Dr. Linda Slaney DC

Week 5 of What's Actually Depleted.

Omega-3s. Lots of research here. Not all of it agrees. Let's talk about it.

EPA and DHA are building blocks of brain cell membranes, and they help regulate inflammation. That's why they keep showing up in conversations about focus, mood, and perimenopause.

Perimenopause: estrogen shifts may change how your body handles fats and inflammation. Researchers are still sorting out the details, so I won't oversell it.

ADHD: honestly, mixed. Some trials, mostly in kids, show small improvements in symptoms. A bigger recent review of 22 studies didn't find a significant overall benefit. So not a magic bullet. Maybe a helpful piece for some people.

Things that can show up when intake is low (they're also common with a dozen other issues, so don't self-diagnose):
→ Brain fog
→ Dry skin or eyes
→ Joint stiffness
→ Low mood
→ Restless sleep

Best food sources: salmon, mackerel, sardines, anchovies, herring. Walnuts and flax give you ALA, which your body converts poorly. Fatty fish is the real deal.

Supplements: fish oil, or algae oil if you're plant-based. Check the label for how much EPA and DHA you're actually getting, not just "fish oil" in big letters. Many ADHD trials used EPA-heavy formulas.

Safety: low risk at normal doses. The FDA suggests keeping EPA + DHA to 3g a day or less from all sources, and no more than 2g from supplements. Higher doses may affect blood clotting. On a blood thinner? Check with your doctor or pharmacist first.

Low-risk, easy to find, worth a try for a couple of months. See how you feel.

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Week 4 of What's Actually Depleted.

B12.

Low B12 can look like aging. Or depression. Or early memory decline. That's exactly why it gets missed.

It matters for your nerves, your red blood cells, DNA synthesis and your brain. Not a small job list.

Now, perimenopause. Some menopause educators, Dr. Wendy Sweet included, list B12 among the nutrients that can run low at this stage. Here's where I land. The research is thinner than that sounds. One study of nearly 300 peri- and postmenopausal women found almost all of them had normal B12. So I can't tell you most women are low.

What I can tell you is who's more at risk. Older age. Acid-reducing meds. Metformin. Gut conditions. Eating little or no animal food. And the symptoms of low B12 overlap a LOT with perimenopause, so it's easy to blame hormones when it's something else.

Same with focus and mood. B12 helps your body make the chemicals your brain runs on, and low levels can leave you foggy, flat or scattered. That can look like ADHD. Does low B12 cause ADHD? No. Is it worth ruling out? Absolutely.

Signs it might be low:
→ Fatigue and weakness
→ Brain fog or memory trouble
→ Tingling or numbness in hands or feet
→ Low mood
→ Heart palpitations, an irregular or bounding heartbeat, or shortness of breath. Get these checked, don't guess.
→ Pale or yellowish skin
→ Sore tongue or mouth sores

Tingling or numbness? Don't guess and don't wait on it. Nerve symptoms left too long can become permanent. That's the one place "just correct it" isn't the whole story.

Food sources: clams (top of the list), beef liver, oysters, salmon, tuna, eggs, dairy. If you eat fully plant-based, B12 needs a supplement or fortified foods. No way around that one.

Supplements: the research doesn't show one form beating the other. Cyanocobalamin and methylcobalamin both raise levels. Skip the MTHFR hype, that's a folate story, not a B12 one. Supplement B12 is absorbed differently than the B12 in food, so low stomach acid doesn't always block it. Some people still absorb it poorly and need injections. The right form and dose is a conversation with your doctor or nurse practitioner.

Safety: B12 has a very low risk of harm at normal doses, and what your body doesn't use mostly gets flushed out.

So don't guess. Testing beats guessing. Ask your family doctor or nurse practitioner for a B12 blood test. It's simple, and if you're low, it's very treatable.

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Week 3 of What's Actually Depleted.

This is the one I want every woman in perimenopause to read.

Iron. Specifically — ferritin.

And the numbers just changed.

Last week, the American Society of Hematology released new guidelines for diagnosing iron deficiency.

The old cutoff? 15.
The new one for menstruating women? 30.
And if your periods are heavy? 50.

So that ferritin of 28 your lab report called "normal"? By the new standard, that's iron deficient.

Here's why this matters in perimenopause: periods often get heavier before they stop. Sometimes a lot heavier. That blood loss adds up. Month after month.

And here's what almost nobody tells you. You can have totally normal bloodwork — normal hemoglobin, normal CBC — and still be running on empty iron stores.

Because a CBC doesn't measure your stores. Ferritin does. And it's not always on your requisition unless you ask.

