What Does Your Body Need Now? Minerals, Patterns + Ecology

What Does Your Body Need Now? Minerals, Patterns + Ecology

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I just got my 48th hair tissue mineral analysis back.

Twelve years of running this test on myself — every quarter, through every season, every transition, every difficult chapter and every rebuilding season.

And what I've learned in that time has very little to do with which minerals were low and which were high.

What it's taught me is how to read patterns. And more than that — how to ask a better question.

Not: which minerals do I need to fix?

But: what does this version of me need now?

That shift sounds subtle. But it changes everything about how I approach this work. And I think it might change something for you too.

Why minerals feel so complicated

Minerals are having a moment in the wellness world, and in many ways I love that. They are foundational. They matter enormously.

But I'm also watching them get pulled into the same fragmented model so many of us were trying to escape.

How much magnesium do I need? Should I take potassium? My copper is low — do I supplement? Which cell salt? Wait, zinc antagonizes copper. Calcium affects magnesium...

And suddenly something that is inherently relational has become fourteen bottles on the counter and another complicated protocol to manage.

I've watched people spend years trying to micromanage their mineral levels one at a time, getting increasingly frustrated that things aren't shifting. And the reason, almost always, is the same.

They're treating minerals like individual replacement parts.

When minerals are actually an ecology.

What that means in practice

Ecology is the study of relationships. And your minerals are deeply relational — with each other, with your hormones, your gut, your nervous system, your digestion, your sleep, your stress, your history, and the demands your particular life has been placing on your body.

Which means seeing a mineral that's low and immediately thinking "I need more of that" often misses the point entirely.

Supply matters — you can't build with raw materials you don't have. But supply is only the beginning of the story. What happens after a mineral enters your body — whether you can absorb it, transport it, use it inside your cells, retain it, and regulate what gets lost — that's where most of the story actually lives.

This is why someone can eat beautifully and still not feel nourished. Why two people eating the same diet can have completely different mineral patterns. Why the answer isn't always more.

The question that changed everything for me

Here's the piece I keep coming back to after 48 tests.

We can't talk about mineral health only from the perspective of what's coming in. We also have to ask what your particular life has asked your body to do with the resources it has.

Two people can eat similar diets and take the same supplements — and have completely different physiological landscapes. Because one is sleeping well in a stable season of life, and another is raising children, caregiving, working long hours, moving through a hormonal transition, recovering from illness. Or several of those things at once.

The body adapts to that. That's what bodies do. They're supposed to.

But sometimes the demands continue long enough, or stack high enough, that adaptation becomes compensation. The body prioritizes one function over another. Resources get allocated differently. A pattern develops that worked incredibly well to get you through a particular season — but isn't necessarily where you want to remain.

Your biography becomes your biology.

And when I look at an HTMA, that's what I'm actually reading. Not a list of things that are wrong. A map of how this particular person's body has organized itself around everything it's been asked to live through.

That distinction matters. Because understanding how you got here gives you somewhere to begin working with it — rather than against it.

What I'm really looking for after 48 tests

I've never arrived at a test where every mineral is sitting perfectly in range and someone hands me a certificate that says: congratulations, you've completed health. 😂

That's not how living systems work.

The question I care about far more is: what can I handle now that I couldn't handle before?

How well do I recover? Can I sleep? Can I think clearly? Can I move my body and actually recover from it? Can I move through a difficult week without losing my footing for the next month?

That's capacity. And looking back across twelve years, that's where I see the most meaningful change.

There have been seasons where my body had to do enormous amounts of compensating. Seasons where I finally had enough stability to start rebuilding what those years required of me. And now, heading into menopause and my 48th test, new things are showing up — some things have shifted tremendously, some patterns that used to be loud aren't asking for much anymore, and some things are saying: hey. It's my turn now.

I'm not trying to get back to what my test looked like five years ago. I'm asking: what does this version of me need now?

That question is what I want to explore with you in this episode. Because I think it's one most of us haven't been taught to ask — and once you start, it changes not just how you think about minerals, but how you think about your health entirely.

A personal update

This past year of working with clients inside Minerals & Microbes has reinforced so much of what I talk about in this episode. Four months can be incredibly productive — but sometimes what a person needs is more time and space to work through layers without rushing the process.

So beginning in September, I'm adding an eight-month Minerals & Microbes container alongside my existing four-month program. Some people need a focused four-month period of support. Others are arriving with years of accumulated patterns and want more space to repair, rebuild, retest, and continue working through what their body reveals next.

If you'd like to learn more about working together, you can explore both options here.

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