Functional Labs for ADHD Moms with Hali Laricey
You went to the doctor. You said you were tired. You said you couldn’t focus. You said you had brain fog and joint pain and a stomach that has been off for years. They ran your labs. Everything came back “within range.”
You still feel terrible.
Hali Laricey has been on the receiving end of that conversation, both as a patient and as a practitioner. She is a Certified Functional Wellness Practitioner who works with women to find the actual story their labs are telling. She joined the podcast and gave us some practical advice we are all looking for.
“There is a huge gap between our moms who are sitting in the weeds going ‘help, help, help!’ and traditional medicine,” Hali said. “Even functional medicine, for that matter, is way up in the clouds, going ‘okay, here’s your fifteen minutes.’ There is a gap there.”
Her work lives inside that gap.
The Quick Win: breathe, on purpose
Hali’s first move for an overwhelmed mom is one she said she was almost embarrassed to recommend because “everybody says that.” But she explained why it’s important.
When you are overstimulated, your breath gets shallower and shallower. Less oxygen reaches your brain. Your thinking gets foggier. You feel a little faint. You sweat. Your nervous system goes into alarm mode, and your body tries to keep up.
A deliberate breath, counting to four on the inhale, holding, then exhaling, releases certain neural connections and engages others. It is a reset. It costs nothing. It works in thirty seconds.
“It may sound benign,” Hali said. “But it’s not. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a really big deal.”
That is the foundation. Before any lab work, any supplement protocol, any intervention. Breathe.
Why “within range” is not an answer
The center of Hali’s work is helping women read their own labs through a functional lens. The trap she keeps pulling people out of is the “within range” trap. I personally have heard this often. What I’m learning is that my range is different from someone else's. My tolerance level is different than yours.
Standard lab reference ranges are built on population averages. Most of the population is not optimally well. They are tired. They are inflamed. They are running on coffee and stress. The range you are comparing yourself to is a range of people who feel mostly the way you do.
“I’m looking for optimization,” Hali said. “I want everybody to live optimally. Living on that verge of being sick all the time is not acceptable to me.”
Her example landed: a TSH of .4 is fine. But if your TSH has been .4 for years and is slowly creeping up to 2, 3, 4.4, that is “still within range.” It is also telling a completely different story. The trajectory matters. The pattern matters. Most fifteen-minute appointments are not built to see either one.
The three markers every ADHD mom can look at this week
This is the part of the conversation I want every listener to remember. Hali walked through three specific markers on the Complete Blood Count with differential - the CBC with diff. Every primary care doctor can run this. Most do not include the differential automatically. Ask for it.
Then scroll down to the bottom of your CBC.
Neutrophils. The optimal target is around 60%. Consistently higher means a chronic bacterial or fungal load somewhere in your body. The symptoms can be fatigue, body pain, recurring UTIs that come right back after antibiotics, SIBO, IBS, constipation, diarrhea. “You’d be surprised at how many people have consistently high neutrophils at 70%, 72%, and they don’t have a cold,” Hali said. “They just have this low-lying but chronic tug going on in their immune system.”
Lymphocytes. The target is around 30%. Higher means a hidden viral load. Lymphocytes elevated above 35% can show up as anxiety, depression, joint pain, migraines, autoimmune conditions. Hali has seen lymphocytes in the high forties and fifties on women who had been told they were just stressed. They were not just stressed. Something was actively draining them.
Monocytes. The optimal is 7% or less. Above that, sometimes as high as 15%, often points to a reactivated virus. Epstein-Barr (mono) is the most common one. Once you have had mono, the virus lives in your body for life. The goal is to keep it dormant. Monocytes above 7% may indicate it is not dormant.
This is a five-minute exercise. Pull up your lab portal. Find your most recent CBC. Look at those three numbers.
Why the gut is doing more than you think
Hali made a connection that grounds everything else she said: at least 70% of the immune system lives in the gut. She believes it is higher. The gut is also where the “gut feeling” actually lives. Bad news hits your gut before it hits your head. That is the vagus nerve telling your immune system to brace.
For ADHD moms specifically, the consequences stack.
Chronic stress depletes the gut. A depleted gut weakens the immune system. A weak immune system creates the inflammation that compromises the gut-brain axis. Your focus, your mood, your nervous system regulation, all run on signals that get muddier when the gut is in trouble.
“Mom carries it all for everyone,” Hali said. “She needs to use her executive functioning for everyone else, and she’s struggling with her own.
That right there causes anxiety and stress and overwhelm. That leads to things like adrenal fatigue. Your body is like ‘okay, I am going to hold it for you for a little bit. But I am going to need some help.’”
Hali’s adrenal fatigue story
Hali spent years feeling like something was wrong. She finally said the words “adrenal fatigue” to her doctor. Her doctor said, “Oh, that’s not really a thing.” She felt dismissed. She thought it must be in her head.
Three years later, she changed doctors, learned to read lab work for herself, and ran her own back-to-back panels. The pattern was there in every set. Adrenal fatigue, as she had suspected, was visible all along.
“Had I known then,” she said, “I could have done things differently.”
That story is why she does this work. She does not want any other woman to spend three years carrying something her labs could have explained.
Vitamin D, with cofactors
One of Hali’s most practical takeaways was about Vitamin D, because so many ADHD moms are running on low D and do not know it, or are taking it and not absorbing it.
The standard lab range starts at 30. Hali’s target is 80 or above. The difference is dramatic.
She also warned about the Costco bottle. She had a client who took a high-dose Vitamin D from Costco for six months. His level climbed to over a hundred. He felt no different. The reason: his cells were inflamed. Vitamin D is a hormone. If the cellular membrane is inflamed, the hormone cannot enter the cell. The number on the report went up. The benefit never arrived.
The fix is two-part: address the inflammation, and use a Vitamin D supplement that includes cofactors like K2 to support absorption.
What Hali wants ADHD moms to take away from this conversation
“I want our moms at the end of this conversation to feel like ‘I can be grounded in this.’”
And: “I am presenting myself today as somebody that your moms can trust to ask those questions of. If I don’t know the answer, I will be the first to say, ‘You know, that’s a really good question, and I don’t know.’”
That posture, the curious practitioner who has lived inside this and is offering to be the bridge, is rare. It is also exactly what most of us need when we are exhausted, foggy, carrying everyone, and getting fifteen minutes of someone else’s time to figure out why.
What to try this week
Pull your last CBC. Look at neutrophils, lymphocytes, and monocytes. Write down your numbers next to the optimal targets: 60, 30, 7.
Then ask for a CBC with differential next time, and add Vitamin D, fasting insulin, and ferritin to the request. Save them in your portal. You are building a picture of yourself over time.
And before any of that, in the next sixty seconds, breathe. Four in, hold, slow exhale. Repeat once.
That is the beginning of designing a body that can actually do mom life.
How Hali works with people
Most of Hali’s clients start at the same place: a Functional Lens Lab Review. It is built for the exact moment this episode is about: when your labs come back “normal,” and you still don’t feel like yourself.
“I review several years of blood work through a functional medicine lens,” Hali said, “looking for patterns, trends, and clues that help explain symptoms and point toward areas that deserve more attention.”
That review is usually the first time the picture starts to make sense. From there, most people want to keep going. Once you can see the patterns in your own labs, it is hard to unsee them. That is where Hali builds something more personalized, shaped around a client’s labs, their history, and what their body is actually asking for.
Find Hali at halilaricey.com. Download her Dream Labs List and add fasting insulin and ferritin. Book a personalized functional lab review with her.
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Listen to my conversation with Hali Laricey - podcast episode below - be sure to subscribe to the show - we would LOVE for you to join us!!
