Dr. Mark Hyman
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
What the hell does normal mean?
Normal.
is essentially it's a scientific term that means two standard deviations from the mean.
So when you look at the average of the population, you do two standard deviations separate from that.
That's what's normal.
So it could be if you're 2 or 92, you know, that's a big range of people.
And we want to look at what's optimal, not what's normal.
And just to help you understand this, if you were to land in America,
And you would say, you know, what is the normal weight of Americans?
It's overweight, because 75% of us are overweight.
It's abnormal to be thin in America today.
But it doesn't mean it's good.
It just means it's, quote, normal.
So we want to get away from saying, oh, your labs are normal.
You're fine.
We want to look at what is optimal.
What is an optimal lab range?
In other words, your vitamin D on the lab says...
it's 29, that's low.
If it's 31, that's good.