E50: Real Food Isn’t Always Enough: The Essential Mineral That Could Transform Your Health | Nathan Colonna of Mitigate Stress

Even if you eat real food, live an active lifestyle, and try to do everything “right,” you could still be missing one key mineral that supports nearly every system in your body. In this episode, Nathan of Mitigate Stress explains why magnesium deficiency is so common today, what makes magnesium bicarbonate different from other forms, and how easily it can be incorporated into your daily routine. Nathan shares how restoring this essential mineral transformed his own health after years of unexplained fatigue and inflammation. His story is evidence that sometimes the missing piece to better energy, sleep, and calm is simpler than we think. Join us for this conversation to learn why magnesium matters more than you realize and how to start replenishing it naturally!

In this episode, we cover:

• How a sudden case of Bell’s Palsy at age 18 launched Nathan’s journey to uncover the root of his health struggles
• The wake-up call that came later: debilitating inflammation, fatigue, and pain despite a “healthy” lifestyle
• Why the search for answers led him through vegetarianism, bodybuilding, and finally back to real food and faith
• The story behind founding Mitigate Stress and the mission to create the most natural, absorbable magnesium in the world
• What makes magnesium bicarbonate unique and why most forms of magnesium don’t actually absorb well
• The crucial role magnesium plays in stress reduction, hormone balance, energy, sleep, and overall vitality
• Simple ways to incorporate magnesium bicarbonate, sprays, and baths into your daily rhythm for better recovery and calm
• How mineral deficiencies develop in our modern food supply (even for homesteaders) and the role of supplementation in nutrition
• The connection between faith, physical health, and community— how returning to God transformed Nathan’s wellness journey
• A conversation about living more intentionally and addressing root causes instead of quick fixes, both in health and homesteading

Thank you to our sponsors!

McMurrayHatchery.com | A wide selection of poultry breeds and supplies to assist you with raising your flock

Nutrimill.com | High-quality small kitchen appliance products that function well, are easy to use, and promote healthy eating

About Nathan

Nathan’s journey into the world of health and performance began in the gym—but it was his own health crisis that truly changed everything. After battling Bell’s Palsy and Lyme disease in college, he found himself exhausted, overmedicated, and without answers. It wasn’t until he began questioning conventional treatments and turning to natural healing that things began to shift. 

Alongside his friend and co-founder Nick, Nathan explored ancestral nutrition, movement, and faith as powerful tools for real recovery. Together, they transitioned from personal trainers to holistic practitioners, eventually creating the Mitigate Stress Routine—a simple, sustainable system designed to help everyday people feel better and stay consistent. 

Nathan’s passion lies in helping others cut through the noise of the wellness industry and return to what actually works: nutrient-dense food, intentional movement, and a grounded spiritual life. His faith in Christ now guides everything he does—from the routines he teaches to the products they create. Whether he’s developing magnesium supplements or coaching clients through burnout, Nathan’s mission is to restore health from the ground up—with honesty, integrity, and purpose.

Resources Mentioned

Check out and shop the specific supplements mentioned in this episode:

Magnesium bicarbonate Master Mineral Drink daily supplement

Magnesium Oil Spray

Magnesium Bath Flakes

Pure Shilajit tablets, capsules and more

Connect

Nathan Colonna | Website | Instagram | YouTube

Homesteaders of America | Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Pinterest

Real Food Isn’t Always Enough: The Essential Mineral That Could Transform Your Health Transcript

Amy Fewell Welcome to the Homesteaders of America Podcast, where we encourage simple living, hard work, natural healthcare, real food, and building an agrarian society. If you’re pioneering your way through modern noise and conveniences, and you’re an advocate for living a more sustainable and quiet life, this podcast is for you. Welcome to this week’s podcast. I’m your host, Amy Fewell, and I’m the founder of the Homesteaders of America organization and annual events. If you’re not familiar with us, we are a resource for homesteading education and online support. And we even host a couple of in-person events each year with our biggest annual event happening right outside the nation’s capital here in Virginia every October. Check us out online at HomesteadersofAmerica.com. Follow us on all of our social media platforms and subscribe to our newsletter so that you can be the first to know about all things HOA (that’s short for Homesteaders of America). Don’t forget that we have an online membership that gives you access to thousands—yes, literally thousands—of hours worth of information and videos. It also gets you discount codes, an HOA decal sticker when you sign up, and access to event tickets before anyone else. All right. Let’s dive into this week’s episode. 

