E240: Root Causes Of Chronic Mineral Depletion & How To Start Moving The Needle To Replenish Energy & Balance Hormones

Are you constantly tired, moody, or bloated, and wondering how the heck you got here when you’re doing all the right things? 

Let’s unpack something most women have never even heard of but definitely feel the effects of: mineral depletion. Specifically, the slow oxidizer pattern that keeps your energy low, your PMS raging, and your emotions stuck on numb.

I’ve seen this same pattern in hundreds of high-achieving women, and today, I’m breaking it down in a way that finally makes sense. Because knowing what’s happening in your body is the first step to getting out of it.

It’s wild once you see how it all connects.

Here’s a little taste of what we’ll chat about:

• The mineral combo that explains fatigue, PMS, anxiety, and low libido
• Why your emotions might be a bigger piece of the mineral puzzle than your diet
• The first small but powerful shifts that can help your body rebuild energy and hormonal balance from the inside out

This isn’t another “take these supplements” talk. It’s a deep dive into why your body’s been in freeze mode, and how you can safely guide it out.

Hit play, grab a cozy spot, and a few minutes just for you, because this episode might just make you say, “Ohhh… that’s why I’ve been feeling this way.”

NEW Private Podcast - 3 Steps to Making Hormones Well

Book a FREE Hormone Strategy Call with me

NEED HELP FIXING YOUR HORMONES? CHECK OUT MY RESOURCES:
Hormone Imbalance Quiz - Find out which of the top 3 hormone imbalances affects you most!
Join Nourish Your Hormones Coaching for the step-by-step and my eyes on YOUR hormones for the next 4 months.

LET’S CONNECT!
IG:

To get the Restored Mini-Course for free leave a rating & review on the show OR share this podcast in your IG story (tag me @leishadrews) or send it to 3 friends  - DM or email me a screenshot and I'll send the course your way!

Email: support@abundant-lifewellness.com

Don’t forget to subscribe, share this episode, and leave a review. Your support helps us reach more women looking for answers.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this podcast is to be taken as medical advice, please take informed accountability and speak to your provider before making changes to your health routine.

This podcast is for women and moms to learn how to balance hormones naturally in motherhood, to have pain-free periods, increased fertility, to decrease PMS mood swings, and to increase energy without restrictive diet plans. You'll learn how to balance blood sugar, increase progesterone naturally, understand the root cause of estrogen dominance, irregular periods, PCOS, insulin resistance, hormonal acne, post birth-control syndrome, and conceive naturally. We use a pro-metabolic, whole food, root cause approach to functional women's health and focus on truly holistic health and mind-body connection.

If you listen to any of the following shows, we're sure you'll like ours too!
Pursuit of Wellness with Mari Llewellyn, Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, Found My Fitness with Rhonda Patrick, Just Ingredients Podcast, Wellness Mama, The Dr Josh Axe Show, Are You Menstrual Podcast, The Model Health Show, Grounded Wellness By Primally Pure, Be Well By Kelly Leveque, The Freely Rooted Podcast with Kori Meloy, Simple Farmhouse Life with Lisa Bass

Transcript

[00:00:00] There is a key mineral depletion pattern that I see over and over again in high achieving women who have low energy and PMS mood swings. And today I'm unpacking that for you so you can finally get out of it. 

[00:00:00] Hey friend. Today we are talking about minerals, but we're not talking about them in general. We're talking very specifically about a mineral pattern that I see most of the time when I do hair, tissue mineral tests with my clients. And we're not only gonna talk about. If this is you, how to know, we're gonna talk about why you're stuck here, even if maybe you are doing some good things for your minerals.

And we're gonna talk about the emotional root causes of this particular mineral pattern that I think are incredibly important to realize, because if the emotions can't move or change, this is a pattern that you. Honestly, we'll be stuck with much longer than if you can understand the full picture of this mineral pattern.

This mineral pattern is what I call, or what, what is called a slow oxidizer pattern on an HTMA test. That doesn't mean anything to you most likely, and that is totally fine. I'm gonna [00:01:00] go into all of it, but I'm actually gonna start. For those of you who are newer to functional testing and maybe haven't had one of these done, haven't heard of these before.

I'm gonna talk about an HT MA test and why I actually prioritize them a lot of the time when I'm practicing with clients. So an HTMA is a. Lab tests that measures the minerals and heavy metal storage in your hair. It is going to reflect about the last three months of what you are doing in your body, how you are moving minerals, and it's gonna be more of a timeline and shows how your body has been handling stress.

