Elemental Health and Nutrition

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Elemental Health and Nutrition Functional Medicine aims to find the root cause of illness by looking deeper into a persons biochemi When this balance becomes disrupted, illness can occur.

Every aspect of your body, even your DNA, is composed of an abundance of vitamins and minerals, which exist in perfect harmony. Nutritional medicine aims to bring the body back into equilibrium through dietary and lifestyle changes, and focused supplementation. A nutritional consultation involves taking a thorough case history, analyzing your diet, and taking lifestyle factors and day-to-day stressors into consideration. This holistic approach helps to get to the true root of your issue, and not simply treat your symptom. The following conditions are among those that can benefit from a nutritional consult.

- Constant stress
- Poor sleep
- Fatigue
- Brain fog
- Anxiety or depression
- Learning difficulties
- High histamine
- Methylation issues
- Poor weight management
- Digestive issues
- Cardiovascular issues

I also have a strong interest in mental health issues, methylation and genetic polymorphisms, which can benefit from targeted functional testing and precise supplementation.

Quick question for you: when you're exhausted, does a full night's sleep fix it?Ordinary tiredness lifts with rest. A go...
15/10/2026

Quick question for you: when you're exhausted, does a full night's sleep fix it?

Ordinary tiredness lifts with rest. A good night or a quiet weekend, and you're mostly back to yourself.

Fatigue is different. You sleep and eat well, and you still wake up flat. People in that spot often tell me they're doing everything right, and they usually are.

When rest doesn't touch it, I want to look at the drivers before anyone files it under stress: iron stores, thyroid function beyond TSH alone, B12, how the mitochondria are coping, and whether it all started after a virus.

So I'm curious. Does sleep fix yours? Yes, sometimes, or not at all? Tell me in the comments.

What's the one symptom you've just learned to live with?The 3pm crash. Bloating by dinner. Waking at 3am. The fog that s...
14/10/2026

What's the one symptom you've just learned to live with?

The 3pm crash. Bloating by dinner. Waking at 3am. The fog that settles in by mid-morning.

Most people stop mentioning these because someone once told them it was normal. Common, yes. Normal is a different question.

Tell me yours in the comments. No judgement, and you might be surprised how many people say the same thing.

Most fibre advice is about hitting a number. Your gut microbes are more interested in variety.In the American Gut Projec...
14/10/2026

Most fibre advice is about hitting a number. Your gut microbes are more interested in variety.

In the American Gut Project, people who ate more than 30 different plant types a week had more diverse gut microbes than people eating 10 or fewer. A more diverse microbiome tends to be a more resilient one.

Different plants feed different microbes. Oats, lentils, berries, nuts, seeds, herbs and leafy greens each bring their own mix of fibres and plant compounds.

There's a clinical catch the "just eat more fibre" advice skips. If you have SIBO or a very reactive gut, loading up on one fermentable fibre (a scoop of inulin powder every day, for example) can make bloating worse. Then the order and pace matter, and it's worth working out what's going on first.

For most people, though, the easy win is breadth. Mixed beans instead of one kind. A handful of mixed nuts and seeds. A new grain once a week. The herbs you'd normally skip.

How many different plants do you think you ate this week?

13/10/2026

More magnesium on the label doesn't mean more magnesium in you.

In a 2019 study from Ghent University, researchers tested 15 magnesium products, then gave two of them to 30 healthy adults. The tablet holding more than twice as much magnesium barely moved blood levels. The lower-strength product raised them clearly.

The difference was the form. Magnesium has to dissolve before your gut can absorb it. Magnesium oxide packs a big number into a small tablet, but it dissolves poorly, so much of it passes straight through. That's why it's also sold as a laxative.

Forms like citrate and glycinate tend to absorb better, and they suit different jobs. Your gut, your medications and how low your stores already are all change the result too.

And if you want to know whether you need more at all, a standard blood test isn't much help. Serum holds under 1% of your body's magnesium. I use red blood cell magnesium instead.

Which form is in your cupboard right now?

Many people start their first appointment with an apology."I know others have it worse.""It's probably nothing.""I didn'...
13/10/2026

Many people start their first appointment with an apology.

"I know others have it worse."
"It's probably nothing."
"I didn't want to make a fuss."

Then, about twenty minutes in, the real story comes out. The exhaustion that has hung around for years. The gut that hasn't felt right since a bad virus.

You don't have to earn the right to feel unwell. It isn't a competition, and there's no queue to wait in behind people who are sicker than you.

Playing symptoms down has a cost. It pushes testing back, and over time it teaches you to stop listening to your own body.