Amy Fewell Welcome back to this week’s recording of the Homesteaders of America podcast. This week we’re taking it a little bit different… I know we’ve had some, you know, stories… I mean, of course, we’ll have stories today too. But this is actually a product and a story that I personally have used. And so I’m welcoming Nathan Colonna from Mitigate Stress to the podcast today. Welcome, Nathan. 

Nathan Colonna Hey guys, thanks for having me on. 

Amy Fewell So why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and then I’ll kind of go into how we met and we’ll go from there. 

Nathan Colonna Sure, sounds great. So I guess we can start back on my health journey. I guess that’s kind of how all of our products and business started was back when I was 18. I was a freshman in college, and I grew up here in Northern Virginia. I went to school down in Bradford University, a beautiful area. And I woke up one day and I was like paralyzed on the left side of my body, and you know, it was Bell’s palsy. That’s what the medical team told me. And I was in the hospital for like a week doing all these tests, and eventually got put on a PICC line, was taking a bunch of antibiotics, and you know, that was kind of it. I didn’t know any better at 18. You know, I was just partying at school and just living life. Didn’t really make any lifestyle changes back then. I thought I was healthy, and you know, at a young age, you can really get away with it. You think you can at least, until you know, it builds up over time. But it wasn’t again until about six years later when I was 23, 24 years old, I was personal training up at a Gold’s gym in Herndon, Virginia. And this was after college. I went right into personal training and I was bodybuilding, doing some powerlifting, but mostly bodybuilding. And again, I just hit a brick wall one day, I just woke up and felt like I could barely move, my joints hurt, I was inflamed head to toe. I had digestive issues, but I looked great on the outside. You know, people saw my physique and wanted to train with me, but I knew internally, something was wrong. So that’s where I kind of went down a rabbit hole of just trying to figure the stuff out on my own because I went to a specialist and they kind of put me to somebody else and they pushed me to somebody else, and I just was kind of fed up with that because I wasn’t getting to the root of my issues. And at this time in my life is where I met my business partner now, Nick. He was also a personal trainer, and he was way more into the health and supplement stuff than I was at the time. He had a lot of health issues himself. But he grew up vegetarian, so I kind of knew that and I was like, “Oh, why don’t we try switching up diets a little bit?” And I tried changing my diet and I started noticing some changes in my health. And I went vegetarian and vegan at the time. I thought that was great and you know, started changing the quality of my water to my environment to just learning a lot of these things that we discuss in our business now at Mitigate Stress. Just really experimenting with my health and trying different things. And yeah, that kind of led us to doing a whole bunch of experiments with the food we ate, the water we drank, just the lifestyle we were living. Just analyzing, you know, what we were doing now, what was working, what wasn’t, and just trying to figure it out. And long story short, I know I’m taking everybody on a whirlwind of… 

Amy Fewell That’s perfect. 

Nathan Colonna …the journey here, but it ultimately ended up leading us back to God. I grew up Catholic up until I was 18 when I went to college. I pretty much left the faith. I didn’t care. I had no real foundation in that. But yeah, ultimately led us back into the faith right before COVID. It was right around when COVID was happening, you know, things took a turn. We had to kind of pivot and adapt and up our business online because everything got shut down. We couldn’t train people in person, we couldn’t train at the gyms. So we were basically forced to go all online. And it was a blessing. It really was. And you know, we started the business online. I don’t know where I was going with that, but I don’t know if you have any questions. I lost track.

Amy Fewell Yeah, I do. I do. I have a ton of questions. So your health took a turn, you were dealing with it for years, you played around with your diet. Okay, I have to ask: are you still vegetarian or not? 

Nathan Colonna No, no. That was very short lived. That was about a year. Nick, he grew up vegetarian, so he was like done with it. He was like, “Why are you pulling me back into this stuff?” Like he was ready to go full on carnivore, which he pretty much is now. But yeah, I started having injuries. I pulled a muscle in my hamstring. I pulled a muscle in the bottom of my foot. I just was noticing things were off. And yeah, I quickly got back into bone broth, you know, and started getting farm fresh food, and that was just a big lifestyle change. I never had raw dairy my whole life and I never had these… You know, we grew up hunting, so I had some deer here and there. My dad was in the food business, so he had, you know, food at home, great, great food, but it wasn’t like farm fresh food.

Amy Fewell Well, now that’s led you into homesteading too, right? 

