Wellness + Wisdom Podcast You'll Only Heal Your Body When You End The War with Yourself (Shawn Wells)
Mar 17, 2026
Shawn Wells, supplement formulator and nutrition scientist behind 1,200+ products and 40+ patents, discusses why your nervous system controls whether supplements work. He explains how stress blocks absorption and how rituals, breathwork, and expectation prime the body. He also contrasts caffeine with paraxanthine and outlines practical practices to make supplements actually take effect.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Stress Blocks Supplement Absorption
- Chronic sympathetic activation prevents cellular absorption and metabolism of oral supplements.
- Shawn Wells explains fight/flight diverts blood, ATP and liver metabolism so even high-quality supplements aren't bioabsorbed when you're hypervigilant.
Shawn's Hypervigilance Quadrupled His Doses
- Shawn describes being chronically hypervigilant for years and needing huge supplement doses to feel effects.
- He says he never relaxed, quadruple-dosed supplements, and lacked resilience until doing deep neural work.
Prime Your State Before Swallowing Supplements
- Prime your nervous system before taking supplements with breathwork, intention, and parasympathetic practices.
- Shawn recounts intention setting and breathwork before journeys where doses dropped from usual levels to a tenth once he relaxed.
