What is Health Optimization and How Can You Achieve it in 2022? background image
December 20, 2021

What is Health Optimization and How Can You Achieve it in 2022?

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So you’ve reached a point in your health and wellness journey where you’ve fixed (at least relatively) whatever you set out to fix–-Lyme disease, autoimmunity, gut health, or perhaps mental health. You went through a lot of pain and suffering and struggle, and you made it through to the other side. Congratulations! But now that you’ve done what you set out to do, and learned so much about your body, mind, and spirit along the way, what’s next? 

Or maybe you’re already at a baseline level of health where everything’s going just fine, but you want more–-more energy, brain power, strength, whatever it is. You’ve heard of supplements  like nootropics, but you know you don’t just want to take a random supplement and hope for the best. What do you do?  

These are questions that many people who’ve had to (or want to) take their health into their own hands eventually end up with, and the answer is: Now that you’ve secured your baseline of health and wellbeing, you can move onto optimizing your health and wellbeing. 

In this article, we’ll discuss health optimization and health optimization medicine, why it’s different from preventative medicine, how health optimization ties into cellular health, and how you can optimize your own health in 2022 and beyond. 

Key Takeaways: 

  • Health optimization is all about helping you feel your best and operate at 100% mentally and physically. 
  • Health optimization medicine focuses on correcting imbalances instead of diagnosing disease. 
  • Health optimization starts at the cellular level. 
  • Optimizing your health does not have to be complicated or involve a million supplements, it’s more about finding the right nutrients, practices, and even relationships that exponentially support your wellbeing over time. 

What is Health Optimization? 

In a nutshell, health optimization is the practice of looking at your health from a perspective of, “how can I make this even better” or “what can I do to feel my best every day and live a long and healthy life,” versus, “how can I fix this thing that’s wrong with me.” 

The goal of health optimization medicine and practices is to take you from “yeah, I’m doing pretty good” to “I’m feeling the best I’ve ever felt right now.” 

Practitioners in health optimization medicine typically come from a more functional or integrative perspective, but they aren’t specializing in a particular disease or even an area of health, like gut health for example. If anything, health optimization doctors specialize in cellular health, since they are looking for imbalances and deficiencies on a foundational level, such as vitamins and minerals, that when corrected and optimized can bring about full body wellness. 

Why We Need Health Optimization Medicine

Health optimization medicine represents a fundamental shift in the way we look at our health, especially in a Western context. The current medical model, in conventional and integrative medicine alike, is primarily to treat disease and fix health issues, or prevent future health issues. But health optimization focuses on sustaining health, rather than treating or preventing illness. 

As far as a mindset shift, it’s an important distinction to make: aren’t you much more likely to want to make choices that sustain your health, that make you feel good, instead of ones that prevent you from feeling bad, or prevent some nameless possible condition in the future? 

And for those patients still struggling with chronic illness, health optimization medicine really represents a shift in the way we look at our bodies. When you have a chronic disease, it can be easy to get trapped in a mindset of the body becoming the enemy; life becomes about a war against illness, and the disease must be defeated and beaten into submission. But that perspective rarely brings about lasting healing. 

Health optimization sees the body as a partner in health, to be nourished, supported, and guided into its best possible state. For chronic illness patients, this may represent a shift in perspective that leads to significant recovery and healing. 

Health Optimization Is Not the Same as Preventative Medicine

So health optimization focuses on sustaining health over preventing disease, but what does that mean in practice? 

It all comes down to the starting point: preventative medicine still starts from the point of, “How do we prevent cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, etc.?” Perhaps a patient is following a preventative medicine prescription of a healthy diet and exercise and stress reduction, but they are still looking toward a future where disease looms on the horizon. 

Examples of preventative medicine might include: 

  • Vaccination 
  • Reducing sugar consumption to prevent diabetes
  • Lifting weights to prevent muscle loss.

You can think of health optimization medicine almost as coming before preventative medicine, answering the question of, “How do we help the body run at peak performance (so that disease isn’t even an option)?” It prioritizes the body’s fundamental needs and its optimal nutrient requirements. Dr. Ted Achacoso, a pioneer in health optimization medicine, describes it like this: “The overarching practice is detection and correction of imbalances and not diagnosis and treatment of disease [1].” 

