You're Not Just Sensitive — Your System Doesn't Have Enough Buffer

If you're someone who reacts to everything — supplements, foods, environments, stress — and you've started to wonder if you're just built differently, this episode is for you.

Maybe you've been told you're highly sensitive. Maybe you have a history of mast cell issues, nervous system dysregulation, or just a body that seems to respond to everything more intensely than other people's do. Maybe you've tried to support your health and had things backfire in ways that don't make sense. You do everything right and still feel like your system is working against you.

What I see in almost everyone who comes to me with this picture is not a mystery and not a personality trait. It's a system that doesn't have enough buffer to absorb what's coming in — and once you understand what that means physiologically, everything starts to make a different kind of sense.

In this episode I break down what being unbuffered actually looks like in the body. What hair tissue mineral analysis and comprehensive gut microbiome testing consistently show in people who feel this way. Why the sodium to magnesium ratio is one of the most telling markers of nervous system capacity. Which keystone gut species are almost universally absent in sensitive people — and what that costs you neurochemically, including your body's ability to produce GABA and regulate its own stress response.

This is the episode I wish existed when I was in the thick of it myself.

Read the full blog post: https://lydiajoy.mykajabi.com/blog/you-re-not-just-sensitive-your-system-doesn-t-have-enough-buffer

💬 Text me using the link at the top of the show notes — I'd love to hear what landed.

☕ Support the show for as little as $3/month — link in show notes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Hey friends, welcome back to the show. This is Olivia, and this is Rewilded Wellness, where we're really looking at how to come back into a more grounded, nourished, and sustainable relationship with our bodies. And today's episode is a podcast version of a blog post that I just published. So if you want to read it, it is in the show notes for you. It's also something I kind of wanted to put into words for a while. It's about something that I see in pretty much everyone that comes to work with me. And it's a pattern, it's a part of a pattern that doesn't really have a clean name in the mainstream wellness conversation. But it's, I think it explains a lot of why so many people feel like they're they're they're doing a lot of things that and their body is still not cooperating, right? Um and I'm gonna call this being unbuffered, but I'm gonna get into it a little bit more because I think by the end of this, you'll understand, you'll see yourself in it or someone you know in it a little differently. Before I get into it, two quick things. Uh, first, there is now a link at the top of the show notes where you can text me directly, and I mean that literally. You click the link, it opens a text, and you share what you want to share, and I will get it. And I would love to hear from you. You know, one of the strange realities of podcasting is that, you know, I put something out into the world, and I genuinely have no idea how it lands unless someone actually tells me, right? I can see that people are downloading, but I have no idea what people are thinking, right? I don't know what clicks for you. I don't know if you're motivated to do anything differently. You had a big takeaway. So your feedback means more than you know, and it does help me keep making things that are actually uh speaking to you or are useful, right? So if something in this episode or any of the episodes you listen to resonates, please use that link and share with me. I will read every single text. And second, this podcast is completely listener-supported, no ads, no sponsors, just me showing up every week to share what I know. Um, if you find value here, the things that help me most are, you know, sharing an episode with someone, leaving a review on Spotify or iTunes, anywhere you listen that you can comment, please do so. Um, and then if you want to support the show financially, you can do that for as little as$3 a month, basically buying me a coffee every month if you want to. And that link is in the show notes too for you. It's obviously completely optional, not expected, but always appreciated. All right, let's get into it. So, like I said, there's a particular kind of person who finds their way to my work. They've usually been on a healing journey for a while. They've done a lot of things, a lot of trial and error, a lot of actual protocols, a lot of a lot of testing. Some people have done more testing than I can even believe that that is possible, but there's a lot of testing that people are doing. Um, you know, attempts at protocols, um, all kinds of things, right? They've changed their diet, they've done, they've worked on their circadian biology, they've, you know, cleaned up their household, like so many things, right? So these are people that are not lazy at all by any stretch of the imagination. If anything, they've been trying harder than most people would. And somewhere along the way, they things just stopped adding