Nathan Colonna Yeah, yeah. I mean, just with a business and just, you know, seeing how the supply chain really took a toll. I think that with COVID, it really shot me into homesteading. You know, we started with chickens back when we all lived together, Nick, my business partner and his brother who works for us. And then when we moved, we finally got our own place here in Bealeton, January 2024, we kind of took it up a notch. We had some goats before, we raised meat chickens, and then when we started having our own land, yeah—we went, you know, dairy cow, beef cow, meat chickens, geese, ducks… 

Amy Fewell You went all in, yeah. 

Nathan Colonna Cats, dogs, yeah, the whole… We’re trying to make it as self-sufficient as possible. 

Amy Fewell We’re taking a break from the podcast so I can tell you a little bit about this year’s sponsor, Murray McMurray Hatchery. Murray McMurray officially started his chicken business in 1917. He had always been interested in poultry as a young man and particularly enjoyed showing birds at the local and state fairs. He was in the banking business at the time and sold baby chicks through the bank to area farmers and hobbyists. But now, we know Murray McMurray as one of the top homesteader’s choice hatcheries here in the United States. They have all kinds of birds, from show birds to exotic birds to meat birds, because who doesn’t want every kind of chicken or poultry possible? They have ducks and all kinds of options for you. Here at Homesteaders of America, Murray McMurray Hatchery has supported homesteaders for at least the last eight years (or as long as we’ve been around) and beyond, since 1917. Make sure you check them out at McMurrayHatchery.com to get your orders in for the year. 

Amy Fewell Okay, so you came full circle with your food and all of that. You’re homesteading now. So let me interject for you guys: how I met Nathan is… Most of you know that I was pregnant most of this year and part of last year, and we went through some crazy hard times in our family at the beginning of this year with various different health things that were happening. And so the stress of that and just me being on my feet all the time was causing high blood pressure in my pregnancy, and I had never had that before. It was very new for me. Honestly freaked me out a little bit because I’m like, this is not normal. I’ve never had high blood pressure in my entire life. And there were other things, like I had high fluid, and there were just so many things that started happening. Mostly from stress, but also my body telling me, hey, there’s an issue here, like we need to deal with this. And so multiple people in my natural health community recommended, “Have you tried magnesium?” And I’m like, “Well, I have. Like I take a magnesium supplement,” and they’re like, “No, no, no, no, no. That’s not the same thing.” And so your business came up, Nathan, Mitigate Stress. And I had one girl tell me, she’s like, “This is the place to get magnesium bicarbonate.” And I’m like, “Okay, I’ve heard of this, I talk about this a lot,” but why don’t you explain to people who are listening: What exactly does your company do, what are you professionals in, experts in? And tell us more about magnesium bicarbonate. 

Nathan Colonna Yeah, sure. We specialize in making the best magnesium, we claim, in the world. It’s the most natural form of magnesium that you would find in nature. So you would typically find it in spring water. You’d find magnesium bicarbonate in companies like Gerald Steiner or Mountain Valley, these certain spring water companies, naturally contain magnesium bicarbonate. So we started experimenting back seven, eight years ago with making it ourselves with the, you know—you probably see people with the soda stream—making it with magnesium hydroxide, and that’s kind of like a DIY at home, but we began to figure out that… We wanted to make the most potent form—an electrolyte solution where it would have the most magnesium per dose on the market in the most absorbable form. So with bicarbonate, studies have shown and claim to have up to 90%, even up to 100% absorption rate, depending on how functioning a person’s gut is. You know, some people have some gut issues, some people don’t. So it really depends. But most other forms of magnesium, like pills and powders, they’re gonna be around 4 to 30% absorbable. So it may take you 10, 20 different… a pill form of magnesium glycinate or threonate to get one serving of our magnesium bicarbonate. So people may think, oh, I’m saving money by either making it myself or taking a pill form, but you know, if you look at the end of the day, how much are you actually spending for that pill bottle and how many pills are you gonna have to get for a serving? So kind of going off track, but I want people to understand that the water suspended form in magnesium is most absorbable. One of the doctors, Dr. Russell Beckett, he was a doctor out in Australia, he was noticing… How he kind of really focused on magnesium bicarbonate was he was seeing cattle live 30 to 50% longer. And he was wondering, you know, what’s the variable here of why they’re living longer? And he began to end up finding that they were drinking magnesium bicarbonate rich water. So yeah, there’s so many symptoms that can be present in our bodies that can be a cause of magnesium deficiency, whether it’s, you know, like you experienced—high blood pressure, cardiovascular issues, inflammation, low energy, just your bone health, insulin resistance, sensitivity, your digestion. So many things are imperative and are used with magnesium. So, you know, it’s claimed, I’m sure you’ve heard, up to 42% of our body uses magnesium for certain functions. So I don’t know if that makes sense, but yeah, a lot can be attributed to a magnesium deficiency that we’re experiencing. And that was, I think, why a lot of my health issues I was experiencing, I was noticing magnesium was the big heavy hitter in me making jumps in in my health journey, was taking magnesium chloride sprays or taking baths and then eventually making our own magnesium and seeing other competitors out there and saying, “Hey, we can do way better than this.” This was my business partner, Nick saying, “Yeah, we can make a way better product,” and we saw the problem and really tried to hone in on just creating that solution for people out there. And yeah, not many people still know about bicarbonate. You know, you see a lot of on Instagram, people just talking about the main forms, whether it’s oxide, citrate, threonate, glycinate, biglycinate, and most are in pill and powder forms. And we just want people to kind of see like, hey, where are you gonna find a pill or powder in nature? You know, you’re gonna find more of a water solution of magnesium in nature. So there’s ways we can kind of go off this. Like there’s the magnesium burn rate that Morley Robbins talks about and Dr. Andrea Rosanoff, they talk about the burn rate where we’re losing magnesium daily. So just like any mineral, we’re gonna lose it under stress, whether it’s a physical stress of an injury, a chemical stress of I don’t know, deodorants or toxins and you know, sprays, colognes in our environment or emotional stress, breakup, you know, loss of job, kind of financial stress, you know, all these things can be removing magnesium out of the body, and we need to constantly replenish it. And as well as, our diets are definitely deficient in magnesium. Most food that people are getting definitely don’t have any magnesium, even if you think you see an Instagram post and you say, Oh, I can get my magnesium from these foods, but was it grown in magnesium-rich soil and soils that, I’m sure you know, have all the minerals present? So that’s a big factor. 

