It’s estimated that 90% of Americans have at least one nutritional deficiency. When our bodies don’t get the nutrients they need, it can disrupt all essential functions, leading to fatigue, weakened immunity, hormonal imbalances, cognitive issues, and serious long-term health risks.

Magnesium deficiency alone affects 1 out of 2 people, and it is essential for everything from muscle and brain function to sleep and so much more. Vitamin D deficiency is also nearly at 50%, which has been shown to increase risk of depression by up to 14%. But what’s the go-to solution for this? Antidepressants. 

Nutritional deficiencies impact even those with the healthiest diets. Why? Because everyone’s bodies process and absorb things differently, especially if there is underlying gut dysbiosis. 

Genetic mutations can also be found in the majority of people, dramatically impacting their mental health. For example, a mutation on something called the COMT gene, which more than a quarter of all people are estimated to have, is known for causing irritability, anxiety, and chronic stress. 

When up to 90% of doctors visits are related to stress, and stress is linked to the 6 leading causes of death, but the root-cause is not being looked at more closely, you have to wonder why. Instead of digging deeper, we reach for a band aid. So, what’s the solution? Usually SSRI’s and Benzos. 

Did you know that 90% of the body’s serotonin, the neurotransmitter that regulates mood, is produced in the gut? It’s now well known in the medical community that mood is heavily influenced by gut health. The gut and brain are constantly communicating through the gut-brain axis (learn more here), and neither one exists independently of the other. But let me ask you this: How many people do you think who go to a therapist about a mood disorder get asked about their diet or bowel movements? 

Our System is Broken

All of this begs the question: why is it not standard practice, or at least more common to test for these things? We are living in the age of information. Companies like Meta and Google have more data on us than we do on ourselves. If anyone should be leveraging data about ourselves, it’s us.

We know that nutritional deficiencies, genetic mutations, and gut health are closely linked to a wide range of physical and mental ailments, so why is that knowledge not being leveraged to people’s benefit? 

Maybe… It's not good for business. It seems our system is built on greed, rather than genuine concern. Now that’s not to say everyone in the system is greedy at the careless cost of others, of course not. Doctors and therapists are some of the most caring people out there. 

This is simply to say that our system is broken – it’s out of touch, unintuitive, and misaligned. It’s time we reconnect with our roots, listen to our guts, and live in greater alignment with our selves, with each other, and with the entire natural world. Ancient medicine holds profound wisdom, our divine intuition is all-knowing, and alignment is our highest truth.

Like many of our societal systems, traditional “health” care is long overdue for a radical transformation. The current system disjoints not only the body, mind, and spirit, but also further separates the various components of the body; you pay to go to your primary care doctor to get referred to go to the Gastroenterologist for gut symptoms, and the psychiatrist for mood disorders, but they never share notes or dare to tread into each other's territory. 

It’s like two people holding pieces to the same puzzle that will never be solved as long as each one remains disconnected from the other. They have no concept of the bigger picture, as they’ve been systemically trained to believe that their piece is the entire puzzle. Recognizing the inextricable  interconnectivity of everything in life, and especially within our own bodies and energy fields allows us to connect the dots that paint the picture of that puzzle.

Instead of relying on a system that often fails, and coincidentally makes a massive profit in doing so, people can and should be empowered to take a proactive approach to their own health rather than reactively being sent down the siloed path of western medicine.

Multidimensional Wellness

Data is an essential part of that endeavor, but beyond the physical tangible components, we must also address the intangible. After all, we're spiritual beings experiencing a physical reality. 

At our core, we are energy. Our reality is largely made up of our experiences, our emotions, and the outlook those combine to form. These are vibrations, frequencies, that manifest into matter. Self-love, trauma, mindset, and alignment are just a few of the various components of our higher dimensional wellness that shape our experience of this lifetime. For some, plant medicine can be a powerful way to find greater energetic alignment, emotional acceptance, and enlightened worldview. For others, meditation, journaling, guided reflection, cultivating gratitude, acupuncture, and other forms of emotional, energetic, and spiritual work can go a long way. When we open ourselves in these ways, we nurture our spiritual connection and remind ourselves of the divine nature of reality, and our infinite power to shape that reality as stewards of it.

We are multidimensional beings, and any view of wellness that does not take that into consideration is incomplete. The goal is not surviving, it’s thriving. If we truly want to optimize our wellbeing, a holistic, proactive, and root-cause approach is key.  

Tuning In:

That begins with nurturing mind-body connection, and living in tune with our higher self. Symptoms are a gift, and they should not be muffled. Symptoms are whispers begging us to tune in and recognize the physical, mental, and spiritual imbalances at play. They carry an important message, and it’s up to each of us to decode what they’re trying to say. Instead of being victimized by our symptoms, we should be empowered to listen carefully and act accordingly. We can cultivate this practice through daily meditation, inquisitive reflection, and intentional efforts to feel into our bodies, emotions, thoughts, and intuition. This means slowing down, quieting the noise, and connecting with our self.

