the reference range for zinc, as is the case for many essential nutrients, includes the sick and the healthy under the bell curve of normal.
please let that sink in. i'm confident we've been over this point in the past.
only truly severe deficiencies are flagged in most bloodwork. sure they've gotten around to within-normal gradations for iron and d3 but for most tests the shadings just have not been figured out and programmed in. luckily you can figure out what zinc levels the truly healthy controls are at in research, and aim to be like them