Amy Fewell Yeah, so why don’t you, if you feel comfortable, kind of tell us… People, you know, they learn about magnesium, but what does magnesium actually do in the body and for the body? Because some people might not realize, well, why do I need magnesium? You know, like if I’m deficient… What does it help the body do? 

Nathan Colonna Yeah, I would say the most, like customer testimonies that we get and we see from our customers is reduction in stress and anxiety and just calming the mind. So it’s gonna be big for the brain and relaxing the body. It’s overall relaxing. So calcium is kind of like the exciting mineral. Magnesium is more the relaxer. And most people, we think, have too much calcium or in the wrong forms of calcium compared to magnesium. Dr. Carolyn Dean talks about having a one-to-one ratio, and maybe even more like a two magnesium ratio to one calcium, but relaxation, calming the mind, anxiety, stress. I’d say the other one is just balancing hormones. You know, many people come to us… A lot of our clients are females, so they’re trying to balance hormones and when their hormones are all out of whack, it can cause a cascade of issues down the road. So magnesium is gonna help. It can cause detox, but it’s more of a natural detox of pulling out these stress hormones that are present in our body that, you know, can recirculate in our body. So magnesium is gonna help pull those and balance our hormones, as well as just improving our energy overall. I think that’s the third thing most people come to us, is they just have more energy and a sustained clean energy because magnesium is needed in the… I don’t know if you want to go sciencey, but the mitochondria of the cell, I think it’s like five out of seven of the Krebs cycles needs magnesium present to run, to produce energy. Morley Robbins and these people, they go more in detail about the whole science of what enzymes are being activated, but that’s essentially the more dumbed down version of just magnesium is needed to produce energy. So we need energy for everything, from playing with our kids to going to do chores outside to working, you know, manual work. We all need energy and it’s just kind of like that bucket. You know, if we don’t have enough energy present to give throughout our day, we start just, you know, we get aggravated, we have these issues, we could have joint pain, we can, you know… I think it’s different for everybody. Someone is maybe weaker in their gut compared to their, I don’t know, brain? If that makes sense. 

Amy Fewell It does. 

Nathan Colonna We try to compare ourselves too much, I think, to others. And we have to just kind of see what’s happened in our life and what we need to focus on—ourselves and what our issues are. 

Amy Fewell Yeah. So Nathan was nice enough to actually deliver the magnesium bicarbonate because their company is further away from us. They’re actually in Virginia, but you guys ship all over the place. And so he did bring me some. And so after about three days, I did start seeing a decrease in the high blood pressure. I’m not claiming that it, you know, decreases high blood pressure necessarily, but for me, for my situation, like what you just said, it was helping calm me. It was helping with all of this stuff we’ve been dealing with, with my husband’s health. There was just a lot of stuff going on. And it was replenishing that mineral in my body, which is really essential when you’re pregnant and getting ready to deliver a baby. Magnesium is just highly, highly recommended during that time. And so I still have a bottle. Can I drink that even though it’s how many months old? 

