5 Ways to Personalize Your Health with Human Design and Functional Nutrition

Kelly Harrington, MS, RD
May 23
9 min read

Updated: May 27

Most health approaches focus on symptoms, but what if the root cause of your health struggles is energetic and biological?

Welcome! I’m Kelly – a registered dietitian, functional nutrition coach, and Human Design guide – and I am so glad you’re here.

Together, Human Design and Functional Nutrition create a powerful lens to understand not just how your body functions but how your energy, environment, and emotions play a role in your health story.

Get your free human design chart here. This human design chart is customized with insights and guidance about your human design and individual nutrition, health, and digestion information, which makes this bodygraph unique and special.

What Is Functional Nutrition?

Functional Nutrition is rooted in functional medicine principles. It’s a science-based, individualized approach to health that goes beyond surface-level symptoms to explore the deeper why behind them. Perhaps you’ve heard of root cause medicine. Conventional nutrition and conventional medicine, on the other hand, often provide a one-size-fits-all recommendations based on general guidelines and manages symptoms instead of treating the cause.

Functional nutrition focuses on:

Identifying the root causes of symptoms and chronic conditions.
Understanding how body systems are interconnected (like how gut health impacts body weight, brain function, hormones, or immunity)
Looks at lifestyle, environment, genetics, and emotional health alongside diet.
Using a food as medicine mentality, choosing nutrients that support healing, energy, and resilience
Personalized nutrition plans based on labs, symptoms, and history

Functional nutrition looks at the whole person, not just the condition, helping clients restore balance, improve long-term health, and feel empowered in their choices.

What is Human Design and Why It Belongs in Health Conversations

Human design is a very practical tool for understanding the foundation of someone’s essence—their energetic roots so to speak. It gives you insights you can implement immediately. It can shift misalignment and help you reconnect to your true authentic self you were born to be. Human design helps make decisions in a reliable, mechanical way. It’s structured, clear, and actionable.

As I studied human design more and more, I started noticing correlations between energetics in the chart and the health struggles my clients often faced. Looking at a nutrition client’s human design chart immediately helps me understand how their energy works, how they’re designed to make decisions, how their willpower and motivation operates, how they experience emotions, how those emotions may be impacting their eating, how they process stress and pressure, whether they’re designed for structure or to be more in the flow of life, how they best digest food, and how their environment impacts their well-being. I can also see where they are potentially the most conditioned and being thrown off track.

All of this gives me a different perspective in which to look at someone’s health. I’ve always known eating involves so much more than food, and so when people tell me their goals, the human design chart gives me insight about helping them reach their goals beyond what they eat.

Integrating Human Design with Your Health

When I look at how human design is possibly connected to our physical health, I feel a responsibility to say that, just like our bodies, human design is a system, and all the individual systems work together as a big system which we call metabolism.

Ra Uru Hu said, “I never want to hear anything explained in isolation.” So sure, we can look at specific Centers in the body graph, but we must also zoom out to look at the bigger picture of someone’s body graph to get clues about the possible root cause of a person’s troubles. You must understand the mechanics and details of the human design body graph AND the human body before you go looking at health correlations. This is so important!

If you’re a health practitioner wanting to use human design in your work, you MUST be properly trained in human design or it’s unethical. And vice versa, if you’re a human design professional and want to explore health aspects within the chart, you MUST stay within your scope of practice in your field of training or it’s unethical.

Combining health and Human Design creates a truly holistic approach – one that looks at the whole person and the full Human Design body graph to understand how everything is connected.

Where Biology Meets Energy: 5 Key Areas They Intersect

Energetic misalignment and conditioning can manifest physically through burnout, chronic stress, poor digestion, emotional eating, etc.

These are the questions I would immediately ask myself and take into consideration when I look at someone’s human design chart. How I narrow it down depends on the chart and the person’s health concerns and goals.

