Dori Martin: If you’re in a state of nervous system dysregulation, or perfectionism, or black and white thinking, or have to be, go, go, go, or if there was something that happened that was catastrophic five years ago, and you’ve never processed it, and acknowledged it, and worked through it, then your system is always going to, again, oversupplication in a state of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.

Heather Nelson: Welcome to Her Story Unscripted. I’m your host, Heather Nelson, a connector, business strategist, and someone who truly believes that the most powerful conversations happen when we stop performing and start being real. This podcast is a space for women to share honest, unscripted conversations about life, growth, and the experiences that have shaped who we are. No perfectly polished narratives, no pressure to have it all figured out, just real, authentic stories told exactly as they are.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Her Story Unscripted. I am very excited to have Dori Martin on. We personally just met. But she reached out to me on my podcast, and there’s always something whenever somebody reaches out to me to be on the podcast, that there’s like one little nugget that I’m like, I need this person on my podcast. What you do about is mineral imbalances and stuff. I’m like, I have no idea what any of this is, and I’m so curious because I’m sitting in my 40s as in this weird life altering changes in what our bodies are doing, and so I’m just excited to have this conversation. So, welcome!

Dori Martin: Thank you. I’m so excited to be here. I was listening to your 2025 year end, I thought this is the most fascinating human I’ve come across. And I think that we’re so aligned in so many ways because you talk about honoring yourself, making it by yourself. Now, I have my own story about holding it together for everybody, and worrying about doing all the things, spinning all the blades and thinking, where am I in this whole thing? And so I’m super excited to meet you, and to have this conversation. Thank you for inviting me.

Heather Nelson: Yes, thank you for being here. I want to dive right in. So funny, you’re from California, you said Pittsburgh?

Dori Martin: Yeah. Pittsburgh, California is a very small town at the end of, like, we have a BART, Bay Barrier Rapids Transit. It’s at the very end of the line, and so it’s like a way out because we wanted to just kind of cocoon. We’re near Marina. My husband loves being near the water, and so we’re out here. But we’re in transition. My oldest just graduated and we’re here because of him. Because of the kids, not because of him. We might be moving, we’ll see.

Heather Nelson: Is Pittsburgh in the Bay Area?

Dori Martin: It is in the Bay. Deep into it, like your Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill. Further in Antioch, Brentwood, things like a lot of hills. And not a lot of cities, more like suburbia.

Heather Nelson: Okay. I think I’m in Northern California, Sonoma County.

Dori Martin: Yeah. Heard a little bit about it.

Heather Nelson: Far away. I feel like everybody gets to their career point because there was something that happened along your journey that made you either learn more about it or question it. Or there was a health thing. How did you get to the work that you’re doing today? If you want to lead us into where you’re at, then I have so many questions about the work you’re doing now.

Dori Martin: Absolutely. I’m gonna go through this real fast, but it sounds like I’m starting at the beginning of time. But in 2006 when I had two small children, I ended up getting divorced. One was five months old. The other one was a toddler, and that started sort of my journey of, oh, my goodness, holding it together for everybody, doing it all, trying to make sure everybody is okay. And then I navigated with my dad through its end of life. Shortly after that, as I’m learning how to parent and decided, because I’m a single parent, I didn’t want to lose time with my kids, I started my own practice as a health practitioner, massage therapist, and health educator. And then I ended up getting engaged to an amazing man, and he was diagnosed with a terminal condition. And in the middle of all that, I was getting certified as a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner.

And interestingly, when I graduated, that’s when the diagnosis happened. And so I asked my mentor, hey, this functional diagnostic nutrition, can we help with this? And he said, go to a clinic. So we learn how to help with a terminal condition, and through a clinic. And one of the things I ran was a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis through somebody else, which is a lab I like to use now about minerals that we’ll be talking about later. This minerals, we reduce this. This is low, so we increase that. That’s how you run it. It’s very nuanced. It didn’t really do a lot, but it did show a lot of heavy metal toxicities. And if you have any chronic health conditions, and symptoms of menopause and burnout, then they’re often metals at play, or the inability to detox. Anyways, fast forward, so terminal diagnosis, get your affairs in order, there’s nothing we could do. 12 years later, he’s still here. Just wanted to give you that before you worry about that. Scuba diving, skydiving and doing all the crazy things he loves to do.

But then I never recovered from those moments of burnout, and I didn’t realize it. I was listening to this podcast that you were, and that’s one of the reasons I reached out about burnout, and like losing interest, and losing motivation and everything. That was happening to me, but I didn’t know what’s going on. Fast forward again in 2020, the infamous, I went through a midlife hormone mastery course. I wanted to ramp up my business. I’d worked with an influencer, and that ended or terminated, and so started up again. I felt like I was starting over, but that’s when I saw my labs, or the midlife hormone mastery course. If it were Heather, anybody else, I would have said, hey, sweetie, this is a time to rest. But of course, it’s me, right? And I think I can overcome it because I’ve got like super women. So it was me. I’m like, all right, I know the tools. I’ve got this. So I tried to launch my business at that moment. And then sandwich generation, I’m taking care of my mom, and she lives with me part time as a snowbird, and I never address my burnout. And actually, when my markers came back, and I was looking at labs, they were worse than my husband’s as he was going through his healing journey.

