In this episode of N of 5 Minutes, we talk with Dr Nita Jain about why health care needs to look past lab numbers and averages to understand individual patients. She explains how treating a “low” result with a supplement can miss the deeper causes, and why single-patient studies are especially valuable for complex illnesses like long COVID. Dr Jain highlights how sex differences, personal baselines, and genomics could make care safer and more precise. She also shares an ecological view of microbes, showing how context shapes whether organisms are partners in health or sources of disease.