Most people think their relationship struggles come from poor communication, emotional immaturity, or choosing the wrong partner. And while those things can be true, they’re often symptoms – not the root.
What if the real reason you’re distant from your partner… tired of dating… or stuck in cycles that feel familiar… has more to do with your body than your beliefs?
Your hormones shape your tone of voice. Your gut health affects your mood. And your nervous system sets the tone for how safe or unsafe someone feels around you.
When the body is dysregulated, intimacy becomes complicated. Polarity between the sexes fades. Arguments escalate faster. Sex feels off. And yet, we keep trying to fix the surface – more therapy, more books, more talking.
But the bridge between health and relationships isn’t metaphorical. It’s literal. Your physiology is your relationship baseline.
In this post, I’ll break down how:
- Inflammation can kill attraction
- Mineral imbalances influence your masculine or feminine energy
- Trauma stored in the body blocks intimacy
- And how healing your body might be the relationship advice no one’s given you yet.
Let’s start by looking at how attraction begins in the body – long before it reaches the heart.
Inflammation is taking out love
Yes, you heard that right, inflammation is a cold-blooded killer of love, but it’s doing this without bias and with great precision (this doesn’t include ‘autoimmunity‘). It is doing this for a good reason though, so maybe we can call it a warm-blooded killer of love.
Inflammation is the process by which the immune system recognizes and removes harmful and foreign stimuli to then work to repair the human system. It is often labeled as a bad thing, as in many cases, it can become ‘chronic,’ where disease can develop from this progressed level of inflammation.
When inflammation goes up, our sex hormones – such as androgens (these are usually more abundant in men than women) and estrogens (and these are often more abundant in women) – can go down, leading to a cascade of events beyond just loss of virility in men or women losing their sweet softness.
The reason why is cortisol. When the immune system fires up, cortisol is released to regulate it, like a thermostat. Cortisol can be seen as a ‘fire marshal,’ where inflammation can be seen as the cleansing fire. Cortisol works to prevent the fire from burning everything down.
For the hormone cortisol to perform this role, however, it needs to reduce the activity of estrogens and androgens. When these sex hormones drop in activity, we consequently can lose various functions that tie into our relationship:
- A man may feel passive, withdrawn, or irritable instead of driven and grounded.
- A woman may feel anxious, sharp, or emotionally volatile instead of soft, receptive, or radiant.
When engaged in a romantic relationship, and some of the above feelings transpire, a couple can go from having a really great time out dancing or at a picnic under the sun, to a very bad time quarreling over something very small.
Solving for highly functional inflammation that works for the body, rather than against it, is one of the most important health processes any individual can do – not just those engaged in romantic relationships.
Copper is Feminine. Zinc is Masculine.
Many people see hormones as a woman having bigger breasts, or a man waking up with a you know what – but hormones go beyond the superficial and cannot operate without minerals. If your minerals aren’t in adjustment, the hormonal signaling gets scrambled. Your hormones end up just echoing the chaos instead of telling the truth; this is where naturopathic health coaching starts – at the mineral level.
Zinc and copper aren’t just minerals – they are masculine and feminine energy in our bodies. The balance between these two is what creates real masculine integration and feminine integration.
Zinc = Structure. Zinc is Masculine.
Zinc is like your internal spine. It builds testosterone, protects sperm, and anchors a man in his masculine integration. When zinc is solid, a man can feel focused, calm, and ready. That clear, forward-moving energy – no drama, no hesitation.
But when zinc is low? The whole thing falls apart. You feel foggy, passive, maybe even a little lost. You care, but you can’t find the drive to take action. That fire to lead, to push, to be present – it just goes dark.
Zinc is direction.
Zinc is masculine structure.
It’s what keeps your drive, libido, and purpose alive.
Copper = Flow. Copper is Feminine
Copper is softer. It rises with estrogen. It peaks during pregnancy because it helps a woman connect deeply to her body and emotions. Copper is what gives feminine integration its flow – the empathy, intuition, and emotional depth women naturally carry.
But too much copper? That’s when things get messy. Anxiety spikes. Thoughts race. Emotions swing wildly and without control. Women stuck in copper overload often say, “I feel everything, but I can’t do anything about it.”
This simply mineral imbalance.
Copper is feeling.
Copper is feminine flow.
Balance is Everything – And Here’s Where Naturopathic ‘Mineral Balance’ Comes In
Too much zinc without copper? You can become cold, more logic than heart, and you slowly lose the ability to feel.