Ferritin is how your body stores iron. And iron is what your brain, your hair follicles, and your energy actually run on.

If you have ADHD? Low ferritin has been linked to worse symptoms. Most of that research is in kids — but it's worth knowing your number.

Signs you might be low:
→ Fatigue that feels different — heavy, bone-deep, not just tired
→ Brain fog, can't focus
→ Restless legs at night
→ Hair shedding (even when your hemoglobin is "fine")
→ Cold hands and feet
→ Focus falling apart and you can't figure out why

Best food sources: beef, lamb, chicken liver, oysters, clams. That's heme iron — the kind your body absorbs best.

If you do need a supplement, iron bisglycinate tends to be easier on the gut. Keep it away from calcium, magnesium, coffee and tea. And ask your provider about every-other-day dosing — newer research shows it can actually absorb better.

⚠️ Don't take iron without a confirmed deficiency. Too much iron is genuinely harmful.

⚠️ And if your periods have gotten heavier or changed? Get that checked. Iron fixes the depletion. It doesn't explain the bleeding.

Most lab ranges haven't caught up to the new guidelines yet. So don't just look for a flag.

Ask for the number. Then advocate for yourself.

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Week 2 of What's Actually Depleted.

This week: Vitamin D. And if you live anywhere in Atlantic Canada — this one is for you especially.

We get meaningful UV exposure for maybe 4 months of the year here. The rest of the time, the sun is too low in the sky for our skin to make any. Add perimenopause to that picture.

Vitamin D isn't really a vitamin — it functions more like a hormone. And it works directly with your immune system, your mood, your bones, and your nervous system.

Signs you might be low:
→ Fatigue that sleep doesn't fix
→ Low mood, flat affect, or depression
→ Bone pain or aching back
→ Getting sick more often than you should
→ Hair loss
→ Brain fog

Best food sources: fatty fish (salmon, mackerel, sardines), egg yolks, beef liver, fortified milk.

Best supplement: D3 (not D2) — always paired with K2. K2 directs the calcium where it needs to go.

Target blood level: 100–150 nmol/L. Not just "normal" — optimal. The official RDA of 600 IU is widely considered too low by most functional medicine practitioners.

Get tested. Know your number.

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Big news: I'm speaking at MIDlife, Informed with TERRA Medical Aesthetics + Wellness 🎤

Sunday, Oct 18 · 1-5pm · ALT Hotel, St. John's

My topic: "It's not just aging: the real story behind midlife joint pain"

Because I am SO tired of women being told their joints ache more in their 40s because they're "just getting older." That's not the whole story and I'm going to break down what's actually happening in the body — and what you can do about it.

This is a room full of local health and wellness pros coming together for World Menopause Day. If you're in midlife (or love someone who is), this one's for you.

Tickets were on the wait list first, and public sale opened today.

🎟️ Grab yours: https://terra-midlifeinformed-event.netlify.app

Week 1 of the What's Actually Depleted series.

We're starting with magnesium — because it's the one I talk about most, the one most women are low in, and the one with the widest reach across your whole system.

Magnesium is involved in over 300 biochemical reactions in the body. Sleep. Nervous system regulation. Muscle function. Blood sugar balance. Cortisol metabolism.

And here's the perimenopause piece nobody mentions: estrogen helps your body retain magnesium. As estrogen declines, so does your magnesium. It's not a coincidence. It's physiology.

Signs you might be low:
→ Poor sleep or waking at 3am
→ Anxiety or that wired-but-tired feeling
→ Muscle cramps or tension you can't shake
→ Headaches that come out of nowhere
→ Heart palpitations
→ Low HRV on your wearable

Best food sources: pumpkin seeds, dark chocolate (70%+), spinach, black beans, almonds, avocado.

Best supplement form: magnesium bisglycinate or glycinate — 200–400mg elemental before bed. Avoid magnesium oxide. It's the cheap version and your body barely absorbs it.

Toxicity risk: low from food. High doses can cause loose stools — that's your signal to reduce.

If you've been told your magnesium is "normal" on bloodwork — know that serum magnesium only reflects a tiny fraction of your body's stores.

This one is worth paying attention to.

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Can I tell you something that took me 18 years of clinical practice to say out loud?

Most of the women I see aren't tired because they're lazy. They're not anxious because they're weak. They're not foggy because they're getting old.

They're depleted.

And nobody — not their GP, not their OB, not the internet — connected the dots between what they were feeling and what was actually missing.

Starting next week, I'm walking through the eight nutrients most commonly depleted in perimenopause and in women with ADHD.

Not a supplement sales pitch. Not a scare tactic. Just the clinical picture, laid out plainly, so you can look at your own body and finally have some language for what's going on.

