16 Jan Why Your Expensive Supplements Aren’t Working (The Absorption Crisis in Midlife) with Lindsey Burwell
You’ve invested hundreds (maybe thousands) of dollars in high-quality supplements. You’ve done your research. You’re taking vitamin D for bone health, magnesium for sleep, a multivitamin for coverage, probiotics for gut health, maybe adaptogens for stress. You’re consistent. You’re committed. You’re doing everything the wellness experts tell you to do.
So why do you still feel like absolute crap?
The exhaustion hasn’t lifted. The brain fog persists. Your hormones are still a mess. The stubborn weight won’t budge. And now you’re wondering: are these expensive supplements even doing anything?
Here’s the truth that’s going to save you a lot of money and frustration: Your supplements probably aren’t the problem. The problem is that your body is only absorbing about 10-15% of what you’re taking.
The rest? You’re literally flushing it down the toilet.
This is the absorption crisis in midlife that nobody’s talking about and it’s costing you more than just money. It’s costing you your energy, your vitality, and your faith that anything will actually work.
I recently sat down with Lindsey Burwell, an integrative health practitioner and creator of The Patch Method, who has spent years working with midlife women experiencing this exact crisis. Through comprehensive bioanalytics testing, she discovered a pattern that changed everything: women who were faithfully taking their supplements (high-quality, well-researched supplements) were showing up severely deficient in those exact same nutrients on their lab work.
They were spending $200, $300, even $500 monthly on vitamins. They weren’t missing doses. They were doing everything “right.”
And yet, their bodies were malnourished.
The Root Cause Nobody’s Talking About
We throw around the term “root cause” constantly in the wellness world, but what does it actually mean? Lindsey defines it simply: taking a symptom and looking into the data, the labs, the underlying imbalances to understand what’s driving that symptom, rather than just covering it up.
Think of it like a car’s check engine light. You can put tape over the warning sign, but your engine is still malfunctioning. The same is true for your body. You can take ibuprofen for headaches, apply cortisone cream for skin issues, or rely on sleep aids for insomnia, but if you’re not addressing what’s causing these symptoms, you’re just masking the problem.
Why Your Body Has Stopped Absorbing Nutrients: The Liver Stagnation Root Cause
Here’s the root cause of vitamin absorption failure: When you swallow a vitamin or supplement, very specific enzymatic processes must occur for that nutrient to be fully absorbed. But in today’s toxic world, most of us are dealing with liver stagnation and gut inflammation that prevents this absorption from happening effectively.
Your liver is working overtime, becoming increasingly stagnant and congested. It’s processing stress, removing environmental toxins from personal care products and cleaning supplies, dealing with processed foods, filtering out heavy metals, and even breaking down EMF exposure from Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. When your liver reaches this level of stagnation, it doesn’t prioritize absorbing your supplements – it prioritizes keeping you alive by clearing out toxins.
This is called the “first pass effect,” and when you have liver stagnation, it becomes a critical bottleneck. Your supplements pass through your stagnant, congested liver, then hit your inflamed gut (which may be dealing with bloating, constipation, parasites, or leaky gut), and only a fraction of those nutrients actually make it into your bloodstream.
Lindsey explained that science now shows you may only be absorbing about 10% of the oral supplements you’re taking when liver stagnation is present. This explains why supplement companies often dose their products at 1,000% of your daily value, they know most of it won’t get absorbed when the liver is stagnant and overwhelmed.
The Midlife Shift: Why This Matters More Now
Twenty years ago, you could probably get away with going on autopilot with your health. The toxic load in our environment wasn’t as severe, and our bodies could handle the occasional indulgence or stressor without major consequences.
But we’re living in a fundamentally different world now. The accumulation of environmental toxins, processed foods, chronic stress, EMF exposure, and hormonal changes in midlife has created a perfect storm. You can’t just cruise through midlife anymore without becoming an active participant in your own health.
This doesn’t mean chasing perfection or living in fear. Lindsey shared her philosophy of “good, better, best”—making intentional choices about where you reduce toxic exposure while still living your life. She still gets her nails done with non-toxic polish, colors her hair, and makes choices that bring her joy. The key is reducing your overall toxic bucket while supporting your body’s natural detoxification pathways.