Too much copper without zinc? You can feel a storm within, all heart and no ground, and control feels out of grasp.
Without the right balance, emotional regulation suffers. Intimacy fades. Connection breaks down. Most people are walking around with bodies chemically wired to block their polarity – trying to connect while their nervous system is scrambled and their blood chemistry is off.
That’s why naturopathic health coaching with a tool like HTMA (Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis) is so powerful. The HTMA and mineral balancing program – through Polarity Health – after doing it isn’t entirely about symptom management. It’s more so about reclaiming the masculine and feminine energy you were born with.
If you’re dealing with brain fog, stress, or emotional ups and downs – don’t focus too hard on hormones. Balance your minerals to seamlessly build hormones from the ground up.
Naturopathic functional medicine with ‘mineral balancing’ looks at the foundation. It focuses on how your body handles structure, stress, and emotional regulation.
Most people don’t realize that things like anxiety, burnout, and low libido are often tied to mineral imbalances – especially between zinc and copper.
Getting those in balance supports real masculine integration and feminine integration. That’s where you rebuild clarity, stability, and emotional control.
This is what naturopathic health coaching is for. It helps you take out the guesswork and get your biology working with you again.
Trauma can be blocking your relationships
Many people narrow in on trauma as a purely psychological response to an external stimulus. Trauma can indeed be housed within our cells and entire nervous system. Somatic psychology, neurobiology, and trauma-informed care show that trauma is not just a memory or thought process, it’s a physiological imprint.
Trauma is often physical
Trauma can lock the nervous system into chronic sympathetic (fight/flight) or dorsal vagal (freeze/shutdown) states. These states make relational safety hard to feel – either someone is on edge, or they’re numb. Partners may interpret this as mood swings, detachment, or irrational reactivity.
The key mechanism is the disruption of vagal tone, impairing the ability to downshift into rest, trust, and connection. This downshift engages what is called the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) focused on rest and digestion. From Asa’s perspective, the PNS is widely more ‘yin’ in nature, meaning, a female system of the body; where the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) of fight-or-flight is masculine.
A way in which relational safety can go awry can be via excess use of the hormone cortisol, produced from the adrenal cortex in the SNS. Often, when trauma sets in, cortisol can shoot up.
Check out the analysis of a study done on this subject below:
Elzinga et al. (2003) – Childhood Abuse & PTSD, Cortisol Reactivity to Trauma Reminders
Participants: 24 women with histories of severe childhood abuse – half had current PTSD, half did not.
Method: Researchers used personalized trauma scripts (audio reenactments of the individual’s own traumatic experiences) to trigger stress. They measured salivary cortisol levels before, during, and after exposure
Key Findings:
- Pre‑script (just before exposure): PTSD group showed ~60% higher cortisol levels.
- During script: Cortisol in the PTSD group shot up ~122% higher than non-PTSD group.
- After recovery: Levels remained elevated (~69% higher than controls)
This shows that trauma can heighten and prolong cortisol release during stress – both anticipating it and recovering from it – in people with PTSD.
PTSD is a real problem for many people, though not everyone suffers from PTSD enough to easily be triggered by external stressors that serve as reminders of the event that caused it.
Healing Is How You Reclaim Polarity
You can’t access polarity when your body is stuck in survival.
If you’ve lost the edge, the softness, the spark – it’s not because you don’t love each other. It’s because your biology is pulling the plug on connection. You’re not consciously rejecting intimacy – your nervous system is.
This is why healing isn’t just “inner work” – it’s integration work.
Masculine integration means your body can stay grounded under pressure. You feel drive without being reactive. You hold space without collapsing or avoiding. Your system isn’t flooded with cortisol every time there’s tension – it’s anchored in direction and calm.
Feminine integration means your body feels safe to open. You can express emotion without chaos. You receive without overanalyzing. Your nervous system knows when to surrender – because the threat response isn’t running the show.
This is what healing does:
- It resets cortisol so you’re no longer stuck in the past.
- It strengthens vagal tone so your body feels safe to connect.
- It balances minerals so your hormones actually support your polarity, not block it.
Integration isn’t an idea – it’s a physiological state.
And that’s what most people miss when trying to fix their relationships from the neck up.If your body hasn’t healed, your polarity won’t stick.
But when you restore regulation, when you feed the masculine and feminine sides of the body, connection becomes easy again.
Because you’re no longer performing polarity – you’re becoming it.
