prime, his Body Mass Index (BMI) was around 33 kg/m², technically ‘obese’ by World Health Organization (WHO) standards. Yet no one ...

What Does a Hematocrit Test Measure? A hematocrit test is a blood test that measures the level of red blood cells in your blood. Your blood is made up of plasma and blood cells. Plasma is the liquid ...

Have you heard of the stress hormone? It is called cortisol. As an essential hormone, cortisol is made by the adrenal glands sitting atop the kidneys. It is called the stress hormone because cortisol ...

Labs calculate normal by testing everyone who walks through the door, including patients with undiagnosed conditions and chronic diseases. The middle 95 percent becomes the reference range, whether ...