Something new shows up. A rash. A headache that keeps returning. Your digestion suddenly changes. You’re more tired than usual. You’re not sleeping as well. Something simply feels off.

What’s the first question that comes to mind?

Often, it’s some version of “What can I do to make this go away?”

It’s an understandable question. When something is bothering us, of course we want it to stop. But I’ve learned that there’s another question that’s usually much more useful to me first:

What changed?

When my body starts doing something it wasn’t doing before, I don’t immediately assume I need a new solution. I get curious about what might have changed in my food, environment, routine, products, medications, supplements, stress, sleep, or other areas of my life that could help explain why my body is responding differently.

Sometimes the answer is surprisingly simple. Earlier this year, my face gave me a perfect example.

My Skin Started Telling Me Something Had Changed

At the beginning of the year, I noticed perioral dermatitis starting to show up on my face.

I’d dealt with it about eight years earlier. After a lot of investigative work back then, I eventually discovered that fluoride in my toothpaste was what triggered it for me. I switched to fluoride-free toothpaste, the dermatitis went away, and I’d used fluoride-free toothpaste ever since without another flare.

So when it returned, I was confused.

I knew from experience that fluoride could trigger it, but as far as I knew, I hadn’t reintroduced fluoride. That meant I needed to start looking elsewhere.

I also know that our skin isn’t operating independently from the rest of our bodies. It’s our largest organ, and what’s happening on the outside can be influenced by exposures, inflammation, immune activity, hormones, and other things happening within the body. So rather than viewing the rash only as a skin problem and asking what I could put on it to make it disappear, I wanted to understand what might be provoking the response.

For a couple of months, I kept thinking about what could be different while the dermatitis slowly worsened. Nothing obvious was jumping out at me.

Then one day I had a flash of memory: my husband had bought my last tube of toothpaste.

I went into the bathroom and checked.

Sure enough, it wasn’t fluoride-free.

Mystery solved.

And no, I’m not blaming my husband. The tubes look nearly identical, and the words “fluoride free” are surprisingly easy to miss. Even I, the person who had been intentionally buying the fluoride-free version for years, hadn’t noticed.

But there was the change I’d been looking for.

When Something New Shows Up, I Work Backward

This experience is a pretty good example of how I approach changes in my health.

When something starts happening that wasn’t happening before, I try to work backward from the symptom rather than immediately jumping forward to a solution.

What’s new? What’s different? What has changed?

Sometimes that’s obvious. If I introduce a new supplement and suddenly my digestion changes, that supplement is going to be pretty high on my list of things to investigate. If I switch a skincare product and a rash appears, I’m going to pay attention to the timing. If I’m traveling and my sleep changes, I’m going to consider everything that’s different about my routine before assuming I’ve suddenly developed a sleep problem.

I also think about less obvious changes. Have I changed something about the way I’m eating? Started eating a food more frequently? Changed a medication or supplement? Switched a household or personal-care product? Has my sleep or stress been different? Have I been sick? Has my digestion changed?

I’m essentially looking for clues.

That doesn’t mean the newest thing in my life automatically gets blamed for whatever symptom appears. Correlation isn’t always causation. But timing can give us useful information about where to start looking.

I Check the Foundations Too

Sometimes I can’t identify a new product, food, supplement, exposure, or other obvious change. That’s when I zoom out and look at the foundations that influence how my body functions every day.

How am I nourishing myself? How is my blood sugar regulation? Am I getting the sleep and recovery I need? What has stress looked like lately? How is my digestion? Am I moving my body regularly? Am I adequately hydrated?

These questions aren’t meant to suggest that every symptom can be explained by food, sleep, stress, or movement. They can’t.

But these areas influence so many systems and processes throughout the body that it doesn’t make sense to skip over them while searching for a more complicated explanation.

This is also why knowing how our bodies work matters so much. If all we’ve learned is that a rash needs a cream, a headache needs a pain reliever, constipation needs a laxative, or fatigue needs something to boost our energy, we’re naturally going to think about health in terms of symptom → solution.

When we understand that our bodies are interconnected, we can ask a different question: What might be contributing to this?

That doesn’t guarantee we’ll immediately find the answer. It does give us a much better place to begin.

Then I Decide What Kind of Help I Actually Need

There are absolutely times when working backward doesn’t give me an answer.

A symptom may persist even after I’ve addressed something that seemed like a likely contributor. There may be no obvious change to point to. Or the symptom itself may warrant medical evaluation rather than waiting to see whether I can figure it out myself.

That’s when the next step might be talking with a practitioner, running appropriate labs, using a medication, adding a supplement, or trying another intervention.

The difference is that I’m making that decision based on what I’ve learned rather than assuming from the beginning that a new symptom automatically requires a new treatment.

That’s what I mean when I say I want to understand the need before choosing the intervention. What is actually happening? What might be contributing to it? What have I already ruled out or addressed? And based on what I know now, what is the most appropriate next step?

Sometimes the answer will be medical care. Sometimes it will be a targeted intervention. And sometimes, as I learned earlier this year, the answer is sitting in the bathroom looking almost identical to the toothpaste I’ve been buying for eight years.

Before You Ask “What Should I Do?”, Ask “What Changed?”

When something new persists or keeps coming back, it’s worth getting curious about it. Our bodies give us information all the time, and paying attention to what changed can give us a useful place to start.

Too often, though, our first question is “What will make this go away?” rather than “Why might this be happening?”

So the next time something new starts happening in your body, work backward before you start adding solutions. What changed around the time this started? Did you introduce anything new? Did something familiar disappear? Has anything shifted with your food, products, supplements, medications, environment, sleep, stress, digestion, movement, or routine?

You may not find the answer right away, but you may uncover a clue that helps you decide what to do next.

And you may discover that the answer isn’t something you need to add.

It’s something that changed.