It shows energy production and detoxification. It gives us insight into the thyroid, the adrenals, blood sugar balance, and. Really, there can be some toxins as well, but I really love especially to look at the four main minerals on this test, like calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium. We can look at iron, we can look at zinc, copper, and there's so much [00:02:00] info for thyroid, adrenals, metabolism, and just how your body essentially is handling stress and minerals, I think have gotten a lot more attention lately, at least in my algorithm, but they also I think, are still very under understood and undervalued, but they are truly the spark plugs of your metabolism.

They are needed to make your cells function. And this pattern that I'm talking about today is a depletion pattern that I see almost all the time. And so if you are in this depletion pattern too, it's going to be harder for you to balance your hormones. It's going to be harder for your gut to improve.

It's gonna be harder for your energy to improve without knowing this information.

So when I do HTMA testing, I do it exclusively within my coaching membership because I am absolutely not someone who will just do a test on the fly and then give you a bunch of supplements to take and then send you [00:03:00] on your way because there is so much more to this picture that I hope I'll be able to help you understand today when I'm talking about this test.

I want you to be able to understand my perception of this test too, or any test that I do. I just find that it is so unhelpful to just give someone some test results and another pile of pills and a protocol and send them on their way. I really like to be able to get in deep and look at the big picture.

When I'm interpreting these kind of tests, because it is a lifestyle. It is the food, it is the emotions, it is the supplements, it's all the things together. And so it's really important to be able to not only have that big picture, be in it deep together, but be able to monitor progress as we go forward and start to see changes and start to troubleshoot.

When we need to, because if you just get sent on your way without an expectation of what should or shouldn't get better and what that looks like over time, it is so much harder to stay on track long enough to get results and. [00:04:00] Minimum to get results with your minerals, three months, four months, six months, it takes time.

 So it really is important to be able to take this testing information in context and understand this testing information is helpful, but it is not the end all, be all. And I am not here to tell you a mineral test is the only thing you need to change your hormones. But it does give us so much context and so much of the time.

It absolutely makes sense when we go over it. You're gonna understand. How you got where you are essentially with minerals. That's why I love HTMA and it is different from blood tests. Blood is gonna show what's circulating right now, what your body is trying to keep stable. And a hair test is showing what has been stored or lost over time and what's happening inside the cells.

So your blood calcium, for example, if that's high, you've got real problems in the moment. If your tissue calcium is high. You could have some problems coming up, but that is something that we can work on and it can be like a warning sign, if that makes sense. So it's absolutely,[00:05:00] just a different picture.

Let's go back to where, where I was gonna start with this pattern of slow oxidation. What that looks like on an HTMA mineral test is we see what looks high. Looks like a high amount of calcium and a high amount of magnesium, typically together mixed with a low amount of sodium and a low amount of potassium.

So I'm gonna explain what that actually means. The high calcium is calcium being pulled out of the bones and teeth and deposited into soft tissues when. Magnesium, sodium, potassium are depleted. Chronic stress raises that tissue, calcium, because it actually is a calming mechanism. Your body is trying to calm in stress and buffer that overstimulation.

It's like actually almost like a hardening or a shell on the outside of your cells that your body is creating for you. Armor and then those cell membranes become more rigid, which makes it harder for nutrients to [00:06:00] transport into the cells, even things like thyroid hormone or insulin, and it decreases the metabolism.

So when we see this , slow oxidation pattern, it is a, typically, it can be mixed. I'm not gonna go too deep into that. Typically, it is a slower thyroid pattern, slower adrenal pattern, or like an adrenal burnout pattern. So physical symptoms that come along with this would be a sluggish thyroid. So cold body temperatures, fatigue, weight gain, constipation, tension, headaches, depression, brain fog, feeling just emotionally kind of like flat.

To like unable to feel your feelings is a both, it's both a cause and an effect of a calcium shell or a high calcium on this HDMA test. Also hormone imbalances like high estrogen or low progesterone, heavier, painful periods and low libido all go right along with this calcium shell.

If I've described you to a T just [00:07:00] now. You're our girl. We work with you all the time, and this is what we work on. One of the things we work on, again, I am absolutely not here to sell that the HTMA is the only thing you need to improve your hormones. It's not, but it is a big piece that I really like to see, to see where you are.

And then with this pattern of the higher calcium, higher magnesium. A lot of times it comes along with the low sodium, low potassium. Lemme talk about magnesium for a minute too actually. So magnesium, when we see that magnesium is high on a test, it doesn't typically mean that magnesium is actually high.

