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 ...

Hemoglobin is a protein in red blood cells. It carries oxygen around your body, delivering it to tissues. Hemoglobin also carries carbon dioxide to the lungs so you can breathe it out. Iron is a part ...

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 ...

DEAR DR. ROACH: I am a 73-year-old female. A recent blood test returned an eGFR (estimated glomerular filtration rate) of 59. My physician’s nurse told me that the test was normal. When I asked her ...

Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Public Health, Colorado State University Your blood serves numerous roles to maintain your health. To carry out these ...

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 ...

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 ...