Stress and the Root Center

Considerations from a Functional Nutrition lens:
- What is the person’s current daily stress level?
- Does the person practice daily stress management?
- How is their cortisol rhythm and adrenal function?
- Could there be HPA axis dysregulation?
- Chronic stress = cortisol dysregulation.
- Is chronic stress dysregulating appetite signals?
- When you're chronically stressed, cortisol can stay elevated, leading to inflammation, insulin resistance, stubborn weight gain, blood sugar swings, and eventually fatigue or burnout. Supporting adrenal health through stress management, stable meals, and rest helps keep blood sugar more balanced throughout the day.
- Stress recovery requires balanced meals consisting of protein, healthy fats, and a lot of fiber.
- Would this person benefit from specific herbs and nutrients associated with stress recovery?
Considerations from a Human Design lens:
- Is the Root Center defined, undefined, or open?
- If defined, which Center(s) is it connected to?
- How does the person manage pressure to “do,” especially with an undefined or open Root?
- The Root, Solar Plexus, Ajna, and Throat have a strong biological connection so what is happening in those Centers at a mechanical level?

Emotional Eating and the Solar Plexus Center

A high priority within your human design chart is your Solar Plexus and understanding how emotions might be impacting your symptoms.

Considerations from a Functional Nutrition lens:
- Is the person connected to their internal cues for hunger and fullness?
- Are blood sugar levels stable throughout the day, or are there crashes that trigger emotional eating?
- Is the person eating enough protein, fiber, and healthy fat to support satiety?
- Is their gut-brain axis supported – could digestive health be impacting mood, cravings, or emotional resilience?
- Are there nutrient deficiencies (ie: magnesium, B-vitamins, omega-3s) contributing to mood imbalances?
- Does the person eat for other reasons besides physical hunger?
- Are they skipping meals or under-eating during the day, leading to over-eating later?
- Is there a history of dieting, restriction, or body image issues impacting their relationship with food?
- Are there signs of neurotransmitter imbalances (ie: low serotonin, dopamine) contributing to emotional cravings?

Considerations from a Human Design lens:
- Is the Solar Plexus Center defined, undefined, or open?
- How does the person manage amplified emotions with an undefined or open Solar Plexus?
- What channel is the person’s emotional waves?
- Is the person aware of their emotional wave and is there a connection between eating while in an emotional high or low?
- What are the Rave biology/digestion correlations of gates and channels in the person’s Solar Plexus Center?
- Is the person conditioned to suppress emotions, over-identify with food, soothe emotions with food, celebrate with food, seek food for a dopamine filled experience, eat without being physically hungry, allow outside factors to guide eating decisions, overeat?
- If you have channel 41-30, 36-35, or gate 42, you will enjoy this blog about navigating expectations and emotions.

Primary Health System (PHS) and Health

PHS in a human design chart comes from the four arrows (variables) that hover outside your chart, up near the head and ajna center.

Considerations from a Human Design lens:
- What is the person’s Determination and Transferred Determination?
- What is the person’s Cognition and how does it support their Determination?
- Does the person know how to decompress and release stuck energy from their undefined Centers?
- Is the person eating in the correct Environment for them to support digestion, cognition, and energy?
- Do they recognize when they’re slipping into Transference (mentally or physically)?
- Are they respecting their unique sensory input and output needs based on their PHS design?

Considerations from a Functional Nutrition lens:
- What physical or emotional symptoms appear when they’re eating out of alignment with their Determination (ie: indigestion, headache, bloating, fatigue, mood swings)?
- How does Transference show up?
- When they notice they are in Transference, can they identify non-food ways to cope with it rather than turning to food or substances?
- Are their blood sugar levels, digestive function, and nervous system health being impacted by misalignment with Determination?
- Are they unknowingly overriding their Determination due to social pressure, diet culture, or habits from childhood?
- How can nutritional strategies help ease the transition into eating more in alignment with their PHS?

Energy Mismanagement and Burnout

Considerations from a Functional Nutrition lens:
- Looking at their diet, are there any nutritional deficiencies (ie: B vitamins, magnesium, omega-3s, iron)?
- Does the person eat 30+ plant foods per week?
- Are blood sugar levels stable throughout the day, or are there spikes/crashes contributing to fatigue?
- Is there chronic inflammation, impaired detoxification, or poor mitochondrial function?
- How is their sleep—both quantity and quality?
- Is their exercise routine supporting or depleting them? (Too intense? Not enough recovery? No movement at all?)
- Is caffeine use masking deeper fatigue?