And so again, it’s like I’m going to power through this, I feel fine. Shake it off, it’ll be fine. And then I actually ran my hair tissue in mineral analysis, and the amazing thing about it, and it became the main test that I offer is because it shows you your thumbprint to how you live life and your stress blueprint. I, Heather, bottomed out. It also tells you if you have cellular energy. Of course, what does that mean? Well, you’re not going to be able to create dopamine, and motivation, or have energy to do anything physiologically like getting your hormones and what they need to do, getting enzymes, and just any kind of functional and cell, like anything your body needs to do.

You really can’t because you literally don’t have the energy. Minerals are the spark plugs to your body, and so it gives you an idea. It doesn’t matter what you do with your vehicle. But the best gas in there, maybe a pretty coat of paint, whatever. If the spark plugs aren’t working, that car isn’t going to move. And it’s like us with our bodies and our mental imbalances. And so that is actually after living with burnout, doing all the things, taking hormone replacement therapy, exercising, trying to get my metabolism geared up, nothing was working, and so I would say it’s probably not an either or. But it makes everything work better, and if nothing’s working, things will start working again. So that’s why I really love this conversation.

And I agree, a lot of people don’t know about it. And I think more should because it’s foundational. People are talking about it, but more in general terms. Because a question I was asked was, why don’t people know about it? This is so important. We do talk about it. Take your electrolytes, take your minerals, but you just kind of throw them into whatever like a trace element supplement or something like that. But it’s more nuanced than that. And when you’re depleted, taking the wrong thing can push things down farther because they’re kind of like a Rubik’s cube. They work together, and some of them antagonize each other. It’s not just so simple as just take your minerals. And also, there are certain co-factors that help balance them out. You could take magnesium, that’s a really good example. They say 80% of people are deficient, right? But then if your sodium is low and you take magnesium, it’ll push that down even lower. And sodium is one of the major minerals of energy and vitality. Sodium and potassium together are kind of the pump that actually sparks your cells to have energy. And so if you push it down with magnesium not being aware, then you’re going to actually make it more difficult. And that’s why you hear people saying, it makes me feel worse, makes me feel irritable, edgy, or it just doesn’t help at all. And so it’s very nuanced, but it’s not an expensive lab.

And also, it’s not supplement heavy in the sense that I love using the nutrition instead of a handful of supplements. Because the entourage effect of nature’s intelligence helps you be able to absorb and use these minerals better. But the biggest depletion of minerals is stress. So a lot of the things that you were saying about putting yourself first, finding joy, and making sure that whatever you’re doing, it’s something that lights you up. Because I think all the opposite is that you kind of burn out your minerals even faster. I would also argue that when you get to midlife, we look at hormones because it’s been protecting us this whole time from all the things. Some people call it the sins. I’ll just go with that, but I don’t want to be negative. I think that’s very descriptive of our youth. And so when the hormones disappear, they’re not protecting us anymore. But underneath it all, it’s become depleted, or less and less ability to spark energy.

Heather Nelson: Interesting. I was gonna ask you, how old are you?

Dori Martin: I’ll be 56 tomorrow.

Heather Nelson: My god, you look beautiful for 56.

Dori Martin: Mineral makeup. Sunshine, the right lighting is everything. It’s my friend.

Heather Nelson: Because I’m 43, so I’m sitting in this perimenopause world, and along with everyone else in my world. So when you were starting this journey, you got your hormones tested. Because I think all of us women, we got to go get our hormones tested. And we do, and it’s hard because they always tell you, because our hormones fluctuate by the time a month, blah, blah, blah, and everyone’s through this hormone therapy to regulate themselves. Do you think you need that in conjunction with minerals? Or do you think even if you were to supplement with the right minerals in your day-to-day life, the hormones kind of like, how do those work?

Dori Martin: That’s a really good question. What I would say is it’s always very nuanced and contextual. Every woman’s body is different, so I would test before guessing. However, if you don’t have these foundations down, it won’t work as well, and it actually might make you feel worse. So I would start with the foundations. If you’re having major symptoms, at least monitor your mineral balancing as you’re doing the hormone replacement therapy. I’ll tell you the story. Well, I was doing the midlife hormone mastery program with somebody who’s really big in the field, and we were doing our DUTCH tests. They were talking about physiologic dosing, the ins and outs, and the benefits of one thing or another. So of course, I had mine run, and I was in the menopausal range, flatline, right? And so I thought, all right, I’ll do the physiologic dosing as we now know.