up, right? Um, there's like this constant sensitivity going on, right? Whether it's with supplements, like not really working for them, uh, foods, like what is going on with food? You know, I I feel um like I either have no appetite or I can't eat anything without feeling badly, or certain foods that I used to eat now seem to bother me, or even just eating like a nourishing real food. I thought that would help, but I still feel inflamed, right? Like a nervous system that gets more reactive, not less. Like the list could go on. And most of these people assume, you know, they just haven't found like the right answer yet, or whatever it may be, right? And what what I'm seeing here really is just systems that do not have the capacity to handle what is being asked of it. And that's a very different problem. And it won't, and it it re it requires a completely different approach. And that's what I want to explore today. So, what I mean when I say unbuffered, right? Sensitivity is how most people describe this experience. And sensitivity is real. I'm not dismissing it, but I think the word leads people sometimes in the wrong direction because it makes it sound like a fixed trait, if you will, right? Like suddenly I this is how I am, right? Um, you know, and like that's maybe the end of the story or whatever. But what I'm actually seeing in the people I work with is something more specific than that. It's that their system does not have enough buffer. Buffer is what allows the body to absorb input without overreacting. It's what lets you take in food, stress, a new supplement, a hard week, and process it without everything feeling like too much. And when that buffering capacity is intact, the body can adapt. It can respond and then return to baseline. And when it's not, everything gets amplified, right? The same input that would be neutral or even helpful in another body feels overwhelming in yours. And this is why things backfire. And I want to be specific about what backfiring actually looks like because it's rarely dramatic. It's usually it's a lot of times it's subtle and often very confusing. So say someone starts a supplement, right, that's supposed to support them, and instead they feel more anxious, more wired, more off. I could list you a million things. I've had people tell me happen to them, right? Say, for example, someone tries to increase uh magnesium or add a probiotic, and something gets really off in their system. Their digestion gets way worse, they start getting really weird symptoms, their sleep gets disrupted, you know, two seemingly important things that they probably need, and things go haywire, right? Or, you know, I don't know, sometimes it's a dietary shift, right? Towards a more nourishing diet. Um, and you know, the body feels heavier or like their system just can't process it. Um, a lot of people come to me, this is the one I've said over and over and over, and they've been given like some type of detox protocol for X thing that they were told they have, whatever it may be, you know, mercury or, you know, they've got some type of gut infection or whatever it is. Um and they try to push through it and they just come out the other side feeling way worse than when they started. Even if they felt like it was progressing in the short term, in the long run, they just bottomed right back out. And it's it's not always that the intervention is entirely wrong. It's it's it can be for that person, right? It's more about like understanding that the system didn't have the capacity to proceed with that level of intervention, right? Or receive it. And I think that that's the distinction that matters enormously, both for how you understand what's happening in your body and for what you do next. Right. So what this actually looks like in the body. I work primarily with hair tissue mineral analysis and the um biome effects, which is a very comprehensive gut test. Um, and over time I've started to see consistent patterns in bodies that feel this way, especially in the last handful of years. And I want to go just a little touch into two of them. Not because I want anyone to go hunting for them on their results and try to fix them in isolation or anything like that, but because the physiology underneath is genuinely what I'm trying to get at. And I find it very interesting. And I think when you understand what the body's actually doing, it changes how you relate to your own experience of it. Um, I'm I'm trying to get us objective here right now, okay? So the very first one, it's just one single ratio on the hair test, the HTMA. Um, and it's the sodium to magnesium ratio being very low. Now, normal sits around 4.0. I regularly see people coming in well under one. Okay. Sometimes it's so dramatically low, it's barely showing. And it's to me, I'm like, that is not just a low number. That's a window into a system in a deeply conserved protective state. And here's why. Um, sodium drives the sodium potassium ATP pump, right? Like it's that primary uh mechanism that maintains the electrical potential across the cell membranes, right? So every single nerve signal, every uh active cellular exchange, every process that requires the cell to actually do something runs through this pump. We don't think about