Examples of health optimization medicine might include: 

  • Identifying vitamin and mineral insufficiencies and using diet and supplementation to correct them
  • Balancing hormones
  • Seeing and treating health from a cellular perspective (rather than an organ or systems perspective).

Health Optimization Focuses on Cellular Health 

...And you know we’re all about cellular health! This is another unique perspective health optimization medicine brings to the table; it goes straight to the foundation of the body, the cells. This contrasts the traditional medicine and even functional medicine perspective of treating the body as a series of organs and systems. It’s not that this perspective can’t be useful (thinking about gut health as a system, for example), but going to the foundation of the cells is where health begins. 

So then we can ask: what do cells need to be healthy? 

  • Phospholipids
  • Vitamins
  • Minerals
  • Hormones
  • Fatty acids
  • Water
  • Sunlight, oxygen, etc. 

A practitioner operating from a health optimization framework can help you identify and balance these nutrients so that your cells are running on all cylinders. 

How Can You Optimize Your Health? 

So health optimization is starting to sound pretty good, right? How do you actually put it into practice, maybe to kick off the new year? 

Figure Out Your Health Goals

Separate your goals from the paradigm of disease–-instead of asking, “how can I prevent X?” figure out how you want to feel. Do you want more energy? More brain power, focus, and creativity? Do you want to be physically stronger? Optimal fertility? Strong immunity? Figure out what’s important to you for this coming year. Actually write down your ideas and narrow down your options to one or two main goals. 

Create a Plan 

Ideally, this is where you would work with a doctor or health coach who is familiar with health optimization medicine. They can help you identify nutrients and healthy habits to support based on your goals, as well as discuss how to optimize your environment and even your relationships with your health in mind. 

Establish Healthy Habits

Optimizing your health to reach your goals is going to involve some habit changes. There’s plenty of advice out there on how to change your habits and develop new ones, but at the end of the day, it really comes down to how invested you are in reaching your goal. 

What your healthy habits look like depends on your goals and your plan to achieve them. But if you’re uncertain about where to begin, here are a few suggestions. 

  • Set up your environment so that you have no choice but to choose a healthy habit. An obvious example is not allowing junk food in the house and preparing healthy snacks ahead of time so that you have something immediately on hand when you’re hungry. Bonus: Make your home environment somewhere that inspires you and motivates you to make healthy choices. Add some real plants, books, art, whatever the healthiest version of you finds inspirational. 
  • Talk to an accountability partner, whether that’s a trusted friend, a spouse, or a close family member, especially when you’re tempted to break your good habits and return to destructive ones. But even when you’re not in danger of reaching into the cookie jar, so to speak, it’s a good practice to update your accountability partner on your progress so that they can encourage you. 
  • Give yourself rewards that motivate you to continue your habit streak. A few ideas: a relaxing bath, a new book/music, date night. 
  • Keep some kind of record of your progress–-a journal, a voice note, or even video–-to look back on and see the progress you’ve made over time. How are you feeling better as you change your lifestyle? What challenges are you facing and overcoming? There will come a point where you hardly recognize the person from the first entry! 

Incorporate Helpful Supplements and Nutrients 

Depending on your goals, you’re probably going to need some extra nutritional and cellular support along the way to optimal health. Here are some options to consider, but work with your provider to find what support is right for you. 

Phosphatidylcholine (PC): PC is really the best bang for your buck in terms of supporting your cells. As the primary building block of your cell membranes, your cells need PC to maintain their structure, function, and communication capabilities, which underlie the foundation of total body health. BodyBio PC combines phosphatidylcholine with three other key phospholipids to support cell membrane, brain, and mitochondrial health.*

Butyrate: Butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid produced by certain probiotic bacteria in the gut, does so much more than support gut health. In addition to supporting a healthy inflammation response in the gut and supporting a healthy gut lining, [2, 3],* butyrate: 

  • Supports healthy blood sugar levels [4]*
  • Supports healthy immune response [5]*
  • Supports a healthy microbiome [6]*
  • Supports brain function [7]*
  • Supports sleep [8].* 

    Vitamin D: Vitamin D is essential for healthy immunity, neurotransmitter production, bone health, and many other aspects of your wellbeing [9, 10]. Many functional medicine and integrative doctors consider “normal” levels of this vitamin-hormone to be inadequate for optimal function, especially if you have a chronic illness or autoimmune condition. Because of its involvement in so many key processes in the body, improving your vitamin D status can have significant effects on your physical and mental health. 

