Focus:
Thinking of your body as a complete system AND its tiniest parts — the cells, the microbes, the stored information, scars, memories, desires, and so on.
What does your body need as a whole? What do the little bits need?
I would like for you to journal about these two questions this week and every 6 months until you feel completely healed.
Repetition:
My body is like and connected to every other body, and the needs it has are species specific.
The smallest parts of me ask for things as they need, and I am open to listen and respond accordingly.
More Testing Options
If you want to test to see which microbes may be causing issues in the body, MicrogenDX is a great testing site. If there’s a test we haven’t covered yet and you feel you need more options, DirectLabs is worth a look.
Vitamin D
Let’s talk about Vitamin D. It’s a fat-soluble vitamin that acts more like a hormone than a typical vitamin, because it influences gene expression and affects nearly every system in the body. There are two forms: D2, found in some plants and fungi, and D3, the form your skin produces from UVB sunlight and the form found in animal foods. Your body converts it in two steps — first the liver turns it into 25-hydroxyvitamin D, which is what gets measured on a blood test, and then the kidneys convert that into the active hormone form, calcitriol.
Vitamin D helps you absorb calcium and phosphorus from your gut, which is essential for healthy bones and teeth, and it’s critical for preventing rickets in children and osteomalacia or osteoporosis in adults. It also modulates your immune system, helping you fight off pathogens while keeping inflammation in check, supports muscle function, and there’s growing evidence linking it to cardiovascular health as well. A deficiency can bring bone pain, muscle weakness, a higher risk of fractures, rickets in children, increased infections, fatigue, mood disorders like depression and seasonal affective disorder, hair loss, and slow wound healing.
The most common cause of deficiency is simply not getting enough sun — indoor living, high latitudes, heavy sunblock use, or darker skin pigmentation all reduce how much vitamin D your body makes. Malabsorption conditions like coeliac or Crohn’s, a diet low in vitamin D-rich foods like fatty fish, egg yolks, and fermented dairy or organs, kidney or liver issues, certain medications, obesity, aging, and gut microbiome imbalances can all contribute too. On a blood test, levels below 20 ng/mL are deficient, 20-29 is insufficient, 30-100 is the sufficient range, and above 100 can rarely become toxic. Sunlight, real food, and correcting the underlying issue are the path back to a healthy level.
Vitamin E
Vitamin E is a fat-soluble antioxidant, with alpha-tocopherol being the form most active in the body. It protects your cell membranes from oxidative damage, supports immune function, helps regulate inflammation, and plays a role in skin health and wound healing. True deficiency is rare and usually only shows up alongside a fat-malabsorption problem, but when it happens it can bring nerve damage, poor coordination, vision problems from retinal degeneration, immune weakness, and fragile red blood cells. Causes mirror the same fat-malabsorption conditions we see with the other fat-soluble vitamins — cystic fibrosis, Crohn’s, coeliac, liver disease, or a very low-fat diet over a long period.
Vitamin K
Vitamin K is essential for blood clotting, bone metabolism, and cardiovascular health. Vitamin K2, found in fermented foods and animal products, is the form that supports bone and heart health, and it comes in a few subtypes like MK-4 and MK-7. Vitamin K activates the clotting factors your liver makes, and it also activates osteocalcin, which binds calcium into your bone matrix, and matrix Gla-protein, which keeps calcium out of your arteries where it doesn’t belong. Deficiency can show up as easy bruising, excessive bleeding, bleeding gums, heavy periods, and over time, bone loss from impaired calcium binding. It’s most often caused by fat malabsorption, long-term antibiotic use wiping out the gut bacteria that make K2, a diet low in fermented foods and animal fats, or certain medications like blood thinners. DaVinci ADK is a great supplement if you need one, or Green Pastures fermented cod liver oil with butter oil covers your A, D, and K together.
Choline
Choline is a water-soluble nutrient often grouped with the B vitamins. Your body makes a small amount on its own, but not enough to meet your needs, so you have to get the rest from food. Choline is what your body uses to make acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter involved in memory, mood, and muscle control, and it’s critical for fat metabolism in the liver and for building the phospholipids that make up healthy cell membranes. A deficiency can bring fatigue, memory and concentration trouble, mood changes, muscle damage, and fatty liver. Egg yolks are one of the best sources — about 147 mg per large yolk — along with beef liver, chicken, salmon, and milk. General intake sits around 250-500 mg a day, with adult men needing about 550 mg and women about 425 mg, more if pregnant or breastfeeding. Vegetarians and vegans, pregnant women, and anyone dealing with fatty liver or memory issues tend to benefit most from paying attention to their choline intake.
Inositol
Inositol is a naturally occurring sugar alcohol that behaves like a B-vitamin even though it isn’t officially classified as one, and myo-inositol is the most studied, biologically active form. It’s involved in brain signalling — helping regulate serotonin, dopamine, and GABA — and it helps regulate insulin signalling, which is why it’s so often used for PCOS and metabolic syndrome. It also supports fat metabolism, which helps protect against fatty liver. Food sources include liver, meat, seafood, and eggs. People using it for PCOS often take 2,000-4,000 mg of myo-inositol a day, sometimes paired with a small amount of D-chiro-inositol; for anxiety or OCD, doses run much higher, into the grams per day, and should be done under supervision. It’s generally very well tolerated, with mild nausea or gas being the main things to watch for at high doses.
Alpha-Lipoic Acid
Alpha-lipoic acid is a powerful antioxidant that’s unique in being both water- and fat-soluble, so it can work throughout the entire body. Your body makes a small amount in the mitochondria, and it’s sometimes called a “universal antioxidant” because it helps regenerate vitamin C, vitamin E, and glutathione. It neutralises free radicals, supports mitochondrial energy production, and improves insulin sensitivity and blood sugar control, which is why it’s often used for diabetic neuropathy. True deficiency is rare since your body makes its own, but poor mitochondrial function, aging, and chronic disease can increase your need for it. Typical supplemental doses run 300-600 mg daily.
Linoleic Acid
Linoleic acid is an essential omega-6 fat that your body can’t make on its own, so it has to come from your diet. It’s a building block for longer-chain omega-6 fats like arachidonic acid, which your body uses for cell signalling and for building the eicosanoids that regulate inflammation, clotting, and immune response. It’s also a key part of your skin’s barrier function, keeping it from losing water, and it supports normal growth and brain and vision development in infants and children. True deficiency is rare and mostly shows up with very low-fat diets or malabsorption, bringing dry and scaly skin, hair loss, slow wound healing, and growth problems in children. You’ll find it in pork fat, poultry fat, organ meats, and cold-pressed organic hemp seed oil.