Nathan Colonna Yeah, I mean shelf life is two years unopened, so you have plenty of time.

Amy Fewell Okay, awesome. Yeah, I actually just started it again this week because I was starting to feel groggy and just some things, you know… I’ve hit that three month mark after postpartum. And I’m like, okay, we’re gonna open the next bottle. And so I started recommending it to a lot of my friends, and they have started to benefit from drinking it. And so can you tell us a little bit—how exactly do you make magnesium bicarbonate? And some people might not know, like, how it comes. You know, it’s in a liquid form, but it’s actually carbonated pretty much. 

Nathan Colonna Yeah, great question. You know, our process is fairly in-depth. We started with doing the soda sparkle like many people do at home, but then we realized multiple things—the magnesium hydroxide that we were using wasn’t the cleanest and purest source. So over the past eight years, we’ve kind of found better sourcing. Every like two, three years, we kind of swapped sourcing. We first started with this one off Amazon: Bulk Supplements was one of them. We started, then we realized, oh, there’s actually a cleaner form, and that was Pure Bulk. And then we found another cleaner source, we went kind of straight to the source, and we get our magnesium hydroxide from the Dead Sea. So from what we’ve found on the internet and out there, it’s the cleanest magnesium hydroxide. It’s certified in the Food Chemicals Codex. So it’s like the highest purity, the lowest amount of contaminants and heavy metals. And then we use water, of course. You need cold water, you need magnesium hydroxide, and then carbonation. So some sort of carbonation, which is CO2. So we first started making it in like plastic soda bottles back seven years ago on our own, with like a CO2… I forget the term for the piece, but we’d screw it on and shake it ourselves, and we ended up going to like a three gallon keg people use in breweries and distilleries, and then we went to a 10 gallon keg kind of thing, and then we went to a 15 gallon thing because we needed to upscale a little bit and keep up with demand, so we have a whole commercial grade purified water system that filters all the water that comes through. So it’s basically a heavy water softener, so it really softens the water, it removes all the impurities and everything because in order to make magnesium hydroxide and convert that powder into the bicarbonate form, you want the water to be as low TDS, the Total Dissolved Solids, in it as possible. You want the softest water, you don’t want hard water, or else it’s going to be very hard to convert. So if somebody is doing it at their house, you know, try to get the softest water if possible. So we filter all the water, we put it in a big refrigerated trailer that we have, and we carbonate the water. We add our potassium and sodium, and yeah, we put it on this… We’ve basically engineered… It wasn’t us, it was Nick, my business partner’s dad. He’s a very brilliant guy. He created this keg shaker for us that shakes the keg. Because we used to do it, for the first like three years, all by hand. We would just, you know, we would shake 15 gallon kegs for 20, 30 minutes at a time, multiple times in a day. And yeah, it was definitely some fun times when we were shaking it ourselves. And even when the keg shaker goes down or it needs maintenance, you know, it’s like, oh, I gotta get back… It brings back memories. But yeah, we do invigorating shaking to it because that shaking, with the carbonation and the cold water, really creates that conversion. So it goes through almost a five-day process before it actually gets poured into the bottles that customers receive. And so it’s going through multiple days of shaking, and just letting it sit in the refrigerated trailer to convert because it needs time, as well, to convert. And yeah, it essentially gets poured that day, and most of those bottles that get poured that day will go out to customers that day or the next day. So you’re getting the freshest-made magnesium bicarbonate. And we’ve actually just included more sodium in the form of Icelandic sea salt. So we’ve upgraded our formula a little bit, that’s actually getting released today at twelve. So it’s got ice Icelandic sea salt and potassium bicarbonate and yeah, magnesium bicarbonate. 

Amy Fewell So it’s like the ultimate electrolyte drink too. You know, and you only need a little bit of it. Like you don’t even need that much. So why don’t you tell us the dosage that you guys use for that? 

