From the Desk of Carolyn Dean MD ND
What Biophilic Living, Soil-Derived Minerals, and 20 Minutes Outside Have in Common
Walk through any health store today and you’ll find shelves filled with supplements promising more energy, better sleep, improved immunity, and healthier aging.
Yet many people do need that support because they spend more than 90% of their lives indoors. They work under artificial lights, exercise inside climate-controlled gyms, eat foods shipped from thousands of miles away, and end their evenings in front of glowing screens.
There’s an irony there that’s difficult to ignore.
Meanwhile, people are searching for health in bottles and on their devices while becoming increasingly disconnected from the natural environment their bodies were designed to live in.
That may be one reason why “biophilic living”—connecting with nature as part of daily life—has become one of the biggest wellness conversations of recent years. For example, people are embracing forest bathing, digital-free detox retreats, gardening, and time spent in parks.
Wellness experts increasingly describe nature as one of the most overlooked tools for restoring the nervous system.
But I would take that conversation one step further.
Nature isn’t simply relaxing because it’s quiet or beautiful. The natural world has always been the source of the minerals, light, water, and biological rhythms that every cell in our bodies depends upon.
Supplements can help fill nutritional gaps, but they were never meant to replace nature. Instead, my supplements were designed to complement nature. For that reason, I call them Completement Formula.
That’s the philosophy behind my work—and why I believe spending even twenty intentional minutes outside each day can become part of a much larger nature and mineral health strategy for supporting long-term health.
Why Biophilic Living Is Capturing So Much Attention
Researchers use the term biophilic living to describe something humans have practiced for most of history: regularly surrounding ourselves with natural environments.
For example, that can mean walking through a park before work. When I lived in Manhattan on East 91st, I would walk over to Central Park and then down to the lab at East 66th, happily surrounded by nature.
Likewise, you could tend a garden, eat meals outdoors, sit by open windows, or simply make daylight and fresh air part of everyday life rather than something reserved for vacations.
Over the past decade, studies have shown that spending time in natural settings can lower stress hormones, support heart rate variability, and encourage the nervous system to shift toward its “rest and recover” state. In addition, natural daylight helps regulate our circadian rhythm—the internal clock that influences when we feel alert, sleepy, hungry, and energized throughout the day.
Therefore, these findings help explain why today’s wellness conversation is shifting away from constant biohacking and toward something much simpler: reconnecting with nature.
For me, however, that conversation naturally leads to another question. What, exactly, has modern indoor living taken away?
Nature Has Always Been Our Original Mineral Source
Long before anyone talked about supplements, we obtained minerals through food, water, and the environment itself.
For instance, water naturally filtered through rock collected magnesium, calcium, and trace minerals. Meanwhile, plants absorbed minerals from healthy soil before becoming part of our meals. Sunlight also worked together with nutrients inside the body to regulate countless biological processes.
That partnership between nature and nutrition is something I return to throughout my work.
Mineral-Rich Hydration Starts With Water
One simple example is hydration. In Magnesium: The Missing Link to Total Health, I recommend a straightforward guideline:
Take your body weight in pounds, divide it in half, and drink that many ounces of water each day. Add one-quarter teaspoon of mineral-rich sea salt to each quart (or liter) of water.
Why sea salt instead of refined table salt?
Because naturally colored sea salts contain trace minerals that refining usually removes to create pure white sodium chloride. While sodium often gets all the attention, our bodies also rely on dozens of additional minerals that work together rather than independently. In fact, sea salt can contain more than 72 trace minerals.
Healthy Soil, Healthier Mineral Nutrition
Food tells a similar story.
For years, I’ve pointed readers to government reports on farmland mineral depletion that warned our health depends not only on calories or vitamins, but also on the mineral content of the soil itself. For example, a hundred years ago we consumed about 500 mg of magnesium from a regular diet; today, we’re lucky to get 200 mg.
Although researchers still debate the degree of depletion, the larger point remains important: the nutritional quality of food depends on the quality of the soil in which it grows.
Healthy soil supports healthy plants. In turn, healthy plants help nourish healthy people.
That relationship deserves far more attention than it receives.
You can read more about this phenomenon in detail in my book, Magnesium: The Missing Link to Total Health. In the meantime, here’s a snippet:
Do you know that most of us today are suffering from certain dangerous diet deficiencies which cannot be remedied until depleted soils from which our food comes are brought into proper mineral balance? The alarming fact is that foods (fruits, vegetables, and grains) now being raised on millions of acres of land that no longer contain enough of certain minerals are starving us — no matter how much of them we eat… Our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon the minerals we take into our systems than upon calories or vitamins.
Sunshine, Vitamin D, and Magnesium: A Team Effort
Summer naturally encourages us to spend more time outdoors. At the same time, sunlight remains one of the body’s primary ways of producing vitamin D.
However, many people don’t realize that magnesium plays an essential role in activating vitamin D once it’s produced or consumed.
In Magnesium: The Missing Link to Total Health, I discuss findings from the GrassrootsHealth research program showing that participants who weren’t supplementing with adequate magnesium required substantially more vitamin D supplementation to reach healthy blood levels than those whose magnesium intake was sufficient.
In other words, these nutrients don’t work in isolation—a key principle of nature and mineral health.
- Magnesium helps activate vitamin D.
- Vitamin D supports calcium absorption.
- Vitamin K2 helps direct calcium where it belongs.
- Together, these nutrients function as a coordinated system rather than individual ingredients.
