My Labs Post Got 50,000 Views. The Comments From Doctors Broke My Heart.

A few weeks ago I published a post called “The Labs I Run on Every Patient. Print This. Bring It to Your Doctor.”

It got over 50,000 views. Over 1,000 shares. Hundreds of you printed the cheat sheet, brought it to your appointments, texted it to your mothers and daughters and friends. Women sent me screenshots from the lab waiting room holding the printed list. That response was the most beautiful thing I’ve experienced since starting this Substack.

And then I read the comments from practitioners.

---

A physician with 30 years of experience said he doesn’t feel “compelled to optimize every part of his patients’ health” and sleeps fine at night. I wonder if his patients with undiagnosed Hashimoto’s sleep as well.

A former head of a PA program called it “a poor approach to practice and a waste of resources.”

Another said there was “zero evidence for blanket testing of this scale.”

One accused me of being burnt out and marketing cash-pay services.

One said the knowledge in my post was “of no value.”

And one — a doctor — wrote: “Don’t listen to this crazy woman.”

I read every single comment. And what I felt wasn’t anger. It was heartbreak.

Because I know where these providers are coming from. They’re inside a system that gives them 15 minutes, tells them which labs they’re allowed to run, and rewards them for staying inside the guidelines. Most of them are doing their best. I respect that.

But defending that system’s limitations as if they’re features — telling women that wanting comprehensive labs is wasteful, that the knowledge to understand their own bodies has “no value,” that a $25 fasting insulin test is a waste of resources — that I cannot stay quiet about.

---

Let’s talk about the “expensive tests” argument because it makes me want to throw my laptop.

A fasting insulin costs $10-25 cash. That one test shows insulin resistance a full decade before blood sugar ever looks abnormal. It can help prevent or catch early: type 2 diabetes, heart disease, what we now call PMOS (The Lancet just published a global consensus this week renaming PCOS to Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome — finally acknowledging it’s a hormonal and metabolic condition, not just an ovary problem), fatty liver disease, chronic inflammation, stubborn weight gain, brain fog, and energy crashes. And it’s nearly 100% reversible through lifestyle when caught early.

Unmanaged type 2 diabetes costs the average patient $9,600 per year. But sure. The $25 test is the waste of resources.

A full thyroid panel runs $75-100 cash. That’s the cost of catching Hashimoto’s a decade early instead of letting a woman suffer through her 30s and 40s thinking her fatigue and depression are “just stress” until her TSH finally hits 5.0 and someone hands her a prescription that never addresses the root cause.

The providers calling these tests wasteful are defending a system that would rather spend thousands managing disease than $25 preventing it. That math doesn’t make me burnt out. It makes me furious.

---

And yes — I don’t take insurance. Because insurance dictates what I can order and how I can take care of my patients. It tells me how long I can spend with someone. It decides what’s “medically necessary” based on guidelines built around disease management, not optimal health. I left that system because I refuse to practice with one hand tied behind my back.

I didn’t leave to get rich. I left because my daughter Zuza died after an 11-year cancer journey, and through that process it became permanently clear that this is my mission — to help people prevent disease and understand their own bodies before it’s too late. This isn’t a business strategy. It’s the thing I’m supposed to do with the rest of my life.

---

Here’s what’s coming next. Two things.

First — you asked me to break down these labs. So I will.

I’m starting a free series right here on this Substack going through every major lab marker. When it’s not optimal, what it could mean, what pattern it’s part of, what questions to ask your doctor. Free. For everyone. The education piece that’s missing from the system — the interpretation your doctor doesn’t have time to give you in 15 minutes.

Second — I already built something for you.

After the viral post, the same message kept coming: “I got the labs. Now what do my numbers mean?”

So I built a course called Beyond “Normal.” It’s $47.

Here’s the thing — you don’t need specialty labs to use it. You can put in whatever labs you already have. The basic CBC and CMP from your annual physical. The Quest results sitting in your patient portal right now. Whatever your doctor was willing to run. You paste your numbers in, and in 30 seconds the AI Lab Decoder — built on my 20-year clinical framework — tells you what I would tell you if I were reading them across from you.

Every marker rated as optimal, needs attention, or priority. The patterns that get missed when you look at one number at a time — insulin resistance, inflammation, subclinical thyroid dysfunction, nutrient depletion, methylation issues. Your top priorities with a simple action plan for each.

It’s not a diagnosis. It doesn’t replace your doctor. It’s the interpretation the system doesn’t provide — built from two decades of reading these labs every single day.

Eight video lessons. The AI Lab Decoder. Lifetime access. Works with the labs you already have.

Beyond “Normal”: How to Find What Your Doctor Missed — $47

---

The doctors in my comments aren’t bad people. But when a provider tells a woman that understanding her own labs has “no value” — when another calls me crazy for teaching people what to ask for — I know exactly why 3,000 of you subscribed in a month.

You’re tired of being dismissed. You’re tired of “normal.” And you’re ready to understand what’s actually happening inside your body.

I’m here for that. Let’s get to work.

And here’s your homework. Next week I’m kicking off the lab series with the single most important marker almost nobody is checking — fasting insulin. I’m going to break down exactly what it tells you, what optimal looks like, what the patterns mean, and what to do about it.

If you want to follow along with your own number, you don’t need a doctor’s order. You can go to Quest Diagnostics, order a fasting insulin yourself, and pay cash. It’s about $25. Do it this week so you have your result when the post drops. That way this isn’t theoretical — it’s personal.

— Dagmara

---

I write about integrative medicine, grief, the things about cancer nobody talks about, and everything I can’t say anywhere else. Subscribe — it’s free. Share this with the woman who just got her labs back and was told “everything looks fine.”

---

This post and the referenced course are for educational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The AI Lab Decoder is an educational tool, not a diagnostic instrument. Please work with your own healthcare provider for personalized medical care.