Dori Martin: If you’re within the five year window before your menopausal, when you’re without a period, you actually have a better result because your receptors are still working. So I got myself on that. Then I checked my minerals because I had an awareness that they affect each other well. What happened was my copper went really high, and estrogen and copper have a synergistic relationship. My estrogen did go high, but my copper went high. That’s inflammatory, causes irritability, brain fog. It actually causes a lot of the symptoms of menopause. And if I had not looked at that, and it’s inflammation, and it stresses your adrenals, and it calcifies, it causes calcium to go high and get into your muscles, arteries, bones, and all the things, and causes pain in your body, and inflammation.

So when I saw my Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis, it wasn’t like that. Took the hormone replacement therapy, and it just went through the roof, and so that was actually causing more imbalance that I didn’t know about. I felt great, and then I felt horrible, and I would never have traced it to that. So I would say, just some people really do benefit from hormone replacement therapy, obviously. But also, look at your minerals so you can actually see what’s going on on a mineral level. Because if it’s not working, you can optimize it. If it’s working, you can optimize it. So it’s actually going to make everything work better. And that’s actually for everything, your metabolism and your muscle building.

Even if skin is sagging, it actually has a lot to do with minerals, zinc, silicone, or your ability to digest fruit, free oxidative damage, your metabolic rate, what your thyroid is doing. So many things are related to skin health as well in terms of minerals. And so a lot of the signs of aging are actually depletion, like physical depletion, and their body is breaking down and can’t recover faster than it’s breaking down. I hope I answer your question.

Heather Nelson: No, no, it’s okay. It’s super interesting. What I took from what you said is the inflammation. I feel puffy all the time. Yes, everything hurts all the time. I have no energy. I know that I need to lift, or go walk, or do all these things, but I literally just don’t have the physical energy to do that. I do feel there’s some kind of depletion happening. How does one go about getting mineral testing?

Dori Martin: Yeah. Absolutely. And yes, that is exactly, I could point out ideas about what the mineral balances are just based on what you were saying. But you know what I love about this test. People don’t know about it, and they say, why not just a blood test? With Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis, one of the great things about it is that it’s painless. You don’t have to go anywhere. A practitioner will send you the information. You either get a kit, which is an envelope and some place to collect it. Or a lot of it is just you get the instructions and you actually do it through the instructions that the practitioner would send you, and then take your sample, drop in the lab, and then we do everything else. And so it’s really easy, but there’s so many things. I am a functional diagnostic nutritioner. It’s an amazing program, teaches you how to run all kinds of labs. And through FDN and self study, I know about 12 different functional labs doctors don’t run. But I start with a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis, because whether it’s a gut issue, hormone issue, food sensitivities, any of those things, inflammation, metabolic issue, thyroid issue, it’s going to give you a blueprint to what’s going on in one lab.

Heather Nelson: That’s just from your hair follicle?

Dori Martin: Yes, yes. Do you know why? It’s because it’s a tissue sample. What they’re taking when they’re taking blood is that, I might start talking fast because this is all exciting and fun, but blood is like serum, right? So it’s very much like homeostatic. It wants to carry things to other places. So when you look at that, it’s like, okay, that’s what you’re getting information about. When you actually have a tissue sample, which is your hair, it’s what’s going on in the cell. You might have, for example, great regular thyroid hormone. But if you take your Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis into your hair, if it’s not getting into your cell, you’re not going to be able to feel like you have enough thyroid hormone. You’re going to have that result like, whoa, I’m taking the hormones, but it’s not helping me. You’ll know why, it’s because of a specific ratio on the Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis. The calcium and potassium ratio, and calcium is like a calcification when you see in the water, that’s kind of what it is, right?

So if it’s on your cell, it’s going to block things. Whereas potassium helps you absorb things. So if you have a high calcium potassium ratio, can’t get into the cell, it doesn’t matter how much hormones you take. And if it’s too permeable, it’s going to go right through so it’ll give you a lot of great ideas in a different way if you’re utilizing what you’re taking in. Are you using it? So it’s not like, is it there? But, are you using it? Which is a huge difference. And I don’t expect anybody to understand this, I just wanted to explain what it looks like. Sodium potassium, that’s your vitality ratio, and that’s what gets the energy into the cell. So if it’s really depleted, then everything you’re doing, like you’re saying, I want to work out. Well, you don’t have the motivation. Your intelligent body intuitively knows that’s going to drain you even further, and so it’s probably not a good option to go hit it hard, that kind of thing.

And we do that. We starve our body, so less nutrients than minerals. And then we go and we exercise, and we think high intensity, or let’s just lift more. But if you’re sodium, zinc and other minerals are needed for producing digestive enzymes, so that’s low, you’re not digesting. So that idea about eating more protein, are you breaking it down? Absorbing it? Or is it just another thing for your body to not be able to handle? Just painting a picture tells you a lot of information about how your cells are functioning. And not only that, but it connects the mind-body connection because your mood is impacted by your minerals. Do you ever have those moments when you were lit up emotionally and time just stood still? And you could do something forever. Hours go by and you’re not tired, you just have endless energy. And then other times, it’s a small task. But man, it was like an hour, but it felt like five, right? So that ties into the mind-body connection in terms of your stress and energy.

