Your Body Is Stealing From Your Serotonin — Here's What To Do About It

Grab the Eat To Energize Freebie (with my go-to Nutrition Labs) HERE! 

Life doesn't slow down. Between the daily inconveniences and the hard, unexpected stuff — relationship struggles, loss, disappointments — our bodies are constantly being asked to manage more. One of the reasons Jess has such deep reverence for nutrition is its power to set us up biologically, so when life gets hard, our bodies have something to stand on.

Because health isn't just physical. It's mental, social, spiritual, and biological — and if we can shore up the biological piece, we give ourselves a real fighting chance with the rest.

In this episode, Jess breaks down:

A fascinating gut mechanism that most people have never heard of — and how it directly impacts your mood, energy, and mental wellbeing when your nervous system is in overdrive.

The science (made simple):

Tryptophan is an amino acid your body uses to make serotonin. But under chronic stress, inflammation, or fight-or-flight, an enzyme called IDO activates and diverts tryptophan away from serotonin production — toward a compound called kynurenine (KIN-yoo-reh-neen). This is your body's survival response. But the cost? Lower serotonin availability, and with it, low mood, anxiety, and fatigue.

Your body is literally stealing from your serotonin supply to deal with stress.

The nutrition connection:

When we're stressed, we're also usually not eating the foods that support this pathway — and that's the double hit. Chronic stress depletes the very micronutrients your body needs to produce serotonin in the first place:

• B6 — required to convert tryptophan into serotonin
• Magnesium — supports serotonin synthesis AND calms the HPA axis
• Zinc — activates the enzyme that kicks off serotonin production
• Iron — works alongside zinc in that same enzyme pathway (especially important for women)
• Vitamin D — regulates the genes involved in serotonin synthesis upstream

What this looks like in practice:

Jess shares how she works with clients to assess their nutrition rhythms, run functional labs and GI-MAP testing, and identify where the raw materials for serotonin production may be missing — so that nourishment becomes intentional, not reactive.

Grab the Eat To Energize Freebie HERE! 

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