this, you guys. We we don't think about this at all. So our body's doing this, right? Now, sodium is also regulated by aldosterone, which connects it directly to uh adrenal and HPA access function. So when sodium is severely depleted relative to magnesium, what you're seeing is a system that has been under load long enough that it has turned its own drive down, right? It's like conserving, protecting. It's essentially like throttled itself, right? And in a person, it just they feel low, right? Like they just don't have it. It and it's a low capacity state. And this is, you know, where we have to pay attention, right? Because, you know, it matters what you do, depending on, you know, that person, right? Like they need to have the right balance of minerals coming in so they don't feel this sensitivity of, you know, what I'm saying is like some type of a reactive experience, right? Um, because sodium and magnesium compete for some of the same transport mechanisms. So if, you know, sodium's barely present, you know, if if we aren't getting the right mineral balance, right, and you everyone wants to take magnesium, maybe, maybe they try to take too much, they didn't quite get the balance right, you know, um getting those electrolyte minerals in there as well, in a form, in a way that the body can actually handle. Because a lot of times some people can't even tolerate some of these basic things, right? So what can happen is you can further disrupt that cellular exchange. So it's really finding the right Goldilocks amount of these electrolytes per each person, uh, for one thing. And, you know, if if you get started on minerals and they don't feel good, it can uh affect you in a lot of ways, your digestion, your sleep, your energy. Uh funky things can happen. I've had some crazy stuff people told me have happened. Um, and so I've so especially in, you know, if you look at the whole picture, obviously it's more than this one ratio, right? But I've seen this happen enough times to pay very close attention to how we bring the minerals back in. Because how you do it matters as much as which minerals you're bringing in. And the goal is to gently start to throttle the system back on, not to flood a depleted system with something it isn't ready to receive. So that's just a very simple tiny piece into, you know, um this mineral situation. Now, we obviously could go much more into it, but um the second pattern is in the gut. So let's say you have this low sodium magnesium for one thing, and then we look at the gut, and there's more stuff going on in there, specifically in the keystone species, which I did a whole um train map series on the gut, talked about this more in depth if you want to go back and check out some old blogs. Um and a lot of times people are missing these keystone species. Um, there's a bunch of them, but there's a couple that come up in almost everyone. Okay. So one is Acromantia mucinophila, and the other is Lactobacillus ruteri. And their absence points to different but related problems. Okay, so acromancia lives in the mucus layer of the gut, and it's critical for maintaining it. So when it's absent or severely depleted, the mucus layer thins, tight junctions weaken, the gut becomes more permeable, right? And that increased permeability raises systemic inflammatory load, including the kind that travels through the gut brain axis, it contributes to nervous system reactivity. Um, so acromantia also produces short-chain fatty acids that feed the cells lining the colon. And when it's gone, those cells are losing one of their primary fuel sources and the structure starts to quietly break down. All right, so then we have the lactobacillus ruteri, it does something different. It's primarily a lactic acid producer, and it ferments sugars into lactic acid and other organic acids that create an environment that's inhospitable to pathogens. And it produces ruterin, which is a potent um antimicrobial compound, and it strengthens the intestinal barrier while reducing pro-inflammatory cytokines and supporting immune regulation at the mucosal level. So when it's absent, in and in my experience, I don't see like almost anyone having any. It's rarely detected. Um it's basically you're like losing this layer of frontline protection and structural support that the gut relies on to hold itself together under stress and in general, really, but under stress you is when you really are feeling it, right? So then we have the GABA production that we can see. Um, so the biome effects test uh it tracks us as one of the functional markers, right? And a significant number of people I work with show no detectable GABA production at all. And I feel like this matters because GABA is the nervous system's primary um inhibitory neurotransmitter, right? It's it kind of is like it's what turns the volume down, I guess. It's it's what gives the system like the capacity to absorb stress without overreacting. And bifidobacterium longum is one of the primary GABA-producing species in the gut. And, you know, it has a couple others. Um, they contribute acetate and other metabolites that really help hold the gut ecosystem together. So when these species are uh depleted or absent, you're you're not just losing a structural piece of the