That’s why I often encourage people to think less about isolated nutrients and more about nutritional teamwork.
Our bodies certainly do.
How Modern Living Breaks the Connection
As I pointed out earlier, many people wake up indoors and then drive to work enclosed in a car. Next, they spend the day looking at computer screens, exercise inside, eat processed convenience foods, and unwind in front of another screen before bed.
It’s no surprise that people often feel disconnected from nature.
But the disconnect isn’t only psychological. It’s physiological.
Moreover, modern food production, highly processed diets, purified drinking water, chronic stress, and indoor lifestyles can reduce opportunities to obtain the wide variety of minerals our bodies were designed to use.
Chronic Stress and Magnesium Depletion
Stress, in particular, deserves special attention.
One of the consistent themes throughout my research is that chronic stress accelerates magnesium depletion. Stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol increase the body’s need for magnesium while simultaneously encouraging greater magnesium losses.
It’s a difficult cycle.
Essentially, the more stressed we become, the more magnesium we use.
Consequently, the less magnesium we have available, the harder it becomes for the nervous system to recover from stress.
In addition, indoor living can compound the problem by reducing daylight exposure, disrupting healthy sleep patterns, and encouraging long hours of sitting. All of these can affect the body’s natural recovery rhythms.
For example, even something as simple as reducing evening screen time may support healthier sleep by allowing melatonin production to follow its normal circadian rhythm.
Still, the goal isn’t perfection.
It’s restoring some of the daily rhythms that modern life has gradually crowded out.
Bringing Nature’s Wisdom Indoors
One question I hear often is this:
“If nature is the ideal source of minerals, why create supplements at all?”
The answer is simple.
After all, most people no longer live in the environment our biology evolved to expect.
That reality inspired my development of ReMyte.
Rather than attempting to overwhelm the body with large amounts of minerals, I worked with a chemist to develop picometer-sized ionic minerals with efficient cellular absorption in mind.
As I explain in Magnesium: The Missing Link to Total Health, research demonstrated that stabilized mineral ions at this size are readily absorbed through the body’s natural mineral ion channels.
Importantly, my goal wasn’t to replace nature.
Instead, it was to imitate the highly bioavailable forms in which minerals naturally exist in pristine water and healthy ecosystems.
ReMyte provides twelve ionic minerals—including magnesium, potassium, zinc, copper, selenium, chromium, boron, manganese, molybdenum, iodine, calcium, and sodium—to help support the nutritional foundation modern life often struggles to provide.
ReAline complements that mineral foundation by supplying methylated B vitamins together with sulfur-containing amino acids that support normal cellular detoxification pathways.
Together, they represent what I think of as technology working in service of nature—not instead of it. Ultimately, that balance is central to my approach to nature and mineral health.
Five Simple Ways to Bring More Nature Into Your Day and Support Your Mineral Health
Supporting your mineral status doesn’t require moving to the mountains or abandoning modern life. Instead, small, consistent habits often make the biggest difference.
1. Spend 20 Minutes Outside
First, start with twenty minutes outdoors each day. A morning walk, time in the garden, or simply sitting outside allows your body to benefit from natural light while supporting the vitamin D–magnesium relationship we’ve discussed.
2. Choose Mineral-Rich Hydration
Next, stay hydrated with mineral-rich water. Following my hydration guideline—drinking half your body weight in ounces of water daily with mineral-rich sea salt—and adding ReMyte can help replenish minerals modern diets often lack.
3. Eat Seasonal, Locally Grown Foods
Also, whenever possible, choose seasonal, locally grown produce. Fresher foods generally retain more of their original nutritional value and reconnect us with the rhythms of the seasons.
4. Reconnect With the Ground
Additionally, if you enjoy practices such as walking barefoot on grass, many people find grounding relaxing and restorative, although research into its long-term health effects is still developing.
5. Protect Your Circadian Rhythm
Finally, consider reducing screen exposure before bedtime. Protecting your natural circadian rhythm supports healthy sleep and gives your body the opportunity to carry out many of its overnight repair and recovery processes.
None of these habits is dramatic.
Together, however, they create a daily nature and mineral health pattern that gently reconnects your body with the environment it was designed to experience.
Nature Still Knows the Way
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned over decades of practicing medicine is that our bodies rarely ask for complicated solutions.
They ask for the basic things they’ve always needed.
- Clean water.
- Mineral-rich food.
- Sunlight.
- Movement.
- Rest.
- Connection with the natural world.
Modern life often makes those things harder to find. Therefore, thoughtfully designed nutritional support has become increasingly valuable. However, supplements should never replace the larger picture.
They should help restore it.
This summer, try building a simple daily ritual.
Begin your morning with mineral-rich water. Then, spend twenty minutes outside. Eat one meal built around fresh, seasonal foods. Most importantly, let nature become part of your healthcare instead of something you only visit on weekends.
After all, sometimes the most advanced wellness strategy isn’t adding something new.
Instead, it’s remembering what the natural world has been offering us all along.
Support your body’s natural mineral foundation by combining daily time outdoors with cellular nutrition. ReMyte and ReAline were developed to complement—not replace—the mineral intelligence that nature has always provided.
This content is for educational purposes only and discusses nutritional and lifestyle support for normal structure and function of the body. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure disease. Consult a qualified healthcare professional for personal medical guidance.
👉 About the book:
Magnesium: The Missing Link to Total Health
Go deeper than the data. Support your cellular nutrition with ReMyte—the mineral foundation that complements what your wearable tracks but can never measure.
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