    Optimize Your Health in 2022

    Health optimization is all about promoting health and longevity, vs. treating disease and injury. It’s about figuring out what imbalances can be corrected in the body to help you live and feel better every day. It can even extend to shaping your environment and your relationships to help you and your whole community thrive. 

    Plus, health optimization doesn’t have to mean taking a million supplements and exercising every single day. It’s about figuring out what nutrients and practices will benefit you the most, and then taking steps to integrate them into your life in a sustainable way. Maybe if more of us considered health optimization as a tool for improving our health, we would be more likely to keep our New Year’s resolution to “be healthier this year.” If better health is your goal in 2022, look into working with a health optimization medicine practitioner who can help you reach your goals.

    Related Articles

    Semaglutide Can Change What People Want to Eat. Here's What Your Gut Has to Do With It.
    Ashley Palmer | 10.27.2026

    Semaglutide Can Change What People Want to Eat. Here's What Your Gut Has to Do With It.

    Imagine you order the meal you've loved for a decade, and a few bites in, you realize you just don't care about it. You're not full, exactly. Just uninterested.

    Many people taking semaglutide (a GLP-1 medication) describe this experience. Foods that were reliable favorites suddenly seem greasy, or too sweet, or just vaguely off. Scientific American captured the strangeness: a former food writer losing interest in cooking, longtime favorites tasting wrong.

    The obvious explanation is that these medications make you feel full sooner. But fullness doesn't explain why a specific curry tastes bitter now, or why a go-to wine suddenly tastes off. Something more is happening, and it points to a hormone your body has been producing your whole life.

    In this article, we'll look at what the newest research suggests semaglutide does to food preferences, what GLP-1 actually does inside the body, and where your gut microbiome and a short-chain fatty acid called butyrate fit into that system.

    Table of Contents:

    • Semaglutide Isn't Only Changing How Much People Eat
    • Your Gut Was Making GLP-1 Long Before Ozempic
    • Where the Microbiome Comes In
    • Can Butyrate Support Natural GLP-1 Production?
    • Why Butyrate Matters Beyond One Hormone
    • Support the System, Not Just the Signal
    • The Bigger Story Your Gut Was Already Telling

    Semaglutide Isn't Only Changing How Much People Eat

    Researchers are starting to document what users have been describing anecdotally.

    A 2026 observational study of hospitalized Japanese patients with type 2 diabetes found that those on semaglutide showed significantly reduced preference for sweet carbohydrates, non-sweet carbohydrates, and non-sweet fats — while preferences for protein and dietary fiber stayed essentially unchanged. This wasn't a blanket loss of interest in food. It was a selective shift.

    For someone focused on weight loss, eating less may be the point. Still, a reduced appetite for fats is worth paying attention to, since dietary fats supply essential fatty acids and help the body absorb fat-soluble vitamins.

    Taste perception may also contribute. In a 16-week, randomized, placebo-controlled study of 30 women with obesity and PCOS, semaglutide improved overall taste recognition scores and altered brain activity in response to both food images and a sweet solution. In other words, participants' sense of taste sharpened, which may help explain why some foods suddenly seem too strong.

    A 2025 study found the opposite: reduced sensitivity across all five basic tastes in people taking GLP-1 medications compared with matched non-users. That means the more accurate takeaway isn't "Ozempic makes food taste different" so much as "GLP-1 signaling reaches further into how we experience food than many researchers expected."

    None of these studies settles the question on its own. But together they point somewhere useful: GLP-1 isn't only a satiety signal. It appears to play a role in how appealing food seems in the first place.

    Your Gut Was Making GLP-1 Long Before Ozempic

    Here's what often gets lost: GLP-1 wasn't invented by a pharmaceutical company.