gut, but a neurochemical one. And so then the gut brain access becomes less regulated, aka buffered, right? The nervous system has less of the inhibitory tone it needs to like buffer or deal with what's coming in. Okay, so these are just a couple of the top things I see in everyone, not even the whole picture. So you put these patterns together, you have a mineral profile showing a system with very little available drive, and a gut missing the organisms that produce structural integrity, you know, as well as your frontline like antimicrobial protection and that neurochemical calm. And you have a very coherent picture of a system that's working hard just to hold itself together with nothing left over to absorb what's being added to it, what's getting stirred up, right? Um so, you know, and of course, these two tests tell us far more than, you know, these few things that I've touched on here. But the point isn't to go deeper into the markers. The point is that even just a few of them seen in context tell you something clear. The system is under-resourced, it's underbuffered, it's running without the reserves it needs to respond to life without tipping into overwhelm. So, why a lot of approaches make this all worse, right? Well, the the default response to finding markers like these is to try to correct them, right? And the missing, add the missing organisms, right? Push the minerals up, support the pathways that look underactive, which in theory makes sense. But what I've watched happen over and over again is that when you try to correct markers in a system that doesn't have the buffer to process what you're adding, you create often create more instability at first, not less, right? And so, you know, the system just doesn't have the reserve to receive the intervention. And so it responds defensively instead of adaptively. And the person ends up feeling like, what the heck is happening? Or like they're going backwards. Um, when what's really happening is that they've asked more of their system than it could currently handle comfortably. And I've been in this pattern myself, man. Whew! Where my body just did not have the capacity to absorb what I was trying to do, even if it if we could logic it out on paper, protocol-wise, right? And I see it now regularly in the people who come to work with me. They're they've gotten so much information from all over the place. They're definitely not lacking in any level of effort, right? But they're working with a system that has been so focused on managing its load that it doesn't have anything left over to integrate what's being asked of it. And oftentimes, like all the doing that we could do isn't the answer, right? Like, there's a lot you can always do. There's a ton you could always do. But the question always remains like, what can you actually integrate sustainably? So doing the right amount at the right time becomes more of the dance that we have to dance, right? It's always about capacity before complexity. Um, so before you ask your system to do something new, you have to build its ability to receive it. And this is where we have to learn to let the body lead. So, what does that actually look like? Because I talk about this a lot, and um I'm not talking about doing nothing. I'm talking about starting with what each person's system can actually handle and building from there. So, in practice, for most people in this state, that means going back to very foundational things first, right? Um, and I promise you, everyone has something foundational that they are missing. Even if they're doing a lot of good foundational things already, they they haven't figured out some of the things that they need to do foundationally because they don't understand their whole system, right? So everyone has something that they can go and find these subtle inroads in. Um, you know, whether it's through food, right? Like where can we make move that needle, if at all? Um, minerals that are in the appropriate amounts and forms that the body can actually currently tolerate, versus like, here, let's just go ham and give you it all, right? Um, and sometimes it's rarely as much as someone might assume. Like we we we think about these numbers that we've been told, like you're supposed to get X amount of milligrams of this mineral every day, blah, blah, blah. You know, we read the forums, we we think we need way more. Um, and it's not the best way to look at this, right? Because you are the one who. Has to put in the new input and have your body respond accordingly. Sometimes it's just about more consistency in your daily rhythm, right? Like your circadian rhythm, how you start your day and how you end your day, your sleep, your eating patterns. Um, really, so your the your nervous system has something to stable to organize around. Um, and it doesn't always feel like exciting, novel interventions, right? It's really more about creating the conditions in your body, in your life that you can tolerate that allow everything else to work, right? Like to build on further and deeper. And so once we kind of figure out where each person is at and what they need to start with, I'm always watching how the body responds. I'm not looking for immediate improvement, I'm looking for stability in that