It’s been a little while since I spoke about the liver, but it remains the single organ I support in almost every single clinic prescription. I sit in genuine awe of the liver. It cops serious daily abuse, yet give it a few weeks of clean living and target support, and it recovers magnificently.

(Mostly... there are limits!)

What do the hippocampus, high homocysteine levels, and B vitamins all have in common?

If you haven’t the foggiest idea what I am talking about, I am not at all surprised! It is a commonly forgotten part of brain health, yet it is absolutely fundamental to keeping your mind sharp.

I bet you’ve heard the term "leaky gut" by now. But did you know that you can also have a leaky brain?

Okay, stop laughing! I didn’t mean it like that.

Just as a leaky gut allows undigested waste and bacterial toxins to leak into your bloodstream, those same circulating toxins can actually cross the blood-brain barrier. That toxic burden meant to exit the body isn't just floating around in your blood. It's making its way directly to the motherboard of your body and clogging it up.

How’s the brain fog today?

Are you noticing that words don’t come as easily as they used to? Is it taking you ten minutes to digest a simple three-sentence email, or has finding your keys turned into a daily game of Where’s Wally?

Maybe it’s perimenopause. Maybe it’s stress and exhaustion combined with a few questionable carb choices. But ultimately, it boils down to the same thing: a brain that isn’t getting consistent fuel or proper downtime.

Let’s talk about Ketones!

And no, this is not a push for a rigid Ketosis diet. I will not be advocating for you to obsess over being in ketosis or the bad breath that follows (yes, that’s a real thing). But I do want to chat about BRAIN metabolic flexibility!

All that really means is your brain's natural ability to switch between using glucose and ketones for energy, just the same as the rest of your body.

It is no secret that our brains LOVE glucose. Glucose is its absolute favorite fuel, but it works just as well on ketones. Ketones are simply the clean-burning fuel molecules released when we burn fat.

If your brain feels like it’s in go-slow mode and thinking feels like a slog, you might be blaming perimenopause. But which specific stage you are at is a great indicator of what is actually going on under the hood.

Early in perimenopause, we see progesterone steadily declining while oestrogen goes on a wild rollercoaster ride. We notice mood changes, an increase in anxiety, poor sleep, general exhaustion, and a host of increasingly weird or intense premenstrual symptoms. Loads of reasons to have brain fog and a tired brain, right?

But these symptoms are like a knock-on effect from low progesterone. It’s not the direct cause of the energy drop.

When clients come into the clinic and tell me they are struggling with brain fog, anxiety, fatigue, and absolute exhaustion, they are almost always convinced it’s just their hormones, a lack of sleep, or daily stress.

They rarely ever think about their blood sugar levels.

With all the information out there, this whole health journey can be incredibly confusing!

Add that to the messaging we get that we need to work full time, be a full-time mum, cook everything from scratch, sleep for 9 hours a night, keep our ever-loving patience with every meltdown, AND keep a spotless home while also making sure we get a daily workout…

You know you are stressed out, but you can’t think why! You used to be able to cope with so much more! But lately, you keep thinking you have it all under control when you realize that some crucial piece of information has fallen out of your head when you weren’t looking.

And you are suddenly getting random symptoms like bloating as well. You no longer feel settled in your body… in fact, whose body is this that keeps letting you down?

Sleep has got to be one of the most common concerns people have. It’s not always the one that brings them into the clinic, but it is almost always on their wish list. Ironically, many of their health issues will improve with an appropriate amount of good quality sleep, but those very same health issues also drive sleeplessness. I do wonder about the engineering of the body sometimes, lol! Somehow the negative feedback loops got missed!

Here’s why we need a good night's sleep:

Saying "NO" isn’t something that comes easily to women. It’s in the programming we have received from childhood at every turn. We have been led to believe that saying "no" is a choice, but is it really? It’s a bit like, "Would you like strawberry, or chocolate with a punch in the face?" Not really much of a choice, hey?