    GLP-1 is a hormone your intestines release on their own, produced mainly by specialized cells called enteroendocrine L-cells. These cells sit in the gut lining, acting as sensors that detect what's arriving from your meal and releasing hormones that coordinate the response.

    GLP-1 helps regulate insulin release, slows how quickly the stomach empties, contributes to satiety, and carries information from the gut to the brain. GLP-1 medications didn't create a new pathway. They target one your body was already running.

    But there's an important difference, and a lot of wellness marketing glosses over it. Your body's own GLP-1 is broken down within minutes of release. Semaglutide is engineered to resist that breakdown and activate GLP-1 receptors far more strongly, for far longer.

    Supporting your body's own GLP-1 signaling through food or the microbiome isn't a lesser version of taking semaglutide. It's a different thing entirely.

    Where the Microbiome Comes In

    Your gut bacteria eat what you don't digest.

    When fermentable fibers and resistant starch reach the colon, bacteria ferment them and produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), mainly acetate, propionate, and butyrate. These aren't waste products. They're signaling molecules, and the cells lining your intestines are built to receive them.

    Intestinal cells carry receptors, including FFAR2 (also called GPR43) and FFAR3, that detect short-chain fatty acids. When SCFAs bind these receptors on L-cells, they trigger an internal cascade that can influence the release of gut hormones, including GLP-1 and a related satiety hormone called PYY.

    So the pathway is real: fiber arrives, microbes ferment it, metabolites are produced, gut cells sense them, hormones get released, and the gut communicates with the pancreas and the brain. That last link is worth sitting with — your gut and brain are in constant conversation, and food-derived microbial metabolites are part of what they're saying to each other.

    The quick version of this compresses to: fiber → butyrate → GLP-1 → less hunger. The actual biology is an ecosystem with many signals, of which butyrate is one.

    Can Butyrate Support Natural GLP-1 Production?

    The mechanistic evidence is strong. The human evidence is thinner, but still developing.

    A small 2026 study in adults with obesity found that oral sodium butyrate combined with L-arginine significantly increased circulating GLP-1. That's encouraging, but the study had only seven participants, butyrate wasn't tested on its own, and participants reported no difference in hunger or fullness.

    By contrast, in a 2025 randomized controlled trial of 50 adults with obesity, people taking sodium butyrate alongside a reduced-calorie diet saw reductions in weight, BMI, and waist circumference, but their serum GLP-1 didn't change significantly.

    A 2026 randomized, double-blind trial of 46 adults added more nuance. After 12 weeks of sodium butyrate plus a moderately reduced-calorie diet, participants with obesity lost a meaningful amount of weight. Participants who also had type 2 diabetes did not, although their blood sugar control improved.

    That pattern echoes an earlier finding. In a 2018 study, four weeks of oral butyrate improved insulin sensitivity in lean men but not in men with metabolic syndrome.

    Together, these suggest butyrate's effects depend heavily on metabolic context: who you are, what your microbiome looks like, and where the butyrate ends up. But GLP-1 is only part of the story.

    Why Butyrate Matters Beyond One Hormone

    Focusing only on GLP-1 undersells what butyrate does.

    Butyrate is the primary fuel source for colonocytes, the cells lining your colon. Not a supporting nutrient. Their main energy supply. Those cells use butyrate to power the work of maintaining a functioning gut lining, the barrier that decides what passes from your digestive tract into your body and what doesn't.

    This is where the cellular health picture comes together. A well-fueled intestinal lining supports a healthy gut barrier. A healthy barrier supports a stable environment for the microbial community living there. And that community produces metabolites that signal to the rest of the body — including the gut-to-brain communication involved in appetite and satiety.

    Butyrate sits at the center of that loop as both fuel and message. That role holds regardless of what the GLP-1 research eventually concludes.

    Support the System, Not Just the Signal

    The takeaway isn't that you should be trying to maximize GLP-1. Your metabolism and gut function are more complex than one signal.

    Lasting metabolic regulation runs on an ecosystem: microbial diversity, adequate fermentable fiber, well-nourished intestinal cells, an intact gut barrier, and steady communication between gut and brain. Semaglutide shows what happens when you push one signal in that system very hard. It doesn't show that one signal is the whole system, or the only way to modulate it.