Our wellness is like a symphony, each individual component singing the song of our life. When one note is playing out of tune, we may not hear it through the noise. But one leads to another, right on down the line, and it's often not until there is severe disharmony that we consider looking behind the curtain. 

Concepts in Action

For example, I worked with a woman who struggled for years with a combination of debilitating anxiety and equally debilitating digestion problems. If the anxiety didn’t keep her home then the GI upset did. As a result, her relationships were strained, her work suffered, and her sense of self got lost in the constant battle against her negative inner-voice. Ultimately Amanda accepted her fate after a costly yet fruitless quest for support from traditional Western medicine. Her psychiatrist put her on Xanax, and her GI said her endoscopy came back with no significant insights. He also put her on prescription medications to manage her indigestion, and told her to take them for the rest of her life. It wasn’t until a decade later that other symptoms started piling up, from chronic fatigue and Hypothyroidism to a strained liver and long-standing depression… and of course with it, antidepressants.

Desperate for answers, she sought alternative help from a root-cause practitioner. We started with targeted lab testing, which revealed numerous vitamin, mineral, and antioxidant deficiencies,  a slow COMT gene, and gut dysbiosis stemming from bacterial overgrowth in her intestines — all commonly associated with chronic stress and anxiety. With tailored solutions, Amanda regained control over her health in ways she never thought would be possible; her energy levels, anxiety, and digestive health were transformed, and naturally her quality of life followed suit. Within just a few months, her panic attacks reduced by 90%, her anxiety went from ‘nearly constant’ to ‘almost never’, and she weaned completely off her antidepressants because she felt so good that she simply forgot to refill them — something she never thought would be possible.

A Common Trend

When the mainstream system had failed Amanda, holistic root-cause medicine picked up the slack. Amanda is not alone. In the US, 1 in 3 people will experience anxiety disorder and 1 in 5 will experience major depression at least once in their lifetime. But as we know, these conditions are rarely cured, they’re merely managed. Mood disorders are on the sharp incline, and the US surgeon general recently declared a mental health crisis. Countless other conditions have taken on a similarly concerning trend. In roughly the last two decades, just to name a few, diabetes has risen by 45%, obesity by 40%, and autism by 350%. Let that sink in.

Disconnected and Manipulated for Profit

It’s no surprise that the spike in so many diseases correlates with the rise of processed foods, screen-time, busy-culture, and the ever-growing divide between humans and nature. 

We’ve become so disconnected from the natural world, living in man-made environments, abiding by man-made rules, and eating man-made food.

Remember when everyone was hooked on cigarettes, and then suddenly it went out of style? Big tobacco realized they were in trouble and pivoted to the food industry, applying their expertise in chemistry, marketing, and addiction science to make processed foods more addictive. These companies used their deep understanding of consumer behavior and chemical formulations to optimize foods for what they called maximum "bliss point". This refers to the ideal combination of sugar, salt, and fat that makes foods nearly irresistible.

Many processed foods today are still designed with this approach, making them hyper-palatable and incredibly difficult to resist. Research has even compared the neurological effects of junk food to drugs, reinforcing the idea that these formulations were intentionally created to drive overconsumption. It’s hard to blame people for being unhealthy when they are literally being manipulated for a profit. Ultra-processed foods make up 70% of the American diet – most of which carry no nutritional value. This is draining physical, mental, and spiritual health on a widespread scale.   

Blue Zones Show the Simplicity of Holistic Health

On the flip side, you have some areas of the world, called the blue zones, where people are living far longer and healthier lives than anywhere else. Researchers have worked tirelessly to show that the common threads between these places are quite simple: a diet rich in whole foods, particularly plants, regular physical activity, 7-9 hours of sleep, a sense of purpose, reduced stress, and social connection. In other words: intuitive care for body, mind and spirit. It’s not overcomplicated, over modernized, or overmonetized.

Change Starts with Us

Let’s be very clear: traditional food and health care systems are largely built on an economic model that profits from ongoing sickness. Food corporations thrive on addiction, and doctors are incentivized to prescribe medications that mask (or even trade) symptoms, rather than explore deeper causes. But if we shift the paradigm — if we start proactively caring for the entire individual — our approach to well-being could shift from one of perpetual treatment to one of true healing and continual betterment.

Change starts with us, one person at a time. We don’t have to wait until we’re in crisis to make changes. We don’t have to accept symptoms as our reality. The power is in our hands to reclaim our health, to reconnect with our body’s wisdom, and to align ourselves with the life we’re meant to live. It starts with taking action — whether it’s getting a lab test, changing our diet, cultivating our spiritual connection, digging into our psyche, or simply tuning in to our body’s signals. Our journey toward holistic health – individually and collectively – begins the moment we choose to listen and act, because true healing, and true change, must always start with the self.

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