Foundations First: 5 Foundations I Look at When Supporting the Body
If you've spent any amount of time trying to improve your health, you probably know how overwhelming it can feel. Take this supplement. Avoid that food. Balance your hormones. Heal your gut. Lower your cortisol. Fix your metabolism. There is so much health information coming at us that it can be difficult to know what matters, what's actually true, or even where to begin.
This is one of the reasons I keep coming back to the foundations with the people I work with. Rather than immediately chasing individual symptoms, I like to ask: Does the body have what it needs to carry out its basic functions well? There are five foundational areas I find myself talking about again and again in my practice:
Digestion
Blood sugar regulation
Nervous system regulation
Mineral balance
Hydration
These five foundations certainly don't explain every symptom or every health condition. But they are involved in an incredible number of the processes our bodies rely on every single day. And perhaps most importantly, they don't operate independently. Let's look at each one.
1. Digestion
We often hear the phrase, "You are what you eat." But I like to take that a step further.
It's not only what you eat. It's what your body can break down, absorb and actually use.
Digestion begins before food ever reaches the intestines. Seeing, smelling and anticipating food begins preparing the digestive system. From there, stomach acid, digestive enzymes, bile, pancreatic secretions and intestinal function all work together to break food into forms the body can absorb and use.
That matters because our food is providing the raw materials the body needs for energy production, tissue repair, hormone production and countless other functions.
You can eat a wonderfully nutrient-dense diet, but we also need to consider how well you're digesting and absorbing those nutrients.
Notice the Connection 🌿
Digestion ↔ Nervous System
Your digestive system doesn't operate separately from your nervous system. When the body perceives stress or threat, resources can shift away from processes such as digestion toward those needed for an immediate response. This is one reason I care not only about what someone eats, but also about the state their body is in when they're eating.
2. Blood Sugar Regulation
Blood sugar regulation is simply the body's ability to keep the amount of glucose in the bloodstream within an appropriate range. After we eat, blood glucose naturally rises. In response, the pancreas releases insulin, which helps glucose move from the bloodstream into cells where it can be used for energy or stored for later.
Blood sugar rising after a meal isn't bad. It's normal physiology.
What we're interested in is how effectively the body manages those changes. When someone experiences large fluctuations, they may notice things like feeling shaky, irritable, unusually hungry, fatigued or headachy between meals. And blood sugar doesn't exist in its own little corner of the body either.
Notice the Connection 🌿
Blood Sugar ↔ Stress Response
When blood glucose gets too low, the body has mechanisms for bringing it back up. Stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol can be part of that response, helping make more fuel available. That means something happening metabolically inside the body can actually produce sensations that feel like stress—such as shakiness, a racing heart or feeling jittery. And the connection goes the other direction too: stress hormones can influence blood glucose.This is why I don't think we can have a complete conversation about blood sugar without eventually talking about the nervous system.
3. Nervous System Regulation
We tend to think of stress as the circumstances happening around us. A packed schedule. A difficult relationship. A demanding job. Not enough sleep. But the body's stress-response systems are responding to information from both outside and inside the body. The autonomic nervous system helps regulate processes we don't have to consciously think about—heart rate, digestion, blood pressure and many other functions. Our goal isn't to eliminate sympathetic nervous system activity. We need it!
The goal is flexibility: the ability to appropriately respond to a challenge and then return toward a more regulated state when that challenge has passed. This is why nervous system support is something I talk about so frequently in my practice. Nutrition matters tremendously. But the physiological environment in which we're asking the body to use that nutrition matters too.
4. Mineral Balance
Minerals may be tiny, but their jobs certainly aren't. Minerals such as magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium, zinc, copper and others participate in an enormous number of physiological processes.
They are involved in things like:
Nerve signaling
Muscle contraction
Fluid balance
Energy metabolism
Enzyme activity
Glucose metabolism
Thyroid physiology
Bone health
And one of the most important things to understand about minerals is that they don't work independently.
Mineral relationships and balance matter.
For example, sodium and potassium both play important roles in fluid balance and electrical activity across cell membranes. Zinc and copper interact with one another. Magnesium and calcium participate in many overlapping physiological processes.
This is also one reason I use Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA) as one tool in my practice. It gives me additional information about mineral patterns and relationships that I can consider alongside someone's health history, symptoms, nutrition and other available testing. HTMA isn't a stand-alone diagnosis or an answer to every symptom. It's another piece of the puzzle.
Notice the Connection 🌿
Minerals ↔ Blood Sugar ↔ Stress Response
Minerals such as magnesium, potassium, zinc and chromium participate in different aspects of glucose and insulin physiology. At the same time, minerals are involved in nervous system function and the physiological stress response. Again, we're seeing the same theme: These foundations overlap.
5. Hydration
When we hear "hydration," most of us immediately think: Drink more water.
Water is obviously essential—but hydration physiology involves more than simply how many ounces of water you drink. Electrolytes such as sodium and potassium help regulate fluid distribution, nerve impulses, muscle function and other processes throughout the body. This is why I like to think about hydration as water + electrolytes + the body's ability to appropriately regulate fluid, rather than simply trying to drink as much water as possible. And once again, we're right back to minerals.
Notice the Connection 🌿
Hydration ↔ Minerals
Sodium and potassium are both minerals and major electrolytes. So our "mineral foundation" and our "hydration foundation" were never really separate in the first place.
This Is What I Mean by Foundations
The more you learn about the body, the harder it becomes to draw neat little lines between its systems.
Digestion affects nutrient availability.
Nutrients and minerals participate in energy metabolism.
Blood sugar interacts with the stress response.
The nervous system influences digestion.
Minerals influence fluid balance.
Hydration influences nearly every tissue in the body.
Round and round we could go. And that's exactly the point. When someone comes to me with a symptom, of course I care about the symptom. But I also want to zoom out.
How is digestion functioning?
How stable is blood sugar?
What is happening with the nervous system and stress response?
What might mineral patterns tell us?
Is the body adequately hydrated and nourished?
Sometimes we become so focused on finding the thing causing a symptom that we forget to ask a more basic question: Does this body have what it needs to do its everyday jobs well?
That's why I start with the foundations. Not because foundations explain everything. But because they give us a really good place to begin. I'll be digging deeper into each of these areas—both here and on Instagram—and showing you more of the connections between them.
My hope isn't to give you another list of health rules to follow.
It's to help you understand your body a little better, appreciate the incredible way God created its systems to work together, and feel more equipped to support it well.
Start with the foundations. Then ask better questions.