    Feeding that ecosystem starts with fiber-rich whole foods: vegetables, legumes, cooked-and-cooled potatoes and rice (good sources of resistant starch), and other plant foods your gut bacteria can thrive on. Give it time. Gut environments shift over weeks and months, not days.

    For targeted support, BodyBio Butyrate provides butyrate in supplement form to support the gut lining and a healthy microbiome.*

    The Bigger Story Your Gut Was Already Telling

    Semaglutide has taught researchers a great deal about how strongly GLP-1 signaling can influence not just hunger but desires: what sounds good, what tastes right, and what gets left on the plate.

    And yet, the more interesting revelation may be how much was already happening without it. Every meal you eat feeds a microbial community that turns fiber into signaling molecules, which intestinal cells read and translate into messages sent onward to your pancreas and your brain. That conversation has been running your entire life.

    Butyrate is one voice in that conversation. It fuels the cells that hold your gut barrier together and takes part in the signaling between your microbiome and the rest of your body. Supporting butyrate production in the gut won't replicate a pharmaceutical. It doesn't need to. Feeding the system well is its own goal, and the benefits build gradually, often in small shifts that are easy to miss at first.

    Support your gut at the cellular level with BodyBio Butyrate.*

    *These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

    This article is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. If you're taking semaglutide or another GLP-1 medication, talk with your healthcare provider before adding new supplements.

    Comprehensive Guide to Butyrate: What it is, Benefits, Side Effects, & More
    Ashley Palmer | 06.16.2026

    Comprehensive Guide to Butyrate: What it is, Benefits, Side Effects, & More

    Butyrate is a necessary component to a balanced microbiome, also working as an inflammation guard*. One of several, short-chain fatty acids created from fermented resistant starches, low butyrate levels have been associated with serious health concerns.

    Butyrate and IBS: What Your Gut Cells Actually Need
    Ashley Palmer | 04.24.2026

    Butyrate and IBS: What Your Gut Cells Actually Need

    You've tried the probiotics. You've cleaned up your diet. You're doing everything you're supposed to do, and your gut still isn't cooperating.

    If you have IBS, that frustration is familiar. Bloating, urgency, unpredictable mornings, the constant guessing game of what's going to set things off.

    What often gets missed in the conversation around IBS isn't a trendy new supplement or a stricter elimination diet. It's something more foundational: what your gut's own cells actually need to function.

    Here's a closer look at what butyrate does, why IBS and low butyrate levels are closely linked, and how supporting the gut at the cellular level can make a difference.

    Table of Contents:

    • Understanding Butyrate

    • How Butyrate Works in the Gut

    • Why This Becomes an Issue for People With IBS

    • Supporting the Body More Effectively

    • Butyrate, IBS, and the Cellular Health Connection

    • How Butyrate Supports IBS Comfort Long-Term

    Understanding Butyrate

    Butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) produced in the colon when beneficial gut bacteria ferment dietary fiber, specifically resistant starch. It belongs to a class of compounds called postbiotics, the functional byproducts of a healthy microbiome.

    Unlike probiotics, which are living bacteria, butyrate is a metabolite. It's a compound your body puts to work directly at the cellular level. Understanding the difference between probiotics and postbiotics, like butyrate, is a useful shift you can make when thinking about gut health.

    Why the Body Relies on Butyrate

    Your colon is lined with specialized cells called colonocytes. These cells run almost entirely on butyrate, providing up to 90% of their energy needs.

    When colonocytes have what they need, they do their job well. They maintain the integrity of the gut lining, regulate what passes into the bloodstream, support a healthy inflammatory response, and help keep gut motility on track. Without enough butyrate, the gut’s main source of energy, the gut simply can't do its job well.

    How Butyrate Works in the Gut

    Butyrate supports three interconnected systems in the gut: the gut lining, the immune environment, and gut motility.

    The gut lining is just one cell layer thick. Butyrate fuels those cells and supports the tight junctions between them, the structural connections that keep the barrier intact and functioning.

    At the immune level, butyrate helps the body maintain a balanced inflammatory response in the colon without triggering overactivation. And because it directly influences the rhythmic contractions that move contents through the digestive tract, it plays a meaningful role in the irregular patterns that so many people with IBS experience.