Nathan Colonna Yeah, yeah. So it comes in a one-liter swing top bottle. So almost about sixty-four ounces. And that’s the amount of servings that you get over that bottle, if you just stick with one serving a day. So one serving is two tablespoons—half an ounce. So you know, if you’re buying it in bulk, which you always have some sort of discount or offer, if you buy it in bulk, you’re getting it for around 80 cents per serving. Which, you’re getting 375 milligrams of magnesium in that serving, which is almost what the RDA recommends. We think you should be getting closer to six hundred milligrams of magnesium a day. You know, some through your foods, some through supplementation. And ideally, removing maybe some lifestyle habits that are depleting your body of magnesium, because what’s the point of just taking magnesium if you’re not gonna eliminate a lot of these habits that may contribute to burning magnesium more than you should. So yeah, about a half an ounce a day. Put in whatever liquid you’d like—water, most people do it in juice. We have a spritzer recipe ebook that people can get when they subscribe to our website. That’s sent to you for free and you can try different recipes with putting it in like orange juice or however you like to make a mocktail. So yeah, do it in that and just sip it. You know, we recommend sipping throughout the day because we’re constantly burning magnesium, and most people can’t handle it all at once because it’s very concentrated. So you know, if you’re someone who’s more of like an elite athlete who’s working out a ton, maybe you can drink it in a workout session, the whole serving size in maybe 16 to 32 ounces of water. But if you’re someone who’s just sitting at home behind a desk working on the computer, you know, just sipping it in your water, ideally away from your meals if possible is what we recommend as well because it can dilute a little bit in the stomach acid. But then there’s other people that say that drinking water… You know, there’s always two crowds, right? You can drink water with your meals, people say don’t drink too much liquid with your meals, so… We always say, you know, try to avoid it with the meals, but if you’re someone who can tolerate it with your meals, shoot, you know, go for it. 

Amy Fewell Okay guys, we’re taking a quick break in our podcast to bring you some more information about one of our sponsors this year. We are delighted to have NutriMill with us once again this year as a sponsor. We really enjoy this company and everything that they stand for. They are super like-minded. They educate us about whole grains. You can even check out one of the past podcasts we did with the owner of the company. Nutrimill is dedicated to creating high-quality, small kitchen appliance products that function well, are easy to use, and promote healthy eating. From mixers and grain mills to dehydrators, they have it all. Make sure you hit up this one-stop shop for all things fresh grains at NutriMill.com. 

Amy Fewell Okay, so you guys have more than just the drink. You brought me a spray too. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what’s the difference? 

Nathan Colonna Yeah, there’s the liquid form, which is magnesium bicarbonate, and then there’s the spray transdermal form, which is the chloride form. So magnesium chloride is what you would find in your oceans. In the seawater, essentially. As like going to the ocean. So that’s the form most people can handle. If you have sensitive skin and spray it, you may get a little tingly-ness, or if you have some sort of cut, you know, it’s definitely gonna burn a little bit. But yeah, the chloride form is… Dr. Carolyn Dean, I believe that’s what she offers, and she’s created a formula. She says it’s very absorbable as far as internally. We’ve thought about including chloride in our bicarbonate formula, but we just haven’t gotten there. We’ve just kept it transdermal with bath flakes that we offer now and then a spray. 

Amy Fewell So what is the spray normally used for? 

Nathan Colonna Just another form of magnesium absorption. So it’s a great thing to just spray on. Kids can use it. Anybody can really use it. So it’s just another form to get more magnesium into our body. And from what we’ve read, they say your body can absorb what it needs when you spray it. And also, if someone’s really compromised in their gut, it doesn’t need to be absorbed through the intestinal wall. So it goes essentially straight to the bloodstream when you spray it on your skin. It just gets absorbed that way. So it’s great for people that maybe can’t even take a liquid form or pill form. 

Amy Fewell Right. And you guys have magnesium bath flakes too. Is that kind of the same concept or is that used more for detoxing? 

Nathan Colonna Both. I mean, it’s tough because yeah, people just maybe want to use chloride for the bath flakes for detox, but it’s magnesium chloride. So yeah, it may help some detox, it’s gonna help with energy, it’s gonna help you relax, it’s gonna help you sleep. So the bath flakes—you can use them in a foot bath or in a full body soak, so whatever you prefer. But yeah, essentially like going to the ocean and getting a whole bunch of magnesium in your bath.

Amy Fewell Okay. Now I see you have another product on your website. You gotta say this for me: it’s the one that starts with an S. 