And also, your ability to create even a good mood to be able to function. Because there are a lot of things in the Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis that lets us know what’s going on with your mood and how you’re handling stressors in your life. And even thought patterns that might be called like, are you type A? Or are you relaxed and chill? I would see that in a lot of different ways, are you parasympathetic, sympathetic? What’s going on? Your sodium, potassium, yeah? If your potassium is super high or low, super low in depletion and burnout, potassium, you’re a type A person, have always been running it and getting it done, and then suddenly you can’t, and then you feel ashamed, you feel super irritable, and you feel like, what’s wrong with me? Am I broken?

That’s low potassium. We can see these patterns, and it’s been proven over, and over, and over again. And I’m a geek, so I’m in multiple groups where I look at case studies. I have my own clinical experience. I’ve got one client. One practitioner I know, a mentor that’s seen over 20,000 labs. I feel like that’s statistically significant because we’re seeing these patterns in real time, and I’m looking at it as it applies to women in burnout and in midlife. Because you said you were 40, I can’t believe, 43. So you’ve been running whatever your stress and type A lifestyle, and it’s working well for you. But over time, that’s the amount of depletion that if you haven’t given yourself rest and restoration, that’s the amount of depletion that you’ve been experiencing. And now, hormones are going up and down, as you know.

But foundationally, is there energy left in your body to digest food, to fight inflammation, to have enough of a metabolism? It also gives you the metabolic rate. And it’s really fun. Because then, you see if it’s high. You see the mineral pattern. So it’s not like, oh, I’m stuck. It’s like, okay, let’s do these things to bring their levers. Minerals are things that you can actually manage your body. I mean, there’s some genetic factors that will impact, but it gives you a better way of intelligently understanding what to do when your metabolism is slow. Because literally, there’s a marker for slow or fast metabolism. It’s the same for oxidative stress. Are you aging faster than you want to be? But most of us aren’t, right? We’re aging fast, we don’t want to be. So yeah, it’s really fascinating. There’s a blood sugar marker, and there’s an infection ratio, and then there’s just the heavy metals, and inflammation, and fatigue, and a lot of things that we’re dealing with in burnout. Even like bone issues, like lead and other ones embedded in the bone. The body’s intelligent. So when you’re deficient, it’s going to use these toxic metals to kind of substitute for it. And so there’s a lot of things to consider.

Heather Nelson: You can literally get all that from one hair.

Dori Martin: Yes. Isn’t that crazy?

Heather Nelson: That’s so wild and crazy to me.

Dori Martin: I know. Well, I have a case study that I can show you because people are like, seriously? And let me go just rubble and figure this out at the same time, right? But if you look at the lab, and I have a case study, I don’t know if I sent it to you, but you can see in real time how it looks. We talk about the validity in the science behind it, and then just what it looks like, and then how it’s applied in a way that midlife women can be able to understand and see the possibilities. But it does sound very, yeah, it’s a lot.

Heather Nelson: It’s just crazy that that little piece of body, it isn’t even a part of your body. I mean, it is, but that could tell your whole entire everything that’s going on to your body.

Dori Martin: Exactly. Because when you take a hair sample, and it’s about, maybe your hair grows a quarter centimeter a month, so you take hair closest to your scalp, just a small spoonful. And if you take it in the back, you won’t notice. But because people are worried about that, it’s what’s been going on with your body for the last three months. And so instead of just a snapshot with cortisol in the DUTCH Test, one day that you get triggered and you take that test, it’ll spike high. But that’s just one snapshot. It really doesn’t tell you what the average is, which is what you really want. And so, yes, it’s what’s been going on in the last three months. And a lot of times too, depending on the state of the patterns. I can see if somebody’s been in a state of burnout for a very long time, or if they’re acute, there’s that whole stage of stress. It’s acute, or you’re kind of adapting, or you’re depleted, we can tell where you are in that continuum through the hair test just because of how, it literally is a thumbprint, I guess, to your stress patterns. How you’re doing life, and how you’re able to cope with it at this point.

Heather Nelson: So when somebody does give you the sample and you run the testing, do you then come back and say, here’s where you’re depleted. Here are where all your levels are, and then make recommendations of what minerals or things you can do to get it more regulated?