What you're living with is information. It deserves to be taken seriously, even when it isn't dramatic.

That's why I always ask for the whole story.

One of the most common things women in their late 30s and 40s tell me: "My periods have changed, and I was told it's jus...
12/10/2026

One of the most common things women in their late 30s and 40s tell me: "My periods have changed, and I was told it's just age."

Heavier flow. Clots. Cramps that are new or worse. Cycles getting shorter. PMS that's harder to ride out.

Age is part of the story, but it doesn't explain much on its own. As ovulation becomes less regular, progesterone often falls before oestrogen does. That shift can make periods heavier and more painful. It can be tracked, and you don't have to grit your teeth through it.

Heavy bleeding also deserves a proper look. I want to know your iron stores, your thyroid, and whether you've had a pelvic ultrasound with your GP to rule out things like fibroids. From there we can work out where your cycle is heading and what's driving the symptoms.

If your periods have shifted over the last few years, which change has bothered you most?

12/10/2026

You've probably seen the posts: food additives banned in Europe are still on Australian shelves.

That part is true. Two real examples.

Titanium dioxide (additive 171) makes food look whiter. The EU removed it from food in 2022 because its safety could no longer be confirmed. Food Standards Australia New Zealand looked at the same evidence and kept it.

Six artificial colours, including tartrazine (102) and allura red (129), have to carry a warning in Europe: "may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children". Here, no warning is required.

So regulators disagree, and you're allowed to have an opinion about that. But the "banned overseas" angle misses what I actually see in clinic.

The people who feel worst are rarely reacting to one additive. They're eating mostly packaged food, most days, and that whole pattern is wearing on their gut, energy and mood.

"Approved" means a regulator judged something safe at typical intakes. It doesn't mean it suits everyone. A child who reacts to colours, or an adult with a reactive gut, is exactly who the details matter for.

The most useful move isn't memorising additive numbers. Cook more of your week from plain ingredients, and there's simply less on the label to worry about.

Do you check additive numbers when you shop?

11/10/2026

Waking at 3am, wide awake, and lying there until the alarm? It feels random. It usually isn't.

Your body is meant to start lifting cortisol in the second half of the night. It's part of how you wake up in the morning. When that rise comes too early or too hard, a light patch of sleep turns into wide awake, heart going, mind running.

Three things I look at most often:

Blood sugar. If glucose dips overnight, the body releases adrenaline and cortisol to bring it back up. That wake-up call can land at 2 or 3am.

Alcohol. A couple of evening drinks can help you drop off, but as the alcohol clears, the second half of the night gets lighter and more broken.

A stress system that never fully switches off. Months of running on high often show up as a cortisol rhythm that's out of step with the clock.

The popular fixes online (a magnesium spray, a breathing trick, a snack before bed) help some people. They can't tell you which of these is driving yours.

That part is testable. A cortisol curve across the day, fasting glucose and insulin, and an honest look at your evenings usually narrow it down.

What time do you usually wake?

A lot of people tell me their weight has barely moved in twenty years, and they take that as good news. It might not be....
10/10/2026

A lot of people tell me their weight has barely moved in twenty years, and they take that as good news. It might not be.

Muscle as a share of body weight starts falling in your thirties, and fat can slowly move in to take its place. Same number on the scale, different body underneath. Strength drops even faster than size, and it matters: in a study of nearly 140,000 people across 17 countries, every 5 kg drop in grip strength was linked to a 16% higher risk of death.

The good news is muscle responds at any age. Nursing-home residents with an average age of 87 more than doubled their strength with ten weeks of lifting.

In clinic we look at strength, body composition and fasting insulin, not just weight. If you'd like to know where you stand, you can book here: https://natural-health-medicine.simplecliniconline.com/diary/rohan-smith

The full article is here: https://elementalhealthandnutrition.com.au/muscle-loss-ageing-strength/

There's a graph I draw for patients more than any other.It has two lines. The first is the one most people expect: start...
09/10/2026

There's a graph I draw for patients more than any other.

It has two lines. The first is the one most people expect: start treatment, feel a bit better each week, straight up and to the right. The second is what recovery usually looks like. It wobbles. Good fortnight, rough week, better again. But over a few months it keeps climbing.

I draw it because the rough weeks scare people. Three months in, a flare turns up and it feels like all the work has been undone. It usually hasn't. A bad week tends to carry information: a virus, a poor run of sleep, a heavy stretch at work, a point in the cycle. When we line the dips up with what was going on, that's often where the next step in the plan comes from.

If you're in a dip right now, look at the trend, not just this week.

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