Understanding Your Toxic Bucket
Imagine your body as a beautiful glass jar. Every tiny exposure to toxins (from conventional nail polish to processed foods to stress) is a drop of black paint entering that jar. These drops accumulate every single day. When you’re not actively detoxing and the jar starts filling up, symptoms begin appearing. Your body starts screaming for help through headaches, weight gain resistance, fatigue, skin issues, hormonal imbalances, and brain fog.
Everyone’s threshold is different because we’re all exposed at different rates and our bodies detox at different capacities. But the principle remains: reduce the incoming toxic load while actively supporting your body’s ability to clear what’s already there.
The Liver Stagnation Root Cause You Need to Understand
Your liver performs over 500 functions in your body. It’s responsible for nutrient storage, hormone packaging, metabolism, and detoxification. When your liver enzymes are elevated (which many midlife women discover on routine bloodwork) it’s a sign of liver stagnation, not necessarily because you drink or smoke.
High liver enzymes indicate liver stagnation is being caused by: stress, poor sleep quality, environmental toxins in personal care products and cleaning supplies, processed foods with artificial ingredients, parasites, heavy metals, EMF exposure, and stored emotional trauma.
But here’s what’s crucial about addressing this root cause: if your liver is stagnant and congested, and you add in hormone replacement therapy, thyroid medication, or more supplements, they can’t be processed effectively. It’s like trying to pour water through a clogged drain…nothing flows properly until you address the liver stagnation first.
Your gut plays an equally critical role. Even if you don’t experience obvious digestive symptoms like bloating or irregular bowel movements, you could still have leaky gut preventing nutrient absorption. Lindsey emphasized that if you have any autoimmune condition, you definitely have had or currently have leaky gut, regardless of whether you experience digestive discomfort.
The Cortisol-Gut-Histamine Connection
Something fascinating emerged during my own health journey with chronic hives: the intimate connection between cortisol, gut health, and histamine response. I noticed that within 30 minutes of eating, I would experience extreme anxiety (racing heart, overwhelming stress) followed immediately by hives breaking out.
This taught me that stress doesn’t just affect your gut; your gut actively affects your stress response and nervous system. When people say they “feel it in their stomach” before a big presentation or have a “gut feeling” about something, that’s not metaphorical, it’s your gut-brain connection communicating in real time.
Supporting your nervous system became just as important as healing my gut. You can’t fix complex health issues by only addressing nutrition or only managing stress, you need a comprehensive approach that honors the interconnectedness of all your body systems.
Getting to Root Cause Without Test Overwhelm
If you’re dealing with persistent symptoms despite doing “all the right things,” where do you start without drowning in expensive testing?
Lindsey’s approach begins with foundations: optimize your sleep quality, manage stress levels, clean up what you’re eating, reduce toxic exposures in personal care products and cleaning supplies, and establish consistent daily rhythms. Give this 90 days before adding supplements or running extensive labs.
If symptoms persist after truly dialing in these foundations, start with one comprehensive test rather than running five different panels simultaneously. Lindsey recommends metabolic hair follicle analysis as a starting point because it provides about 90 days of comprehensive data showing mineral deficiencies, parasites, mold exposure, gut indicators, and liver function – all for under $500.
The key is: get your data, implement the recommended changes, give your body adequate time to heal (minimum three months), then reassess. Your body needs time for changes to compound and create momentum. Resist the urge to constantly test and chase perfection.
The Transdermal Solution to Bypass Liver Stagnation
After years of seeing women taking mortgage payments worth of supplements yet showing deficiencies on lab work due to liver stagnation, Lindsey developed a different approach: transdermal vitamin delivery through patches that completely bypass the stagnant liver.
Transdermal delivery isn’t new. You’re probably familiar with estrogen patches, nicotine patches, or progesterone creams. The pharmaceutical industry has long recognized that delivering nutrients through the skin bypasses the first pass effect of liver metabolism, especially critical when liver stagnation is blocking absorption.