Dori Martin: Yeah. When you get your test results back, first of all, as you’re waiting for your test results, I will give you an email sequence of different primal inputs or foundational things a human body needs to be able to thrive. And with midlife women, we don’t need a giant rigorous list of things to do that’ll take hours. It’d be great to be able to get a massage every week and go to a retreat, which I think is a great idea. But you can also do little things, and that’s what I think is so exciting. And so we don’t live in an environment as humans that is able to support our primal bodies. But people aren’t getting hydration, we’re not getting the right nutrients, we’re getting processed foods, we have a toxic metal burden especially when we get to midlife, and we are not getting enough sunshine. We’re like complicated plants without sunshine. What do you think is going to happen without proper water, without the proper nutrients? And that’s what’s happening. It’s just basic things like hydration. We’re not breathing properly. We’re just breathing in the lower loads of our lungs, and not really inhaling because we’re stressed, we’re hunched over, we’re looking at our phones, so we’re literally not getting oxygenation and all of these things.

So these really basic things, you get five days of that just to remind you, these are really foundational self-care throughout your day. Drink water, make sure you do some breathing. You mentioned meditation, if that’s something that you want to do, breathe and meditate, do focus on that. And then as you’re waiting for it, that’s what you’re getting, and then you get the lab back. It takes about one or two weeks depending on how busy the lab is. And yes, as you said, I like to co-create. I don’t like telling you or the person, so we look at what’s going on with their lifestyle through an intake, and then we customize a program that is doable and sustainable that fits into your busy lifestyle. And a lot of it is lifestyle. Because the biggest thing that depletes your minerals, like going back to Heather’s interviews and talks about managing stress and trauma, and all those other things, and living your best life, because those will help you maintain your minerals and amplify them. There would be a lot of those things with stretching out your nervous system, and what are some mindset and things that are getting you to feel like you can’t rest? And you don’t get to, and you don’t have self care, and you don’t feel supported, right?

So the other thing is the collective. Find people to support you, that is great medicine. Then we look at the minerals, and we talk about the emotional aspects that were found, and we find the physiologic aspects. I don’t necessarily always show them the lab because it’ll overwhelm them. But really, what the findings are depends on how deep you want to go down the rabbit hole. But a lot of times, just tell me what you found, and then let’s co-create something that will be sustainable to be able to help support you so you’ll understand. It’s almost like if you believe in astrology. I feel like I’m doing something like that, because it really does let you know. I was in such a state of such depletion, I wasn’t going to be able to gig out of it just by basic talk therapy or breath work.

Heather Nelson: Obviously, you were already in this work, but it amplified when you were going through your own thing.

Dori Martin: Exactly.

Heather Nelson: Talk about who you were before, where you are now, and maybe some of the few impacted things that you implemented in your life that got you into the place you are now.

Dori Martin: Oh, great question. And thank you for asking. Where I was before I felt like I had to save the world, and I was holding it together for everybody. I totally resonated with what you were saying because my husband couldn’t work for a bit and so it felt like, got my kids, got my mom, and I’ve got my husband, and I needed to do something to make sure that we were all fine, right? Does anybody resonate? I was like, I’m here, sister. But anyway, still there. I’m still there. That’s the thing, right? I feel like there’s that. So I guess I’ll jump in together. I’ll get back to that. I was burnt out. I succeeded. I got to the point where, when I was doing that midlife hormone mastery, I also signed up for a mastermind. Remember, no cortisol, it was upside down, and I succeeded. And totally menopausal, no hormones in the tank. Trying to launch a business in a mastermind, and I couldn’t keep up. I’m type A. A perfectionist. I always managed to hit my target. I was flatlined. I was shaming the crap out of myself, and I felt so horrible.

You’re like, what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you look at all these people moving ahead? And you’re just sitting on your bum staring at the wall. What’s going on? And so I ran my labs, did a lot of studying, got certified as a yoga therapist, learned about EFT and became a practitioner, meditation, breath work, did all those things. Studied trauma healing. And then finally, because I wanted to help other people, I wanted to help my husband, my clients, and I turned all of that towards myself. It wasn’t until I got into the absolute burnout, brain fog. My hormones were everywhere. It was that whole copper incident that actually caused raging mood swings. Like, oh, my god, I actually keep myself away from people because I’m a terror. I’m gonna rip somebody’s feelings apart. I ended up doing all these other things that really helped. The thing that really helped was looking at my Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis, and there’s nothing a black and white to give you a quantification, because people will tell me, hey, you look exhausted. You need to do something about that.

But when you see it in black and white like that and explain to you, it really shifts how you think about things. So I started balancing out your minerals, my minerals. I don’t like to recommend more than five, maybe different things to do in terms of supplementation. But then a lot of it was lifestyle. Women in midlife, their blood sugar becomes less balanced. And so doing things to dial that in. But then just the basic things that I mentioned in the five days in the email sequence that I send to people, sunshine. I know that sounds so odd, but it balances our hormones, it helps with our stress, it gives us the energy we need because it increases the cortisol you need for the day, and then it tapers out at night time. Basically, your body does things in a certain sequence, and it’s sort of like a band and symphony. And when you don’t have your light and dark signals balanced, then your body’s in chaos, and nothing else works.

