Normal Is Not the Goal: Why Feeling “Fine” Is the Most Overlooked Health Warning

What if the real health issue isn’t disease — but adaptation?

In this episode of Your Infinite Health, we unpack a belief that quietly keeps people stuck: the idea that normal equals healthy.

LeNae Goolsby and Trip Goolsby, MD explore the space between being clinically “fine” and actually feeling well — the gray zone where fatigue, pain, brain fog, poor sleep, and declining resilience quietly take root.

You’ll learn why:

• “Normal” lab results often miss early dysfunction
• Chronic stress doesn’t cause immediate disease — it causes adaptation
• Pushing harder can worsen symptoms instead of resolving them
• Biological reserve functions like a health savings account
• Mind–body work is physiology, not positivity
• Early warning signs are a gift — not something to ignore

This conversation reframes health as capacity, resilience, and repair — not symptom suppression — and explains how changing the signals your body receives can restore momentum before breakdown occurs.

If you’ve ever been told everything looks fine but you don’t feel fine, this episode is for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Welcome to Your Infinite Health. Are you getting older? Are you feeling it? How would you like to do that in reverse? We're your host, Dr. Tripp and Lin. We've run an integrative medicine practice for 13 years. Together, we have 60 years of combined experience helping clients.

SPEAKER_03: 0:18

We've helped tens of thousands achieve success in health and live longer, happier lives.

SPEAKER_01: 0:24

In this show, we'll cover peer-reviewed and evidence-based integrative approaches to creating the health you've always wanted.

SPEAKER_03: 0:31

We also share professional experience we see in the field every day.

SPEAKER_01: 0:35

So if you're ready to feel, look, and live your best life, you're in the right place.

SPEAKER_03: 0:40

Welcome to your infinite health podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 0:45

Hey Trip, what's going on?

SPEAKER_03: 0:47

Not much. Just finished up with my last patient in clinic. It was one of those days. How about you?

SPEAKER_00: 0:54

I'm good. Just doing the do. You know how it is.

SPEAKER_03: 0:57

That feels very on brand for you. Consistently doing the do.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02

Very. So I wanted to try something new with the podcast these next few rounds. I have an idea I've been kicking around.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10

Okay, I'm listening.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11

I've been thinking a lot about this idea that normal is not the goal. Specifically, I'm fascinated by that moment when someone goes to the doctor, explains all their symptoms, and the doctor says, Well, everything looks fine. You're normal. And somehow hearing you're fine makes them feel a hundred times worse.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32

Yeah, that's a real thing. It's incredibly invalidating for people. They feel dismissed because their lived experience doesn't match the data they're being given.

SPEAKER_00: 1:42

Exactly. So I thought, what if we did a series unpacking that? Not in a dramatic alarmist way, just honestly, a real conversation about that gray area between being clinically sick and actually feeling well.

SPEAKER_03: 1:58

I mean, that's a conversation that needs to be had.

SPEAKER_00: 2:01

Perfect. But before we get into the heavy stuff, I have a joke. You know I went on that ski trip recently, right?

SPEAKER_03: 2:10

I don't think you mentioned it. So do tell.

SPEAKER_00: 2:14

Well, it started off great drum roll, but then it was all downhill from there.

SPEAKER_03: 2:22

That was terrible.

SPEAKER_00: 2:23

I know, I'm sorry. I have a new dad joke calendar and well, it was there. Okay, that's enough damage for today. Let's get to the meat of this sode. So if you're listening and you're someone who is on paper doing everything right, you're functioning, you're productive, maybe even a high achiever, you're responsible, but you're carrying this deep fatigue that a nap or even a whole weekend of sleep doesn't seem to fix. Or maybe you're managing chronic pain, but it's never really resolved. It's just always there. Or maybe you're doing all the healthy things, eating clean, exercising, but you don't actually feel healthy. This conversation is for you.

SPEAKER_03: 3:08

And that's a bigger group of people than most realize. I see them every single day in my practice. They are the engine of our society. The people holding everything together for their families, their jobs, their communities. And they often feel like they're the only ones who feel this way, that it's some kind of personal failing.