The patches work by utilizing your largest organ (your skin) to deliver nutrients directly into your bloodstream through slow, steady release over 8-12 hours. Instead of slamming your stagnant liver with a handful of pills at breakfast (which it struggles to process), the patch provides continuous nutrient delivery throughout the day, completely bypassing the liver stagnation bottleneck.
Lindsey created specific formulations targeting common midlife challenges: a detox patch that activates all three liver detoxification pathways, a metabolism patch supporting metabolic function and gut lining, a cortisol patch with GABA and adaptogens for nervous system regulation, an immunity patch with vitamin C and zinc, and a menopause patch addressing hormonal balance and night sweats.
The Detox Work That Actually Matters
Real detoxification isn’t about juice cleanses or punishing yourself after a weekend of indulgence. True detox means getting into your cells and liver to clean them out at a deep level.
Effective detox modalities include: infrared sauna use, dry brushing before showering, lymphatic drainage tools, rebounding to activate lymphatic flow, consuming bitter foods and cilantro, and utilizing transdermal delivery for targeted liver support.
Lindsey shared that many clients report deeper sleep cycles and improved REM sleep when using the detox patch at night because they’re supporting the natural liver detoxification cycle that occurs between midnight and 3 AM, which is often when people wake up if their liver is struggling.
When Symptom Management Is Necessary
There’s no shame in using medication or interventions when you’re debilitated and need quality of life support. If you have severe headaches and need ibuprofen to function, take it. The key is coupling that immediate relief with long-term detective work to address the root cause.
I shared my own experience with chronic hives when the anxiety was so severe that prescription hydroxyzine (an antihistamine that helps calm the nervous system) was what finally gave me enough relief to implement other healing modalities like breathwork and dietary changes. Sometimes you need that bridge to get you stable enough to do the deeper work.
Your Body Is Always On Your Side
Here’s something powerful Lindsey shared: If your body hated you, the moment you got a paper cut, you would bleed out and die. But instead, within seconds, your body clots that blood automatically. It doesn’t matter if you have parasites or nutrient deficiencies, your body immediately works to save your life.
Your body is a self-healing machine that wants to thrive. Symptoms are your body whispering (and sometimes screaming) for help, asking you to pause, get curious, and support it differently. When you provide what your body actually needs and remove what’s blocking its natural healing capacity, transformation becomes inevitable.
The absorption crisis in midlife is real, but it’s not inevitable. The invitation here isn’t to chase perfection or live in fear of every toxic exposure. It’s to become an active, engaged participant in your own health journey and actually get the nutrients your body needs.
Your expensive supplements aren’t working because they can’t get through the liver-gut bottleneck. But when you understand what’s blocking absorption and choose delivery methods that bypass those obstacles, everything changes.
When your body finally gets the nutrients it’s been desperately asking for, you experience life more fully. You show up differently for yourself and the people you love. You stop declining invitations, hiding from photos, or feeling disconnected from your own life. You reclaim the vibrant energy and presence that midlife is supposed to amplify, not diminish.
Start by trusting your inner knowing. You know your body best. If you have persistent symptoms and doctors keep telling you “everything’s fine,” keep being relentless. Keep pursuing answers. Find practitioners who will go deep with you rather than accepting surface-level solutions. Support your body’s natural intelligence by reducing toxic burden where you can, actively detoxing through proven modalities, choosing supplement delivery methods that actually work (like transdermal patches), addressing both liver and gut health comprehensively, and managing nervous system stress alongside physical symptoms.
Your best years aren’t behind you. They’re waiting for you to claim them…with a body that actually absorbs the nutrients you’re giving it, a mind that thinks clearly, and the energy to fully participate in the life you’re building. Stop flushing money down the toilet. Start supporting your body in a way it can actually use.
💥 Ready to bypass the absorption crisis? Visit thepatchmethod.com and use code NATALIEJILL for 20% off your first order.
The contents of the Midlife Conversations podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider. Some episodes of Midlife Conversations may be sponsored by products or services discussed during the show. The host may receive compensation for such advertisements or if you purchase products through affiliate links mentioned on this podcast.