Nathan Colonna Yeah, shilajit. It’s definitely gained popularity over the past few years. When we started offering it, we were marketing it as a better alternative to a multivitamin because it has over 84 trace bonded minerals in it. So, you know, people take the multivitamin because they want to get all the vitamins and minerals as they can, right? Shilajit is essentially the same thing, but we believe a lot cleaner and a lot more natural. It’s found in the mountains out in the east. So we get it from the Altai Mountains, people get it from Russia and Siberian mountains. But yeah, it’s essentially plant matter that oozes out of the rocks in the summer when it’s warmer and people go up there and harvest it because they were realizing, in I guess Ayurvedic medicine, where it was really helping with a lot of issues. It contains minerals, so it can help with a variety of things, from energy to sleep to recovery. It’s been shown in studies to help with testosterone for males and sperm quality, as well as fertility for females. It can help with just your overall performance. A lot of people take it for performance in a mind kind of focused thing. So yeah, we have it in many different forms. The tablets definitely seem to be the most compatible with someone. You know, they’re just the easiest to take. It’s like a pill, you just pop it out and take it with your coffee or milk, whatever you prefer. 

Amy Fewell That’s really neat. I’ll have to check that out. I know that’s not what we’re talking about today, but it does kinda go along with it, so… 

Nathan Colonna You know, we’re about minerals and movement. That’s essentially what we’re focused on at Mitigate Stress, is just providing the most optimal minerals that people need in today’s deficient societies and depleted societies, you know. It’s our soils, from acid rain depleting… That’s another thing we didn’t really go into is how magnesium has been depleted from our environment through many ways through our industrial revolution to just all the pollutants, you know, that we’re putting into our environment. Every single year there’s thousands of different chemicals getting thrown into the water supply. And that’s why there’s all these water treatment facilities now because they have to just chlorinate and fluoridate the water so much because it’s just so toxic for human consumption that you’re basically just getting terrible water if you’re on the tap, which I’m sure you guys know of, and you know, well is definitely a better option. But you know, you just don’t know what you’re getting nowadays unless you test it and maybe filter it with some sort of filtration system. 

Amy Fewell Yeah. And you nailed it earlier when you said, you know, “Even people who are like, ‘Well, I can just get it all from my food.'” That’s been a big thing we’ve had to drive home. Like if your soil is depleted and if your water is depleted from minerals, you’re only eating as good as your soil is. And this is what we try to educate people about too. And so I get this question constantly, “Why do you promote supplements?” And I’m like, “Well, I’m not telling you to take thousands of supplements,” right? Obviously, like you said, you want to start with your food. What are you eating? What is your diet like? But from there, you have to go even deeper. Where does that food come from? And even if you’re growing it yourself, have you created such a good regenerative environment and microbiome of the soil that your food actually has what it needs in it? And most of us are in that process, right? We’re trying to regenerate what has basically been stolen from our soil and our farms because of industrialization, like what you said. And so that takes time. And you know, so supplements like these, I can get behind because, you know, you’ve talked about the quality and how you’ve researched that and how it’s just coming straight from the source, which is really important when people are looking for supplements, which was one of the reasons I wanted to bring you on, because when we can find supplements that are worth sharing, I mean, it can change people’s lives. And so before I let you go, what are you doing now? Like how is your health now? Are you cured of all of these things? You know, talk a little bit about that. 

Nathan Colonna Yeah, I mean it’s definitely been a journey. Since having a kid, I’m sure like most of your listeners know, it’s definitely easy to fall off. But you know, I don’t think it’s that much of an excuse. I know we could always do better from where we’re at, right? But to answer your question, yeah, getting back into the faith, we’re orthodox Christians, so since becoming Orthodox and just realizing what the purpose of our life is and as a human, you know, what is our purpose here on earth? I think that’s helped reduce a lot of the stress that we experience because we’re here to worship God, you know, that’s what the Orthodox Church teaches is we’re here to worship God and we’re here to have communion with God and in community. That is such an important role in our church. So ever since becoming Orthodox, I think that has helped my health journey because I was missing that spiritual component. The food, yeah, everything—we have to look at it with a holistic approach. And that’s what we do at Mitigate Stress is we take the spiritual aspect into it, to the movement aspect, to the environment, and to the food, right? To your minerals and what you’re getting. So going back, I’ll take this back full circle, but yeah, we get that sometimes too, as far as, why do I need to take this if I’m getting it from my food? But I think people just don’t realize how deficient we actually are. Like, I don’t know, it’s maybe more of a conviction to me that I think our potential is way, way up here. And we’re still like, even as personal trainers and people in the fitness industry, I still think we have… You know, you have to have that kind of mindset of just always wanting to get better. You’re never gonna be the best. You’re never gonna know everything about the food and God and minerals. You’re never gonna know the ultimate, right? We’re not God. So I think we just have to have that constant learning experience. But as far as healing, yeah, I feel great. I definitely could get back into more of the movement stuff we preach. Like trigger pointing, we focus a lot on walks, because that’s the foundational movement of our human body is walking more in posture. And yeah, I always want to feel better and have more… I mean my sleep’s great, my energy’s I think pretty consistent, but I’m always looking to improve and to get better and kind of feel younger. Not trying to live forever because we all have to die at some point. We live in this fallen world, but you know, I just want to live a quality life and show my kids and lead by example. And just, you know, you see kids when they’re a toddler age, how much energy they have and we wanna show busy mom and dads as well, how you can be strong, you can be fit with them, you can do stuff with them and you can, you know, not just have to put them in a daycare or something and just let them go or be taught by someone else. So yeah, we have to do what we preach and vice versa. But yeah, I think it’s more, you know, also being orthodox, it’s taught me to just focus, you know, try to focus on others because we’re so focused on ourselves sometimes. With the healing journey, you get too focused on yourself and there’s a time and a place for that, but you know, it goes both ways. You have to be kind of healthy and take care of yourself to be able to take care of others, right? We’ve probably heard that before. So, you know, I’m trying to focus on serving others and be there for others. You have to focus on both, right? To be that person to help, you know, try to bear fruit what Christ teaches us to do. We have to bear some sort of fruit or else, you know, I don’t think it’s gonna be beneficial. 