SPEAKER_00: 3:28

Right. And that brings me to something you say that I think sometimes catches people off guard. You say most people who feel this way don't actually have a health problem in the way we typically think of one. Can you explain what you mean by that? But explain it like you're talking to a patient, not another doctor.

SPEAKER_03: 3:48

Sure. When I say that, trying to make a critical distinction between disease and dysfunction. Most of these individuals don't have a diagnosable disease. Their organs are intact, their systems are technically functional, and they still have a reasonable capacity to get through the day. Biologically, nothing is catastrophically failing. What is happening instead is a state of adaptation. Their entire biology has shifted to adapt to a state of chronic stress, pressure, and vigilance over a long period of time.

SPEAKER_00: 4:22

So you're talking about the biological reserve. Can you explain that concept?

SPEAKER_03: 4:28

Exactly. Think of your health like a bank account. Your biological reserve is your savings. When you're young and healthy, you have a huge reserve. You can pull all-nighters, eat poorly, handle stress, and bounce back quickly because you're making huge deposits of rest and recovery. But over time, with constant demands, you start making more withdrawals than deposits. You're still paying your daily bills, going to work, taking care of family, so on. So on the surface, you look financially solvent, but your savings, your reserve is dwindling. You're living paycheck to paycheck physiologically. You don't have a buffer for unexpected stressors. And that's when you start to feel constantly fatigued and unwell, even though you're not sick yet.

SPEAKER_00: 5:23

You're one unexpected expense away from disaster. So when you say the body has adapted, what does that actually look like on the inside? What is the body doing in this state?

SPEAKER_03: 5:35

It looks like the body becoming incredibly conservative with its resources. Imagine a company facing a potential recession. It cuts budgets for research and development, for long-term projects, for office upgrades. It focuses only on core operations essential for immediate survival. The body does the same thing. Energy output drops, so you feel tired. Cellular repair and regeneration slow down because that's a long-term investment, and low-grade systemic inflammation increases. This isn't because something is broken, it's a strategic, intelligent response. The system is prioritizing short-term survival over long-term optimization and thriving.

SPEAKER_00: 6:21

When people hear the word survival, I think their minds immediately jump to capital T trauma, like a major accident or a catastrophic event. But are we talking about that here or is it something more subtle?

SPEAKER_03: 6:34

Most of the time, it's something much more subtle. It's the drip-drip of everyday life in the modern world. It's the constant deadlines at work, it's the immense responsibility of caretaking for children or aging parents, the financial pressure, the always-on nature of our phones, the constant self-monitoring on social media. It's the accumulation of these seemingly small stressors. You don't need a single catastrophic event to condition a nervous system into a state of chronic vigilance. You just need time and consistency.

SPEAKER_00: 7:10

So let me try to reflect this back to make sure I'm getting this. If your body perceives rightly or wrongly that it's under constant demand and threat, it makes a strategic choice to divert resources away from long-term projects like tissue repair, robust immune function, and hormonal balance, and instead hoard those resources for immediate survival needs. Is that a fair summary?

SPEAKER_03: 7:36

That's exactly it. The body is constantly running a subconscious risk assessment. It asks one fundamental question before anything else. Is this a safe environment to heal, repair, and build for the future? If the answer, based on the signals it's receiving, is no, then optimization gets postponed indefinitely. Repair is a luxury for peacetime, and these bodies are living in a perpetual state of low-grade warmth.

SPEAKER_00: 8:06

This is where people get so frustrated, isn't it? Because from their perspective, they're doing all the right things. They're disciplined with their diet, they're consistent with their workouts, they're trying so hard to be healthy.

SPEAKER_03: 8:19

And that very effort, that trying harder, can actually reinforce the underlying problem. It's a paradox that is very difficult for high achievers to accept. They double down on high-intensity workouts. They adopt restrictive diets like intermittent fasting. They push through the fatigue because that's what has always worked for them in other areas of life. Discipline is incredibly useful, but only when the capacity to execute and recover exists. If the nervous system is already in a guarded threat response state, pushing harder just adds another stressor to the pile. It increases stress chemistry. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, stays elevated, disrupting sleep and metabolism. Systemic inflammation stays active, causing brain fog and aches. Hormones that govern repair and vitality, like thyroid and sex hormones, begin to flatten. The windows for recovery after a workout or a stressful day completely disappear. So people feel like they're failing when in reality they're just asking way too much of a system that is already intelligently and appropriately protecting itself.