If you have come to the realization that the whole "coffee and leftover crusts" survival strategy isn’t working for you, then keep reading.

There is a very good biological reason why skipping meals, living on green smoothies, and generally neglecting your own diet is keeping you locked in a stress loop. It’s not just your weight that suffers; your entire nervous system takes the hit.

Food is not a weapon to control your weight. Food is the structural nourishment required for every single process in your body, from metabolic function to nervous system regulation. It is literally the keystone holding the whole she-bang together.

As if the physical load of motherhood isn’t enough, mothers are far and away the ones carrying the heavy, invisible mental load. I don’t want to get into the systemic why of all this today, because I’d need a giant soapbox for that. Right now, I am far more concerned with how we can help you build stress resilience, handle the pressure, and intentionally shift the weight when you can.

Here’s why it matters so much.

It’s 5 pm and you’ve been running since your eyes opened.

Coffee for breakfast, the kids' leftover crusts for a snack. You’ve managed to get everyone organized and dressed, brushed hair, and kissed the bumps. You’ve wrangled the family into the car, negotiated lifts, and made sure your partner is up to speed on the week’s logistics.

Lunch was eaten standing or on the run, but you have no idea what you actually ate. The washing, the cleaning, the planning, the organizing… you’ve done it all in one day. And tomorrow, you’ll do it all again, just like you did yesterday.

What is wrong with mother nature? Why oh why would she put these 2 together? Not always but definitely often! It’s like setting a hair trigger bomb inside the house and not telling anyone. But here we are. Hormonal woman and hormonal kids all cohabitating!

From a hormonal perspective kids in puberty are seeing a rise in their sex hormones that can take a while to level out. That instability can manifest as acne, irritability, moodiness and forgetfulness in both males and females.  And girls get to deal with settling menstrual cycles that flare these symptoms and bring extra with them every month.

Eeek! Nothing like the confusion of transition to make you question your own sanity. The truth is, you aren't choosing between one or the other. You are likely living in the intersection of both.

The "Sandwich" Reality

Our generation faces a unique squeeze. We had children later, so our own parents are aging just as our kids are hitting those demanding teenage years. We are the "sandwich generation," trapped between caregiving for two generations while simultaneously maintaining a career.

We talk a lot about the "mental load" of motherhood: the school forms, afterschool sports, meal planning, laundry, and constant emotional regulation. But we rarely talk about the metabolic load we carry as a result.

If you’re a mum, you are a master of the art of "leaving yourself off the priority list." You eat the crusts off the kids' toast, you skip lunch because you’re running errands, or you rely on that mid-afternoon coffee just to get you to school pickup.

As a degree-qualified Naturopath, I spend a lot of my time diving deep into complex pathology, functional testing, and intricate homeopathic cases. But if there is one thing years of clinical practice in nutrition and homeopathy have taught me, it’s this: You cannot out-supplement a lifestyle that ignores the basics. ‘The Pill for an Ill’ type thinking needs to go!

Winging your health means leaving your well-being to chance, and let’s be honest: that is incredibly stressful. Your body doesn't want "surprises" when it comes to fuel. It thrives on certainty, a plan, and consistency. When you live meal-to-meal, you are keeping your nervous system in a perpetual state of "decision fatigue" and knee-jerk reactions.

Find out how you can get your health back on track with Metabolic Balance.

The link between stress and our metabolism is complicated.

It’s often tempting to stick our heads in the sand and focus only on the symptoms for a band-aid fix: “I need to lose weight,” “I need to sort my sleep,” “I need more energy.” The list goes on with individual seemingly unrelated problems. BUT these are all SOS signals from a body that isn't getting what it needs to create true stress resilience.

Our lives are so incredibly full of day-to-day "mini-dramas" that we simply can’t see the forest for the trees. In an effort to combat all those individual ‘trees,’ we end up with more work, more chaos, and more confusion.