Amy Fewell I love it. Well, thank you for joining me on the podcast today. I always open it up at the end to everyone—and some people have nothing and some people have 10 minute long something—but if there is something burning inside of you that you want to say to our audience, it doesn’t even have to be about this, it can be about anything. What do you want to share? What’s on your mind? 

Nathan Colonna Yeah, that’s a deep question. 

Amy Fewell It is. 

Nathan Colonna Yeah. I just first want to say thank you for having me on and it was a pleasure meeting you in person and I’m glad we got to build this relationship and I look forward to speaking to you and hearing from you more and from everybody who… You know, I just love hearing customer testimonies and that’s what really keeps us going is we want to be the forefront and the provider of the best minerals and magnesium on the planet. That’s our vision for our business and we want to bring as many souls to Christ as possible. That’s also why we do this. You’ll see on all of our packaging and our labels—we have the cross. Nick and I, before we started the business, that’s why we started it was we’re doing this for God and that’s the foundation of our business before anything else. So yeah, no, we’re very grateful to be able to do this. I’m so grateful for the life that we have and what God has blessed us with. And you know, I wouldn’t have imagined it any other way, you know, seeing just where we were five years ago and now I have a family and kid and a house and we’re close to church. We’re blessed more than we could ever imagine. And you can go to our website, we have freebies on our website. You can check it out with a spritzer guide if you want to incorporate magnesium into your life, and there’s some recipe guides up there. And then we also have kind of a fitness side to our business that we don’t promote as much because our website’s focused on magnesium, but that where Nick really focuses on that side of things. We’re coming out with a power of walking guide. So there’s a couple steps that are uploaded on our YouTube that’s kind of private, so you just subscribe and you get access to our power of walking and also how that can help you with really any issues that you may be experiencing. But it’s focused on getting out of pain, having more energy, and just being able to have more mobility, you know, move more throughout our day without kind of feeling things, you know. We’ve seen that a lot. And people just our age, you know, we used to work out with how they’re just having all these injuries and stuff and not being able to do things with their kids and it’s just not good to see that. And yes, things happen for a reason sometimes. You know, we come into days where maybe we’re not feeling the best or we tweak a muscle and it’s just kind of like a teacher as well. So yeah, that’s what we do on that side of the fitness part to our business. But I appreciate it again, Amy and thank you all. 

Amy Fewell Yeah. So thank you for joining the podcast. I think people learned a lot. I’m sure people will have questions. If you guys are watching on YouTube, you can certainly ask your questions in the comments. We will link, whether it’s on YouTube or on your favorite podcast streaming platform, we will link all of this information that we talked about on there so you can either purchase the products or go learn more about magnesium and the products that Mitigate Stress offers. And if you guys share and subscribe and like and do all of those things for us, it helps us out. Until next time, guys. Thanks for joining us, Nathan, and happy homesteading. 

Amy Fewell Hey, thanks for taking the time to listen to this week’s Homesteaders of America episode. We really enjoyed having you here. We welcome questions and you can find the transcript and all the show notes below or on our Homesteaders of America blog post that we have up for this podcast episode. Don’t forget to join us online with a membership or just to read blog posts and find out more information about our events at HomesteadersofAmerica.com. We also have a YouTube channel and follow us on all of our social media accounts to find out more about homesteading during this time in American history. All right, have a great day and happy homesteading.