SPEAKER_00: 9:32

So the advice to try harder isn't just unhelpful, it can actually make things worse.

SPEAKER_03: 9:38

Often it's profoundly counterproductive. The correct instruction isn't push harder, it's change the signal. You have to change the inputs to the system to convince it that the environment is safe enough to come out of survival mode.

SPEAKER_00: 9:53

And this is where, as we said at the beginning, people can feel so dismissed by the conventional medical system. They go in, explain their fatigue, their brain fog, their pain, and they're told everything is fine because their lab work comes back normal.

SPEAKER_03: 10:08

That's because Western medicine is a system designed to identify and treat symptoms. It's not designed to understand or unwind conditioned physiology. If your labs are within the normal reference range and your organs are structurally intact, the system has done its job and it moves on. It doesn't have the framework to address suboptimal function.

SPEAKER_00: 10:29

Okay, let's back up and dig into that. When a doctor tells a patient their labs are normal, what does that actually mean from a data perspective?

SPEAKER_03: 10:38

It means their results fall within a very broad statistical reference range. That range is calculated from a bell curve of all the people, most of whom are not in optimal health, who have had that test done at that lab. The edges of that range are designed to catch outright disease. For example, the range for TSH, a key thyroid hormone, might be 0.5 to 4.5. If you're at 4.4, you're considered normal, even though research shows many people feel symptomatic and unwell at levels above 2.5. The system isn't looking for optimal function, it's looking for a for-alarm fire. Early dysfunction doesn't show up as a raging fire, it shows up as smoke.

SPEAKER_00: 11:22

So when people hear terms like mind-body connection, they can get nervous. They think it's woo-woo or new age stuff. They think it means they're being told to just think positive, which can feel like toxic positivity when you feel physically awful. That's not what you mean when you talk about this, is it?

SPEAKER_03: 11:40

Not at all. This isn't about affirmations. This is about physiology. It's about tangible, measurable biology. When we have a stressful thought, our brain releases chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline. That's not woo. That's a physiological fact. We look at nervous system tone by measuring heart rate variability. We look at stress chemistry through saliva or urine tests that map the cortisol curve. We assess sleep quality, inflammation patterns, hormone levels, and metabolic function all together as an interconnected system. The mind is simply the organ that perceives threat, and the body is what responds to that perception. Repair requires permission, and that permission is a physiological signal, not just the thoughts.

SPEAKER_00: 12:26

So if the goal isn't pushing harder, what does changing the signal look like in a practical sense? Where does someone even start?

SPEAKER_03: 12:35

It starts with sending the body consistent signals of safety and resource availability. For example, sleep. We have to fiercely protect our sleep, not as a luxury, but as a non-negotiable biological necessity. Another huge one is nutrition timing. So many people in the state are skipping breakfast and relying on coffee, which is another stress signal. Eating a protein-rich breakfast within an hour of waking tells your nervous system that you are not in a famine, that resources are plentiful. It's a powerful safety signal. And with movement, it means swapping a grueling cortisol spiking workout for something restorative, like a long walk in nature, gentle yoga, or tai chi. The goal is to create the conditions where repair becomes not just possible but inevitable.

SPEAKER_00: 13:24

Okay, so last question. What is the one thing you want them to hear today?

SPEAKER_03: 13:38

That they're early, and being early is a profound gift. You're getting the warning signals before a major system breakdown. And course correction works best before the engine completely fails. This feeling isn't a sign of weakness, it's an invitation to listen to your body and change the signals you're sending it.

SPEAKER_00: 13:57

So you would say normal is not the goal then, right?

SPEAKER_03: 14:01

Right. In fact, optimal is the goal. Living a longer, more vibrant life is the goal.

SPEAKER_00: 14:07

Absolutely. All right, guys, I hope you all found that informational, educational, and somewhat entertaining. Until next time.

SPEAKER_03: 14:16

Thanks for subscribing to Your Infinite Help. I'm Dr. Tripp.

SPEAKER_01: 14:20

And I'm Lynne. Until next time, feel it, look it, and live it.