So it’s another foundational thing. So we get into the sunshine, I would make sure I got hydrated, I balanced my minerals, and I rested and did a lot of the things that you talked about. Surrounded myself with good people, got really simplification and focus, and a lot of self-care, which wasn’t like something that was time-consuming. But taking a pause throughout the day, which is really difficult. Breath work, meditation, slowing down. Even slowing down your talking and moving makes you more mindful. We’re in a hurry, right? Go, go, go. You’re in danger, go, go, go. It slows your nervous system, it tells you you’re safe. A lot of it is about safety. Suddenly safety and support, those were the things that helped me. And then you could look and you get your minerals back, and you can see that you don’t necessarily need it. It’s crazy because you see it, wow, look at how my energy levels have gone up, and my adrenals have recovered. And look, my blood sugar is balancing, and my metabolism is speeding up, and my thyroid is also balancing out. And it’s amazing.

Heather Nelson: I’m so intrigued. I’m like, I want to do this, and then I want to come back. I think for me, one, it’s like the lack of energy to do stuff, and then the inflammation, for sure, and the moods. So nasty. You know what I mean? I’m like, I don’t even know why. I can’t even explain why.

Dori Martin: Do you want me to give you the mineral interpretation of that? What might be happening is that potassium is super low. And a lot of times, what happens is you’ve been high. You see your goal right there in front of you, and then you turn to a bitch because like, hey, I’ve always been able to do this, and I can’t now. So there’s that irritation, the existential like, what’s going on? I can’t do what I want to do. But there’s also copper, maybe that’s an imbalance. What happens when your copper is imbalanced? You get super irritable, you get so mad that you’re looking for a reason to yell. And when you find some small thing, a bomb. Everything goes into that. It’s totally her minerals, it’s not her.

But anyway, because there’s so much shame, blame and sadness, there’s grief too. Am I broken? Is this the way life is going to be? And you try all the things. It works for other people, and it’s not working for us, right? Or it works, and it stops working, as with what happened with hormones for me. And to answer your question too, it’s very individual. I’m not taking estrogen right now because there are certain minerals that bolster the existing hormones that you have in your body, like boron. It helps increase free estrogen and testosterone, and it influences sex binding hormones. And so basically, it’s not bound, and it’s able to circulate better. So for midlife women, it can actually help. It also helps its own health. So there are certain things that you can do, but it’s not for everybody. There are some people who absolutely need it, so it’s very contextual. And by the way, I’d like to say, don’t listen to anything I say and believe it. Check it out for yourself because that’s, I think, dangerous in terms of like, please do your research or look at the lab and understand it.

Heather Nelson: We’re all different. We’re all made of different things. And so yes, what might work for your friend, it might not work for you. Because again, all individuals, and that’s what I love about this concept, and these tests. It’s very individual, and creates something specific just for you.

Dori Martin: Based on data, yeah.

Heather Nelson: You gotta sign me up because I need to do it. But I do want you to tell me, I want to include in the show notes how people could do a test like this and work with you. That will be in the show notes as well. But I’m curious because you mentioned that this type of testing worked with your husband who had a terminal disease, how has even just getting that dialed in for him changed his life?

Dori Martin: Yeah, such a good question. I would say that we don’t worry so much about the original diagnosis right now. It’s stress levels for a man who I think is a go-getter type A, and now in a season of life where that shouldn’t be a priority anymore. He’s struggling, and so I think that’s the biggest thing. And it is depleting his mental health, and he’s aware of it, so we’re doing all the other things. Managing the nervous system, and trying to get the primal inputs, and get some sunshine, functional movement and those kinds of things. He had some other pre-existing things that are more structural, and so we’re looking a lot at that. But in terms of the minerals and everything, we did work a lot with that.

I’m gonna say it because he’s kind of private, but I kind of feel like he mentioned it, if it makes sense. He had stage four gastric cancer. And when you have something like that in any kind of chronic illness, this is to oversimplify, there’s a toxicity on board. Your immune system is compromised, and also your nutrient depleted, mineral depleted, and something has been stressing you out. Studies have shown that within, like 5, maybe 10 years, maybe a lifetime, something was stressing you out, whether it was a complex trauma or something significant, combat veteran, right? He was a combat veteran and had a lot of stressors in his life, and was a single dad of three kids that he raised for 17 years by himself, and so that is a lot of what sparks something like that in illness.

And so Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis, we’re able to see what the toxicities were and it can also tell you whether you’re ready for a detox. We can see if you’re a poor eliminator. Because a lot of times when people go into a detox, it makes them feel worse, or it actually stirs things up. You don’t have the ability. It’s like sweeping and scrubbing everything. I know where to put in all the dirt and dust, and it makes things worse because you’re so depleted. So yes, we worked a lot on balancing out the minerals. And balancing out blood sugar is a big part of it too. And then detoxification and boosting the immune system. A big piece was nervous system regulation and managing those trauma triggers and thought systems that were keeping him stuck.