It means you are burning a lot of magnesium and based on the way your calcium looks and way that your sodium potassium look, I can often interpret is this a loss of magnesium? Is this actually excess magnesium in the body? And how much of a loss of magnesium is it? Is it a little bit high and your calcium is off the charts?

If so, you're probably depleted and burning through a lot of magnesium. Is it matching the calcium? Is it sky high as well? Then in that case, [00:08:00] maybe you do have enough magnesium, but you're burning it like crazy because of stress. So magnesium is also a mineral that gets burned. At a really high rate because of stress, but it's not necessarily getting stored, it's just getting moved.

So then we talk about sodium and potassium. Sodium and potassium typically look low in this picture, and I think I will do the opposite picture as well, in another podcast. But this is what I'm gonna start with. so lower sodium. Can represent adrenal energy or aldosterone output from the adrenal glands, and it can come from chronic stress, local ORIC intake, excess magnesium or prolonged, fight or flight state to deplete sodium stores.

So low sodium means that you have less electrical potential between cells and less energy. Because there's a sodium potassium pump that brings nutrients into and out of the cells. You have to have enough sodium to be able to help that pump function well in relation to potassium [00:09:00] as well. And you need adequate sodium to make enough stomach acid.

So a lot of times I see this as an issue that actually. Is driving digestive issues or going along with digestive issues, and we just don't even realize how important that sodium is to being able to not only have enough energy, support your adrenal glands, but also to digest food well.

So symptoms that can be associated with low sodium on an HTMA, just to clarify, again, this is different than blood work. Severely low sodium on blood work is a medical emergency severely high or low. Any of these on blood work is a medical emergency. That is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about in the tissue.

In the hair. Physical symptoms are low blood pressure. Getting dizzy when you stand up. Fatigue in the morning, fatigue in the afternoon, craving salt a lot. Brain fog, mental fatigue, poor digestion, as I talked about before, and then intolerance to heat, or being [00:10:00] easily dehydrated or even unstable. Blood sugar and insulin resistance.

All of those things can be related to inadequate sodium levels in the tissue. And then potassium is really, I think, my favorite mineral. I mean, I, I love them all, but potassium, magnesium are my two favorites, my favorite little children of minerals and potassium is really important for voltage in the cell as well.

So it does affect energy a lot. Very important for blood sugar stability and for thyroid hormone uptake for the same reasons as sodium, because the sodium potassium pump is what, like I said, brings nutrients, hormones, all the things in and out of the cells. The way that it gets depleted is from chronic stress, magnesium deficiency, low protein intake, and excess calcium, especially supplementation, which is something that I see.

Fairly often is taking calcium when you don't actually need to be taking calcium. We need to be [00:11:00] mobilizing and using the calcium that your body already has better. When potassium is low, energy production and generation in the mitochondria actually slows down a lot, which you will feel in. The things that you'll notice are low energy, could be muscle weakness, can be heart palpitations, sweet cravings, or getting tired after a meal.

Sluggish digestion, anxiety, feeling wired, but tired and PMS symptoms. These are all things that we see all the time. Then we see on the HTMA that you have no potassium, and that's for energy potential. And so it's really, I think just as you're listening to this, if you're like, check, check.

This is me. This is something that would be really worth looking into. But also if you're having these symptoms, this is what we work on in coaching and we have. Really great results all the time. Women who had this really low energy were feeling brain fogged, were feeling sluggish, their digestion was a mess.

Their PMS mood symptoms were all over the place, and slowly [00:12:00] but surely over a few months, as we work together, we see these things drastically change, and they start to have capacity that they didn't have before. They start to have energy that they didn't have before. Their digestion, their periods improve.

So much that , it's so easy to almost forget how bad it was, this is something that if you relate to this, you are not stuck here. I always just wanna tell you that. And there are clear steps that we can take to move you out of this pattern when we know what's happening in the body and we know what the pattern is.

And when we back up and we look at the lifestyle and we look at emotions and we see why it's happening as well. So this pattern overall, I am gonna talk about emotions. I'm so excited to talk about that. But this pattern overall is like a freeze response in the body. Essentially. your body is saying, I can't keep fighting or fleeing, I just have to freeze.

And so you might feel that in your spirit and be like, dang., Yeah, I feel that. , You might, not necessarily yet, but eventually if [00:13:00] this pattern gets drastic enough. You get to that point of like freeze or even fawn, which is just like people pleasing. , And it's a protective phase that your body goes into after prolonged stress.