person. Like, can your system integrate what we're doing without becoming more reactive? And is there more ease or more turbulence? And that response tells me where we actually are, and it tells me more than any lab marker could on its own. Um, if something creates more instability, it I don't interpret that as push through it. I interpret it as information. We adjust, we slow down, we meet the system where it's at rather than where we want it to be. And this is where I want to say something clearly. No protocol fits every person, right? I think this should be obvious by now. Um, like I sit with a microbiome labs um doctor, okay, and they give me a protocol. And I promise you, like, not one single client has been able to smoothly do all the things that that protocol is, right? Like in half the time, I we don't even get to half of it. Um, like I said, there's a lot you could do, but what can you do sustainably, right? Um, right. And then, you know, um, so that, so then we have to remember, like, I feel like the age of the protocol is over. We do need clear understanding of like, okay, here's what we're seeing, here's what we need to like have like correct in the body or support in the body so it pivots right. Um, you know, and it's interesting too, because even when people come to me with similar markers, um, like the ones that I just told you, um, their health history and their life history are completely different. And their current circumstances are completely different. And what they've already tried is different, and what their nervous system has been through is different, and what their gut has been asked to manage is different, right? So the markers are a starting point for a conversation, not a prescription. And the person in front of me always has to take precedence over what the paper says. Right. The goal is never to fix the markers only, right? Like we're not just like, here, let's make the these labs look better. The goal is to build a system that can actually handle life. Right. So if a lot of people are saying, oh, I'm sensitive to everything I've tried, maybe it's the approach hasn't actually met you where you're at, right? And I think, you know, this changes what recovery looks like. So when you start to see your body through this lens, the whole orientation shifts, right? You stop trying to find the thing that will finally fix you, and you stop interpreting your reactions as failures or signs that something's deeply wrong with you, which, you know, I know it's easy to catastrophize and think it's something so much worse than it is a lot of times. Um you can start paying attention to what your system can actually handle and treating that as real and important information rather than like a frustrating obstacle. Okay. And I know things move more slowly this way, but they also hold. And for people who have been trying things that keep backfiring, slow and stable is not a step down. It's the whole furry can point. Um, and I think of my work as helping people rebuild the conditions that allow their system to respond to life again, not just to supplements or protocols, but to food, to stress, to change, to healing, right? That responsiveness is what was there before things got to this point, and it can come back. But it does have to come back through building capacity, not through adding more complexity to a system that's already overwhelmed. So if this is you and you're in a place where everything feels like too much, you feel super sensitive, you're you're trying hard and things keep backfiring and you can't figure out why. This is the frame I would offer you. Your system doesn't have enough buffer yet, it doesn't have enough capacity. And that's not a permanent state. It's a it's a starting point, it's just where you're at. And it does require a different way of working with your body than most people have been taught. All right, so basically what I'm getting at is that you don't need to push harder. You need a different pace and a different approach. And this is the population of people that I work with most inside my minerals and microbes client work, where I'm they're learning how to work with their body. We're doing this together, side by side, instead of overriding it and really just building that capacity in a way that actually lands and stays and sticks. Does that make sense? So you're not going backwards and bottoming out once you've done something intense right for a while, even if you could muscle your way through it, you know. Um, anyways, I hope that this is making sense for you guys. It's important for me to keep figuring out ways to express this uh because I do see it all the time. And I do have space for new clients right now. So if you're feeling called to go deeper, you can locate that link in the show notes, read all about it. It's very thorough. If you have questions afterwards, you're welcome to email me. I'm always happy to make sure that this is uh clear, right? So if this episode landed for you, if something clicked, or maybe you even have a question or you just want to share uh a takeaway, please use the text me link at the top of the show notes. I genuinely do want to hear from you. And that is all for this episode. I will talk to you guys soon. Stay wild and stay well.