    What Happens When Butyrate Levels Are Supported vs. Strained

    When butyrate is available in adequate amounts, the gut lining stays resilient, motility is more regular, and digestive comfort improves, whether you have a diagnosis of IBS or not.

    If butyrate levels fall short, the gut barrier may become less stable, motility can become unpredictable, and the colon's immune environment may shift. How pronounced these patterns are varies from person to person. Diet, stress, genetics, and microbiome composition all play a role in your body’s patterns too.

    Why This Becomes an Issue for People With IBS

    Modern Stressors on Butyrate Production

    Butyrate is made by gut bacteria that ferment resistant starch, a type of fiber found in foods like cooked and cooled potatoes, legumes, and underripe bananas. The modern diet is low in these foods. That means many people simply aren't giving their gut bacteria the raw materials they need to produce adequate butyrate levels.

    Antibiotic use, chronic stress, and certain medications can also reduce the population of butyrate-producing bacteria in the colon. Over time, that compounds the butyrate production gap.

    Why Common Approaches Often Fall Short

    Probiotics can be a valuable part of gut health support, but most probiotic strains are not butyrate-producing species. They can shift the microbiome, but they don't directly address the fuel shortage that many IBS-related symptoms may stem from.

    Fiber-based approaches come with a similar challenge. In some people with IBS, increasing fermentable fiber can worsen bloating and gas before it helps, because a disrupted microbiome may not efficiently use that fiber to make butyrate.

    Since butyrate works at the cellular level, the signs of low butyrate can overlap common IBS symptoms, which is part of why the connection between the two gets overlooked.

    Supporting the Body More Effectively

    Foundational Support for Butyrate Production

    Diet is the first step to improving the body's natural butyrate production. Foods high in resistant starch give butyrate-producing bacteria what they need to function properly.

    Foods that naturally support butyrate production include cooked and cooled rice, potatoes, and legumes. A steady intake of resistant starch over time does more for the microbiome than occasional high-fiber days followed by low-fiber ones.

    Stress management and adequate sleep can also support a more stable gut environment. Chronic stress directly affects microbiome composition and motility through the gut-brain axis. 

    When Targeted Butyrate Support Makes Sense

    For people whose microbiome is disrupted or whose diet can't consistently provide enough resistant starch, direct butyrate supplementation is another option for long-term support.*

    Supplemental butyrate delivers the short-chain fatty acid directly to the colon, where colonocytes can put it to use.* Clinical research has shown that sodium butyrate supplementation is associated with improvements in abdominal comfort and bowel regularity in people with IBS.

    Sodium butyrate and calcium magnesium butyrate are both effective options, and the differences between which works best for your body often come down to your individual health history and mineral needs.*

    Butyrate, IBS, and the Cellular Health Connection

    IBS is complex, and its causes vary from person to person. But one consistent finding in the research is that people with IBS tend to have lower levels of butyrate-producing bacteria and overall reduced short-chain fatty acids in the gut. That points to a cellular resource problem as much as a microbiome problem.

    When the cells lining the colon are undersupported, the entire digestive environment becomes less stable. Gut barrier function, motility, immune signaling, and communication along the gut-brain axis all depend on colonocytes having what they need to function.

    Supporting the gut at the cellular level is not a replacement for other gut health practices (whole food probiotics, exercise, etc.). It’s the foundation that makes those practices more effective. When your cells are supported, the body functions more efficiently as a whole.

    How Butyrate Supports IBS Comfort Long-Term

    IBS can feel like a moving target, and the path toward better digestive comfort is rarely a straight line or a quick fix. Supporting your gut at the cellular level creates a more stable foundation, and that starts with making sure colonocytes have the fuel they need.*

    Butyrate works best as part of a consistent approach that includes diet, lifestyle, and targeted support where needed. Progress tends to be gradual, and that's expected. It reflects the time it takes for the gut lining to strengthen and the microbiome to rebalance.

    IBS makes a lot more sense when you know what the gut's cells actually need. And that clarity is often where real progress begins.

    Support your gut at the cellular level with BodyBio Butyrate.*