That can actually end up looking like low GABA and serotonin in the brain, low dopamine and elevated histamine, which is crazy because histamine symptoms. Our on the rise like crazy. It's something that I see all the time with my clients is different histamine symptoms and, when you're low in dopamine and serotonin, you are going to be pleasure seeking.

So that looks a lot like social media addiction. It looks a lot like screens. It looks a lot like. overspending. It looks a lot like overeating or, over exercising. Anything that you can do that kind of like, gives you those hits of dopamine and then they go away and then you need to do them again.

So, thinking about that too, like where is that dysregulation going? How far has it sunk in and is it time to do [00:14:00] something about it? Because there is a lot that we can do about it. But I wanna go back to,, emotions for a minute because. I think that this is really, really a foundation root cause of these energy patterns and these mineral patterns in the first place.

And so I'm gonna go through each of these minerals again and talk about the emotional patterns that are, just go alongside them. So the first one is calcium. And I talked about that calcium rising enough where it is. A protective shell around the cells, essentially. And so the body uses calcium to protect itself and to dampen emotional intensity when stress feels unmanageable.

And that can sound like such a good thing, and it is a good thing in the short term. But if it is a pattern that continues long term, this not only gives us. Negative emotional side effects. Like we can't feel as happy as we want to feel, or we can't feel sad either necessarily. We're just kind of [00:15:00] like emotionally numb, and especially if you are trying to feel, and then you're doing that dopamine seeking and pleasure seeking activities, that's a whole different, piece of the puzzle too.

it can be emotional repression, so maybe you can feel your emotions, but you're like, no, thank you. I don't want to, I'm just gonna keep shoving these emotions down that can lead to this, that can be caused by this. And if you are shutting down emotions after chronic fight or flight, if you're disconnecting, you notice that you will withdraw when things are just a little bit too much.

But not in a way that is like you're withdrawing to fill your cup, you're withdrawing to emotionally processed. You're just withdrawing to watch a show on your phone and hide from people, or you're just withdrawing to like go online shopping. Something like that is not a sign of, it's a sign of emotional repression and emotional, just withdrawal [00:16:00] versus stepping aside to care for yourself, which is completely different.

Sometimes it can just feel like I'm fine, I don't feel really happy, I don't feel really sad. I'm just fine. And that one can be okay for a while. Until it's not right, it. Difficulty accessing your emotions like tears, anger, or excitement. and these, all of these emotional patterns can be linked to trauma.

They can be linked to long-term caretaking roles that require suppressing your own needs. And this is actually where I see it the most often. I think a lot of people that we work with do have trauma, and I see this repression of our own needs in motherhood. And maybe our repression of our own needs because of our own mothers doing the same thing.

And us just patterning after them and seeing like, you know, if we act this certain way, if we behave ourselves a certain way, we'll get praise, we'll get value from it. But [00:17:00] really not stopping to question like, what do I need in the process? These are all things that come along with the calcium shell, but I would really argue.

Are some of the specific causes of the calcium shell in the first place. If your body feels like it has to be in that protective mode, things are not safe, then this is what needs to be addressed at more of a root cause to work along with the lifestyle changes, to start to see these minerals really go in the right direction.

When we look at low sodium, which is often a part of this pattern, the emotional beliefs or the core beliefs can be. I can't handle anymore. I'm overwhelmed, I'm overstimulated, I'm over everything. Deep fatigue or emotional fragility, hypersensitivity to stress because typically of the long term aspect of the stress that you've been under, tendency toward overwhelm and avoidance.

So procrastination [00:18:00] can be a part of this. A DHD brain can be a part of this feeling flat, but anxious underneath. And what is really needed in this case is structure, stability, and rest to be able to feel safe again. But also the rewiring of these patterns, which is not an easy feat by any means. A lot of these apply to me as well as I'm reading them and they're things that I'm working on, but.

It's just so important to be able to identify this, I think, because if, if these patterns continue, they're going to continue burning your sodium out, and it's crazy. The difference that we can make when we're addressing this from an emotional and physical standpoint, it just accelerates results. And the low potassium, the emotional pattern, is often discouragement or even hopelessness because low potassium dulls your dopamine response, so your motivation is lower.

So back to that again. These all work together. Procrastination, [00:19:00] again, difficulty sustaining enthusiasm or initiating action, feeling safer in the background instead of being seen. And so you have a really deep need. And even, you know, just remember what I said about potassium and energy. You need potassium to get blood sugar into the cells.

You need potassium to get thyroid hormone in the cells. . This lack of motivation is very emotional, but it's also very physical because you're like, I don't have the energy to care. I don't have the energy to be motivated. Right? And so this works together, but the need again is for safety. And this is what I teach my clients to do is let's assess where are there safety leaks in your life?