Considerations from a Human Design lens:
- What is the person’s Type and how are they using or misusing their energy?
- Does the undefined or open Sacral Center know when enough is enough?
- Are there channels or gates in the chart that suggest pressure (ie: from the Head or Root) or a drive to prove, please, or keep up (ie: undefined Ego, undefined G)?
- How is their Root Center operating? Does the person need adrenal support?
- Does the person have aspects in their chart that point to really needing to prioritize alone time, self-care, privacy, emotional decompression? Does conditioning prevent that?
- From where in the body graph is their energy being leaked?
- Are they honoring their Strategy and Authority or living from their mind?
- Is their movement aligned with their design? (ie: are they forcing intense workouts when their body thrives on gentler activity, or avoiding movement when it would help energy flow?)

Weight Loss and Metabolism

Considerations from a Functional Nutrition lens:
- If wearing a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM), what are the person’s blood sugar patterns?
- What are the person’s thyroid labs?
- What could be causing inflammation (ie: diet, environmental toxins, food sensitivities)?
- Where is the client in her menstrual cycle? This influences hormones, energy, cravings, blood sugar sensitivities, and nutrition needs.
- What’s the quality and quantity of the person’s sleep?
- Are they under-eating or chronically restricting, which may be downregulating their metabolism?
- Is their gut health (ie: microbiome diversity, digestive efficiency) supporting or impairing metabolic function?
- Are they consuming enough protein, fiber, and healthy fats to support thermogenesis and satiety?
- What’s their movement pattern like (ie: are they overtraining, sedentary, or missing recovery)?

Considerations from a Human Design lens:
- How might a conditioned mindset, beliefs, and ideals prevent sustained weight loss?
- Are there any unsupportive patterns tied to conditioning?
- Is emotional stress linked to overeating or food control patterns?
- Is cortisol a contributing factor to weight gain?
- What is their Authority, and are they making food and lifestyle decisions from that place or from the mind?
- How does the person’s definition (centers, channels, or gates) influence their relationship with food, willpower, self-worth, rest, etc.?
- Does the person’s human design point to a non-linear approach to health (ie: need for experimentation, working in cycles)?
- Are they aligning their food and exercise habits with their energy type, strategy, and authority?

Real Integration: Functional Meets Energetic

The systems of functional medicine/nutrition and human design don’t contradict. Rather, they complete each other. Functional nutrition addresses the physical terrain. Human Design helps align you with your energetic DNA and how you’re meant to use your energy and gifts in alignment.

This approach to support my nutrition clients is key for holistic health support.

How to Start Applying Functional Nutrition and Human Design into Your Life

It’s also an absolute must to understand and apply your Type, Strategy, and Authority in your day-to-day life. This foundational layer of Human Design helps you start practicing how to align with your natural energy, reduce resistance, and start shedding layers of conditioning in your life.

If you haven't had a foundational Human Design reading yet, that’s a powerful first step.

Next, begin observing and tracking the physical symptoms you’re experiencing, such as energy levels, digestion, stress, mood, and hunger patterns. Also begin to observe how your body uniquely responds to emotions, stress, food, and routines. In my work with clients, I use them to help identify where to focus on in the Human Design chart and what to optimize first.

Unlike one-size-fits-all advice, this approach honors your specific design and biology. Try experimenting with how and when you eat, how you rest, and what kinds of movement or recovery feel truly restorative.

For deeper insights, tools like wearing a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) can help you see how your body responds to food and stress in real time. Stabilizing blood sugars can drastically improve your physical and mental energy levels.

You may also benefit from targeted nutritional support. I often recommend supplements like:

Glucose-Adapt for blood sugar stability
Adreno-Lift to support adrenal health and stress resilience

Working with a trained guide who understands both Human Design and functional nutrition can bring clarity, accountability, and depth to your process. The goal isn’t perfection. It’s self-awareness and sustainable alignment with your body’s true needs.

If you’re curious to explore this integration further, start by downloading your free Human Design chart, tracking your symptoms, or booking a session for personalized guidance.

Remember: you’re designed to feel good in your body. You just need the right map and a little guidance to find your way back to balance, vitality, and ease.

Ready to personalize your health journey? Work with me to explore how your chart and biology can work together to support the healthiest version of you.