Your Doctor Said You're Fine. Your Body Disagrees.

You just spent $2,500 on an executive physical. Maybe more. The results came back and your doctor told you what you wanted to hear: cholesterol is acceptable, blood pressure is reasonable, no signs of diabetes.

You're healthy.

So why do you still feel like sh*t?

The 3pm crash that coffee stopped fixing six months ago. The brain fog that makes you reread emails three times before responding. The fact that you woke up this morning without the energy you had at 35, or even 40.

Your labs say you're fine. Your body says otherwise.

One of them is wrong.

The Problem with Normal

Here's what nobody tells you about standard blood panels, and it's worth understanding because it explains a lot of the frustration you're probably feeling.

When your doctor runs a CBC and metabolic panel, they're only checking whether you're sick enough to treat. They're just looking for the big stuff: diabetes, kidney failure, liver problems, etc. Important, sure, but it's a bit like checking whether your house is on fire while completely ignoring the crack running through the foundation.

The thing is, the reference ranges on your lab report come from averaging millions of Americans, and the average American is overweight, inflamed, and pre-diabetic.

So when you fall within that range, your doctor checks the box and moves on. You go home feeling validated for about ten minutes, and then you're back at your desk at 2pm wondering why your brain feels like it's running through mud.

Then you start to think maybe you're just making it up.

You're not.

Being normal in America just means you're not in an emergency. It does not mean you're performing anywhere close to where you could be.

What Standard Labs Miss

The tests your doctor ran are missing an entire category of health, and it's the one that actually explains how you feel. Vascular efficiency.

Your brain consumes about 20% of your body's oxygen supply. Your cardiovascular system is responsible for delivering that oxygen. When the delivery system starts to degrade, even slightly, the first organs to suffer are the ones that need the most blood flow.

Your brain is one of them.

The other is the one you probably don't want to talk about.

Here's the uncomfortable truth, and you've probably already sensed this on some level. The same vascular dysfunction that causes brain fog is the same dysfunction that causes erection problems. The blood vessels in erectile tissue are only 1-2mm wide. The coronary arteries in your heart are 3-4mm. The small pipes fail first, which is why ED often shows up years before a cardiac event.

But your doctor isn't testing for early-stage vascular dysfunction. They're testing cholesterol levels. And cholesterol is just the cargo in the blood. It tells you nothing about the quality of the road it travels on.

You can have perfect LDL numbers and still have blood vessels that are stiffening, inflamed, and struggling to deliver oxygen where it needs to go.

Why You Feel Gaslit

This is the part that makes men furious.

You know something is wrong. You feel it every day. But when you bring it to your doctor, they look at your labs and say the same thing: everything looks fine, maybe try reducing stress.

It's not gaslighting in the malicious sense and your doctor isn't lying to you. They're just using the only tools insurance pays for, and those tools were designed to simply catch emergencies, rather than mitigate decline.

So you fall through the gap. You're not sick enough to treat, but you're not well enough to function at full capacity.

The system doesn't have a category for that.

The Markers That Matter

There are biomarkers that can detect early vascular dysfunction before it ever shows up on a standard panel, and most doctors don't run them because they're not part of the standard of care.

ADMA (Asymmetric Dimethylarginine) measures your body's ability to produce nitric oxide, which is the molecule that keeps blood vessels relaxed and flexible. When ADMA is elevated, your vessels stiffen. Blood flow drops. Then brain fog, fatigue, and performance issues follow.

hs-CRP (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein) measures systemic inflammation. Chronic low-grade inflammation damages the lining of blood vessels over time, and it doesn't show up as high cholesterol until the damage is already advanced.

Homocysteine is an amino acid that, when elevated, indicates vascular toxicity. High homocysteine is associated with cognitive decline and cardiovascular risk, but it's rarely included in standard panels.

These aren't exotic tests either. They're available at most labs. They're just not part of what your insurance considers necessary, because the standard of care was built for sick people. Not for high performers trying to figure out why they can't think straight at 3pm.

What This Means for You

You're not crazy nor are you imagining it. Your body's simply telling you something is off because something is off. It's just that the tests your doctor ran weren't designed to find it.

The good news is that early-stage vascular dysfunction is measurable. And in most cases, it's improvable. Start with our Vascular Age Calculator to estimate where you stand. You don't have to accept normal when normal means declining.

Your labs might say you're fine.

But you already knew that wasn't the whole story.