Is it primarily emotional? Is it primarily physical? You're hitting the gas with caffeine and not really feeding yourself. You're running around like a crazy person 24 7, unable to like take enough of a slowdown to get enough rest or [00:20:00] to feed yourself or to fill your cup. We have to look at these things because it is so praised in our society to be busy.

It's so praised to be productive. It's so praised. To be the one that everyone calls and those things can be good, but we have to question our why. why are we actually doing these things? Is it because we have this desire for people pleasing that comes out of absolute burnout and not even being able to be in fight or flight anymore?

We just wanna people please at this point so that because we're looking for safety, right? It comes back to that safety and we can create so much safety in our body by giving our bodies. What they need to make hormones, well, detox hormones well and balance that stress. So your body starts, your brain starts to be able to tell your body.

Things are safe. things are safe, and your hormones respond and your adrenals respond, and your minerals start to shift because there's enough there and there's [00:21:00] enough safety signals happening that we can see. That long-term picture of safety versus we are in conservation, absolutely survival mode.

Your body is going to react differently to that than when it is getting signals of safety consistently. I think that, I can't just like emphasize this enough, but we have to look at the whole picture I just wanna encourage you and invite you, if you've listened to this episode and you're like, wow, I feel seen, I feel heard.

This is me. You are not alone. You are not alone. You are probably the majority of women, and this is exactly what we work with and this is what we can help you with. And so we would love to help you in nourish your hormones coaching. You will come into a place that is safe. You'll have someone holding your hand and looking at the picture for you so you don't have to figure it all out on your own.

So you don't have to [00:22:00] continue to promote these beliefs in your head that you're the only one you can rely on, that you have to figure everything out on your own. And that. You have to suppress everything that's happened to you and for you and with you to be able to keep going. It's a safe space to be able to do that, to be able to imperfectly move forward, taking some action steps.

Slowly but surely with other moms who also have a busy life, and coaches who are moms who have a busy life, we make it as realistic as possible. And I always say the minimum effective dose for you to be able to see results, and so when you come into coaching, you get on a call with me first and we make sure it's right for you.

My goal in that call is always for you to feel 100% clear. This is for me, or this is not for me. That's my goal. My goal is never to sell you into [00:23:00] something or coerce you into something that is not for you because that's a lose, lose lose for me, a lose for you. Okay. After we have that call, I put together a one-on-one hormone audit for you.

And I tell you, these are the priority action steps based on what you've told me about your symptoms and your life. These are the things you're going to start with first, and you are going to be consistent on. And then when we get labs back, if you choose to do labs, we get even more. In depth with those things.

We get more in depth with protocols and we check in with you every single week to make sure that the things you are doing are working for you, that they make sense, that they're not overwhelming. We help you, you know, just troubleshoot those things and we work with you on making sure that your food is really working for you.

We help you understand what your cycle is telling you. We track that with you every single week as well, so that you not only get the results that you want. Less PMS, more energy, less painful periods, just more balancing [00:24:00] capacity in your life and your motherhood. But you understand your body at such a higher level than you ever have, and you have that breath of fresh air, like, wow, this is what I needed.

This is what I was looking for, and this is what I should have known all along. Right? And it comes back to those basics, those foundations. That you are probably doing some of, but maybe not in the right combinations for you. There's just things that are missing to get you where you actually want to go.

I am passionate about this program because this is what, this is the best of what I've seen work over the years, and I love being able to get in there with you and do this. If I didn't, I wouldn't be doing this. I wouldn't be podcasting. I wouldn't be coaching. I would just be doing the kids stuff all the time, but this is not something that is a job for me.

This is something that I love to do and I feel called to do, and so I just want to invite you into that. We have a couple of spots left for [00:25:00] the rest of the year. I, it's crazy how close to the end of the year we are. We have several spots left for the end of the year until the end of the year, and you can just book a call at that top link in the show notes.

Let's talk about it. Let's see if it's a right fit for you. And if it is, just think about how two months from now, we'll start the new year. And instead of being like, okay, I have to start over, like, what have I accomplished this year? You'll have results already. You'll be in a place where you're starting to see change in your body and you don't have to go through that whole mental pattern again of it's the new year.

It's time to make a change, right? You're already gonna be making that change and feeling better even through the holidays. I see it every year. It's totally possible and I'd love to see you in there. I have a timer going that you probably can hear. Gotta go get that outta the oven and I'll see you next week.