Aaron Hartman, MDFunctional Medicine Specialist | Clinical Researcher

Redefining Normal Bloodwork

2 Jul 2025 · 1 min

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YouTube video (Aaron Hartman, MD) arguing that conventional laboratory reference ranges—typically set as ±2 standard deviations around the population mean—no longer indicate optimal health because much of the population has metabolic disease. The speaker recommends more stringent/‘optimal’ targets for certain labs (example: an optimal liver value <20 on a component of the comprehensive metabolic panel).

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Typically, lab ranges are based on two standard deviations of the mean, meaning the average typical person, 95% of the population falls in that range. Well, today's normal quote, unquote, people are sick, we're diabetic, we're obese, we're inflamed, we have high blood pressure, we have metabolic syndrome, we have toxicity issues. So that that concept of a normal range isn't super helpful anymore. So let's go through a couple other labs like that. Are you looking at a comprehensive metabolic panel? You might see your liver on some levels and have a normal range, but actually optimal for your liver is actually a level less than 20.