The Secret Under Your Feet

Most people don’t think about dirt unless they’re trying to get it off something—their floor, their kids, their clothes. I certainly didn’t.

Not when I was in medical school or an attending physician seeing 30 patients a day. Not even when our daughter, Anna, was little and we were drowning in therapies, specialists, and medications.

Soil was just… soil.

Then we moved onto a piece of land. And I bought cows (mostly for the tax benefit).

That’s where this story begins. Not in a medical journal, not at a conference, but in a pasture with two 500-pound animals I had absolutely no business owning.

I had this moment…not a dramatic lightning bolt, but the quieter kind of realization that sneaks up on you. I realized the cows were only as healthy as the grass beneath them. And the grass was only as healthy as the soil beneath that. And whatever was in the soil somehow made its way into them… and into us.

Our microbiome, I would eventually realize, doesn’t begin in our gut.

It begins in the environment around us.

And that simple shift changed how I practice medicine.

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The Case for Soil as Medicine

Once you start paying attention to soil, it shows up everywhere.

I met Joel Salatin, the well-known regenerative farmer, and he started talking about cows the way cardiologists talk about hearts—inputs, outputs, stressors, resilience. It struck me that farmers think about ecosystems the way functional medicine thinks about humans. Nothing is isolated. Everything affects everything.

Around the same time, I picked up an old book by Sir Albert Howard—the father of modern organic agriculture. He worked for the British Empire a century ago, studying why some communities had healthier crops and livestock than others. His conclusion was surprisingly simple:

Healthy soil → healthy plants → healthy animals → healthy humans.

And this wasn’t fringe; this was observational science at its best.

He noticed that when farmers used chemical fertilizers—something brand-new at the time—the soil became acidic and microbiologically barren. Crops looked fine at first, but the people eating them weren’t. More infections. More dental decay. More chronic illness.

That lined up with the work of Weston A. Price, a dentist who traveled the world in the 1930s. He found isolated communities with broad faces, straight teeth, minimal cavities, and vibrant health… until processed foods arrived. Then the decay—both dental and physical—showed up within a single generation.

Price wasn’t studying aesthetics. He was studying nutrition density. And nutrition begins where food begins: in the soil.

I was just talking about this with Ashley Armstrong (a former mechanical engineer turned regenerative farmer). Ashley reminded me that we have this modern hubris where we assume we can outsmart nature. She said something like, “We’re never going to out-engineer Mother Nature.” And she’s right. For thousands of years, humans depended on the nutrient density that comes directly from soil and ruminants. We only got into trouble when we convinced ourselves we could improve on that with chemistry and convenience.

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We’re never going to out-engineer Mother Nature.

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The Microbiome Starts in the Dirt (Here’s the Science)

One of the great myths of modern biology is that our gut microbiome is something that happens internally—like a closed little terrarium inside your abdomen.

But the truth is much more interesting.

1. Soil → Plant → Gut: The Microbial Handoff

Plants carry bacteria, fungi, and yeasts from the soil on their surfaces. When you eat a freshly picked carrot, you’re eating the ecosystem it grew in. Those microbes talk to your microbes. They train your immune system. They influence your metabolism.

But when you eat a prewashed, chlorinated, bagged, triple-rinsed vegetable… that conversation gets quieter.

We sanitized our food supply to reduce pathogens—and that’s important—but in the process, we stripped out the very life that supports our microbiome.

2. Soil Minerals → Human Biochemistry

On our farm, we learned that cows get sick (blindness, infections, connective tissue issues) when they don’t have access to trace minerals from the soil. We started supplementing with kelp, and it was remarkable how quickly they improved.

That got me wondering: what about humans?

The answer is frustratingly simple: humans rely on mineral-rich soil just as much as animals do. But most of us don’t have access to food grown in mineral-rich soil.

For example, selenium. It’s crucial for thyroid function, immunity, detoxification, and more. But the selenium content of your food depends entirely on the selenium content of the soil it grew in. When you industrialize agriculture, you deplete that.

And no: you can’t supplement your way out of this forever. Nature doesn’t work in isolation. Minerals come packaged with enzymes, cofactors, microbial ecosystems. A pill can’t replicate that.