Save this post. Share it with someone who needs it.

And if you want to know which pattern of depletion you're most likely dealing with first — take the quiz.

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She wouldn't let me shrink.

A patient told me this week that the Soul Tired Quiz felt like I was speaking directly to her.

She's technically "after." Past menopause. On hormone therapy through her doctor. By every textbook framing, past the window I write about.

And she still heard herself in it.

I did what I always do. I deflected. I'm no expert, I'm still learning.

She didn't accept it.

She reminded me we've been having these conversations for years, across the adjusting table, in between appointments, in the quiet moments when women actually tell their chiropractor what they haven't told anyone else.

She said: you have lived experience that is valuable.

She wouldn't let me make myself smaller.

Here's what I'm sitting with:

For eighteen years I've been listening to women in this exact season of life. I've watched the bracing settle into their shoulders. I've heard the 3am wake-ups, the rage that comes from nowhere, the exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix. I've been thinking about this, out loud, with them, long before I had a brand around it.

The credentials I'm earning right now will confirm what I already know. They won't create it.

And the women I'm building Soul Well for? They've spent decades being told their experience needs to be validated by someone else before it counts. When I shrink, I reinforce the very thing that hurt them.

So I'm done with that reflex.

If you've been feeling wired, exhausted, scattered, bracing, and you've been told it's just stress, just age, just life, I see you. I've been seeing you for eighteen years.

Start with the quiz, find out which pattern is running your system: https://bit.ly/soultiredquiz

Cheers! Come home to yourself. 🌿

Two things perimenopausal women need to hear — and one thing nobody says after:

You need to lift heavy. And you need to jump.

Not to earn your body back. Not because you're behind. But because estrogen — the hormone that's been quietly protecting your bone density, your muscle mass, your joint integrity — is becoming less reliable. And your body needs a new signal to replace it.

That signal is load. Weight in your hands. Impact through your feet.

🏋️ LIFTING HEAVY
→ Preserves and builds muscle mass (which drops in perimenopause)
→ Protects bone density
→ Improves insulin sensitivity
→ Regulates mood and nervous system

🦘 JUMPING
→ Triggers osteogenic loading — the process that signals bone to remodel and strengthen
→ Even 10–20 jumps per day has measurable impact on bone density
→ Jump rope, jumping jacks, box jumps — the modality matters less than the impact signal
→ 30 seconds. That's the dose.

Now here's what nobody says after they tell you all that.

You cannot go from zero to sixty on a nervous system that's already running hot. High intensity exercise spikes cortisol. If you're already wired, exhausted, sleeping badly — a brutal workout doesn't build you up. It tips you further over the edge.

So the sequence matters:
1️⃣ Learn the patterns first — hinge, squat, press, pull. Bodyweight or light load.
2️⃣ Build consistency — same movements, same days, becoming automatic.
3️⃣ Add load — now your body is ready to adapt, not just survive.
4️⃣ Jump early and often — 10 jumps before your coffee counts.

Let it be easy first. Build the pattern. Then build the strength.

If you're soul tired and not sure where to even start, the quiz is your first step: https://bit.ly/soultiredquiz

Cheers! Come home to yourself. 🌿

I got my body composition data back in April.

I'm a chiropractor. I know what the numbers mean. I know exactly which lever moves metabolic age, which marker is the sleeper finding, which direction things are trending and why. I have the clinical framework to read this clearly and without drama.

I still sat with it for a while.

Not because the numbers were catastrophic. They weren't. But there's a difference between knowing something intellectually and seeing it in your own data. Skeletal muscle mass trending down. Metabolic age trending up. Body fat distribution doing exactly what perimenopause does. Shifting inward. Accumulating in ways that don't respond to the approaches that worked before.

And here's the part I'm willing to say out loud: I've been avoiding the gym.

Not because I don't know I should go. Because initiation — actually starting, actually getting there — is genuinely hard for my brain. That's not a motivation problem. That's the ADHD piece intersecting with the exhaustion piece intersecting with the "one more thing on the list" piece. I know exactly what I need to do and I cannot make myself do it. That's a real pattern. It has a name.

I'm sharing this because the women I work with feel this gap between knowing and doing as a personal failure. It isn't. It's a nervous system in a body under hormonal transition trying to initiate something that requires energy it doesn't currently have.

The data is the map. I'm starting to follow it. Imperfectly. Slowly. From where I actually am, not from where I think I should be.

If the gap between knowing and doing feels familiar — you're not alone. Start with the quiz: https://bit.ly/soultiredquiz

Cheers! Come home to yourself. 🌿