Heather Nelson: That’s so cool. I’m curious that it made me think of this. Because one of my best friends just got diagnosed with cancer, colon cancer. Does a test like this, or analyzing where you’re at while you’re going through chemo and cancer, is that helpful?

Dori Martin: Can give you information, for sure, about what’s been happening, and the amount of depletion, and maybe some toxic metals, and things that you have in your body. When you go through conventional treatment, it’s going to shift everything, so it’s good to know the baseline. I’ve worked with people, you take it before and then after, and then you actually start addressing what happens after. It’s just interesting to see what may be the situation, the landscape of your minerals that I don’t want to say aloud, but I guess allowed this cancer to grow. There’s this thing about terrain theory, a healthy body is able to fight it off or offset the cancer. But because we all have cancer in our body, I’ve actually coached people through nutrition for that. And also mineral balancing. But again, it’s also focusing on a lot of different things. The nervous system regulation and detoxification. It means some boosting. I have something that I offer for that. For me, it’s really heavy. We’re talking about joy and what lights us up, I want to be able to be a source of information and resources for that. But I didn’t want that to be everything I talk about all the time.

But for sure, mental balancing will give you a blueprint kind of a big picture. There are a lot of different things and specialists that give you information about what to do. This will foundationally make things work better, and then everything else will be really the therapy that you want to use to take the lead. But I will say that if you’re in a state of nervous system dysregulation, or perfectionism, or black and white thinking, or have to be go, go, go, or if there was something that happened that was catastrophic 5 years ago and you’ve never kind of processed it, kind of acknowledged it and worked through it, then your system is always going to again oversupplication in a state of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. The opposite of that is rest, digest, and recover.

And I want to say, Heather, that looking at people’s labs, even DUTCH hormone labs and other labs, I find that especially after 2020 and midlife 2020, right? All existing depletion, a lot of us are stuck within that continuum of fight, flight, freeze, never quite optimizing that rest and recovery. Without that, you can’t literally rest and recover. And so a lot of what I focus on is nervous system regulation. And through that, it’s more inquiry and helping guide the person through it, because it’s different for everybody. If it’s my idea or my favorite thing, it’s not enough. It’s not going to work. It’s like, what do you like to do? What makes you feel good? How do you process? I would ask questions, and how to guide the person through what’s really underneath it all, creating that lack of safety. It comes down to safety, or are we to fight for safety or thrive?

Heather Nelson: You’re speaking my language right now.

Dori Martin: Oh, absolutely. That’s like, I’ve got to talk to this woman because she’s doing all these things and all these shifts, and taking a risk that lights you up, although that’s good stress, right?

Heather Nelson: Good stress. Since you’ve been doing this test on all these women, what are the number, maybe two mineral deficiencies are you seeing that consistently show up?

Dori Martin: Oh, my goodness. I often see that the sodium magnesium ratio is low, and that’s our adrenal ratio. That’s like, are we depleted? Are we able to rise to the challenge and do the things we want to do to have the life we want? It’s pushing beyond capacity for too long and very little self-care. And I see that quite often. I also see for those who feel inflammation, and mood swings, and things like that, copper dysregulation. I also see the thyroid is slowing down the thyroid ratio. When your adrenals are taxed for too long, it makes sense that the thyroid is trying to adapt. It’s using some of the same things your adrenals are to be able to be thriving, and so when your adrenals are depleted, then this thyroid is depleted. I’m pointing at it like it’s here, but your thyroid is depleted. I don’t know if people can’t see, but your thyroid gets depleted and starts to slow down because what it’s doing is actually genius. It’s trying to protect you, and you’re going into hibernation mode. It’s shutting you down. It’s called a functional freeze.

Dori Martin: It’s what you talked about, I can’t even place your name. I’m so sorry, but the one who’s talking about entrepreneurship trauma or adrenal fatigue, your body is saying you’ve been going on for so long. I’ve been telling you, I’m exhausted. Now, I’m going to shut you down. What does that mean? To slow down your thyroid. Your adrenals are depleted, and then your calcium levels go up, and that’s where you end up with a flat line energy and mood like, I don’t feel excited anymore, and I’m actually dissociating now. If this keeps going on, and unfortunately, you know what women are doing, instead of understanding the physiology of this burnout, is hitting it harder. I’m going to go work out. I’m going to do this like an extreme diet. Like manhandling it into some go, go, go, more go, go, go. Then ultimately, you see the sodium potassium vitality ratio go high because you’re like, I’m gonna get it done. And then it starts going down, and then it gets depleted, and then you have no energy, and then you feel like, what’s wrong with me? I should be able to do this because I’ve done it before.