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Pesticides & Depleted Soil Disrupt Gut Integrity

I’m not here to fear-monger, but glyphosate (the most common herbicide in the world) was originally patented as an antimicrobial. That means it doesn’t just kill weeds; it affects the microbes in soil… and potentially in your gut.

Add in the fact that many modern soils have lost up to 70% of their mineral content, and you get a perfect storm:

• More gut permeability
• More immune dysregulation
• More sensitivities and intolerances
• More chronic inflammation

What we’re seeing in our clinics isn’t random. It’s environmental.

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What I Learned From My Kids: Soil, Food, & Real Healing

If soil science were only academic, I probably wouldn’t care as much as I do. But it became personal.

When we adopted our son Khalil at six months old, he had severe eczema and asthma. The kind that keeps you up at night listening for breath sounds. The kind that makes you live hypervigilant.

My wife Becky is a pediatric occupational therapist and the original “scout” in our family. She started digging into nutrients, raw milk formulas, fermented foods, broths. We changed what we fed him. We changed how we fed him. We changed where the food came from.

• His eczema improved.
• His asthma calmed.
• His infections dwindled.

The same happened with Anna in different ways. Her hypermobility, connective tissue issues, and neurological challenges all responded when we addressed the foundations: real food, mineral-rich broths, trace minerals from bone, simple things that echoed what our ancestors used to eat.

I’m not saying soil healed my children. I AM saying the things that come from healthy soil played a role in strengthening their bodies.

That matters.

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Why Modern Food Is Making Us Sick

We live in an era where food is abundant but nutrients are scarce.

Ultra-processed foods are stripped of minerals. Vegetables are grown in depleted soils. Animals are fed grain diets that alter the nutrient profile of their meat. Organ meats—which used to supply many of our trace minerals—have all but disappeared.

The more disconnected we’ve become from the land, the more chronic disease has risen. And this isn’t nostalgia. It’s pattern recognition.

When I was interviewing Ashley, she made a comment that I keep thinking about. She said, “Convenience wins … we’ve all been ‘Amazoned.’” She wasn’t judging; she was just naming the reality. Our modern food system didn’t get here by accident. It got here because we kept prioritizing speed, quantity, and shelf-life over quality and connection. The soil paid the price first … our health is just catching up.

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(No, You’re Not Doomed)

What You Can Do Right Now

This isn’t about becoming a homesteader or grinding your own flour or buying a cow (although I’ve done all of those things… and I’m not sure I’d recommend that last one unless you really mean it).

It’s about reconnecting with the sources of nourishment your biology expects.

Here are simple, powerful starting points:

1. Choose better soil → choose better food

• Find a local regenerative farm
• Join a CSA
• Shop farmers markets
• Buy local meat when possible

You’re not just buying ingredients. You’re buying the ecosystem they came from.

2. Make simple swaps

• Replace seed oils with olive oil, butter, or avocado oil
• Choose whole foods over packaged ones
• Swap out chemically treated produce for organic when feasible

3. Rebuild your home food ecosystem

Start with:

• Fermented foods
• Bone broth
• Kelp or trace minerals
• Cooking at home (even three nights a week makes a difference)

4. Reduce environmental burden

• Filter your water
• Use fewer chemicals at home
• Avoid processed oils and hyper-refined snacks

Small changes compound.

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The Big Shift:

Reconnecting with Your Environment Heals Your Biology

Here’s the truth I wish someone had taught me in medical school:

You are not separate from your environment.

You are a product of it.

Your gut isn’t just an internal organ; it’s a mirror of the microbial world you interact with every day. When the soil is alive, diverse, mineral-rich… the food is too. And so are you.

In functional medicine, we talk a lot about roots and systems. But the metaphor is literal. When we nourish the ground we stand on, we nourish ourselves.

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Start Rebuilding Your Food Foundation

If this resonates and you want to go deeper, my Real Food Diaries Course walks you step-by-step through rebuilding your food ecosystem at home—without the overwhelm.

It’s short, simple, and completely free. It’s the practical blueprint I wish I had 15 years ago.

Join Real Food Diaries

And if you want to take the next step in creating a healthier home environment, there’s also the Healthy Home Course, which pairs beautifully with this work.

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