Even their cell danger response, your mitochondria are, the membrane organized cells in your cells that generate energy. It had two jobs. One is to give you energy, but the other is to detect safety. It’s been detecting lack of safety for too long, so the cell danger response shuts your cells down, and so all of its functional freeze. You’re doing the thing because you’ve always done the thing, but you’re not in it. And then your cell danger responds. Your cells are just like, I can’t because we’re not safe. I’m going to shut this down. That’s midlife burnout, caregiver burnout hormones, right? That’s what I’m trying to say. It’s in order, we’re a mess. We’re not looking at this, we’re doing the JLP. Like I said, I’m not slamming any of that. It’s just that, why are we doing these things? Or things that tell your body to do something, and your body is saying, like, I can’t do it. I’m tapping out here. Don’t throw stuff at me, stop punching me. And we’re not hearing it, we’re just putting more in.

Heather Nelson: What a mess we are. Just kidding. You’re telling me I can get better.

Dori Martin: The other part of the story is exactly what you’re saying. If I could just crawl and get it done, I’ll continue to do it. But brain fog, yelling at people, lack of logic, it scared the crap out of me. When you’re exhausted in the middle of the day and have 10 other things to do, you’re holding it together for everybody, and you can’t even hold yourself up is frightening. I mean, utterly horrible. I had to take a break. I had to get sunshine. I had to breathe properly. We had a conversation about that. Absolutely doing these things. And they’re not big things. They’re little things in consistent parts of your day, and I find that super exciting. It’s like the primal inputs that make your baseline body thrive. That’s what I want to share with people. It’s not these fancy, expensive things. Those are great if you want to do it, but you can’t afford it. But it shouldn’t be expensive, and it shouldn’t be intensive, and it shouldn’t exhaust you or stress you out to try and heal.

Heather Nelson: When you go through this, I know everybody’s different. What’s the time to feel better? Is it like weeks? Is it years?

Dori Martin: Really good question. We can see from your mineral pattern how long you’ve been depleted. And an example, if you’re sewing magnesium or super low, it means you’ve been there a long time, so that might take a little bit more time. But some people start feeling improvement pretty quickly. But to get through that adrenal dysregulation and all the things, it can take time. So it really depends on the person. And also, some people are still in the situation that got them, that’s what I wanted to come to. You were saying you’re a mess, sick. Life will punch you in the face sometimes, especially when you’re taking risks and actually living it fully.

So the good news is, go you. But then the bad news, or the thing to know is it’s about resilience and knowing what to do when you get punched in the face. It’s not like we’re going to be on the top of a mountain on the other side, but you’re going to have more times or moments when you are. And if you know that your minerals and it’s more about nervous system regulation and primal inputs, you’ll know what to do. And I find that so empowering. Going into a fighting ring. I don’t know why I’m picking these up. I’m not a fighter, but you will get punched, but you’ll know how to duck, and you know how to recover. You’ve got that resilience, and you’re going to be able to navigate through it more elegantly.

Heather Nelson: What’s the one thing you want to leave the listeners with today? You gave us so many great nuggets. I am so intrigued by this conversation. If there’s one thing a woman could do, obviously, go do this test, we know that. But besides that, what’s something that you’ve learned along the journey that you want to leave everybody with today?

Dori Martin: Listen to Heather’s episode about 2025 recap because she talks about, this is your time. Nobody’s going to save you, you’re going to be able to save yourself because you’ve been holding it together for everybody else. It is your turn. And then if you want, sign up for my program. But I would say, if you don’t do anything else, that’s because that’s the lowest hanging fruit. I listened to that a couple times. Because first of all, it was fascinating, and I really loved your journey.

But also, there’s that talk about, you were so authentic and so raw, and I really appreciate that because that’s not easy. I also heard what you were saying from the point of midlife and burnout and your journey through it, and you’re shifting that trajectory, and being in rooms with people that can lead you. The other thing is to find people who are like-minded that are on the journey with you. It’s really hard to do this by yourself because you’ve got your blind spots, or whatever. Sometimes when you fall down, you need somebody else to pick you up. That would be the other thing. But you talk about all those things, and so I really, really appreciated that. Thank you.

Heather Nelson: I love that. Well, we will put in the show notes how they can find you, how they can follow you, how they can sign up for this testing and do all the things. I just want to say that I’ve learned so much today. It actually kind of fuels me a little bit to know this. This is gonna get better. It’s just the season I need. I know that I need to do it for myself and my family because, of course, they’re the ones that get the brunt of everything. I don’t want that to be the case, it’s bad, so thank you.

Dori Martin: Thank you for inviting me. This has been so much fun.

Heather Nelson: That’s a wrap on today’s episode of Her Story Unscripted. Is something you heard today made you feel a little more seen, a little less alone, or just got you thinking that’s exactly why we’re here? If this episode resonated with you, I’d love for you to share it with another woman in your life who needs to hear it. And if you haven’t already, make sure you subscribe wherever you listen, or catch us on YouTube so you never miss a conversation. I’m Heather Nelson. Thank you for being here, for listening, and for showing up for real stories. I’ll see you next week.