Lifestyle Support – March 2026

Sunday, 29 March 2026

Last week we looked at how prioritising your sleep can help to balance your nervous system. A dysregulated nervous system contributes to disease, poor mental health and relationship challenges. Exercise is a great tool to help regulate your nervous system.

If you are suffering from chronic stress, over-exercising can exacerbate your symptoms. We discussed the five signs of a dysregulated nervous system on 8 March. If you missed it, read the article below.

So, how can you use exercise to support you when you are going through stressful periods?

150 minutes of exercise per week is the recommended amount, which is roughly 20 minutes per day. Balance this across your week through alternating between the amount of time spent exercising. For example, go for a 30-minute walk on Monday, 20 minutes on the exercise bike on Tuesday, and a 10-minute Pilates workout on Wednesday.

Next week we will talk about which foods agitate your nervous system, and which foods can help to balance your nervous system.

Sunday, 22 March 2026

Over the last two weeks we have looked at the signs of a dysregulated nervous system and what can cause the dysregulation. We are now going to explore different ways you can balance your nervous system, and vitamins and nutrients that can support this.

Prioritise your sleep. This is often easier said than done. Here are three tools to help you:

1. Wake up and go to sleep at the same time each day for three weeks. When I find it is difficult to keep to a schedule, I make sure to have the same number of hours rest instead.
2. Prepare yourself for rest. In the hours leading up to sleep, use lower lighting levels and reduce cognitive stimulation like scrolling or high-energy activities.
3. Create a sleep environment to help your body relax. Make sure that your bedroom is a calming and comfortable space.

Sunday, 15 March 2026

Last week we looked at the five signs of a dysregulated nervous system. If you don’t regulate your nervous system, HPA axis (the hypothalamus, pituitary and the adrenals) dysfunction occurs, and the result is disease, poor mental health and relationship challenges.

Here are six things that cause your nervous system to become dysregulated:

1. Chronic stress: your nervous system forgets to turn off the fight or flight system.
2. Childhood trauma: once a signal has been initiated, you then need to train it to move out of that state.
3. Poor diet: some synthetic ingredients in our foods are toxins for the nervous system and cause dysregulation; ultra-processed foods (like reconstituted meat products and mass-produced breads, cereals and crisps) contain a lot of chemicals that are neurotoxins.
4. Imbalanced gut microbiome: dysbiosis (an imbalanced gut bacteria) can activate the HPA axis which negatively affects the gut microbiome.
5. Hormones: a swing in neurotransmitters make you more susceptible to stress (you can feel more raw).
6. Toxins: alcohol, smoking, recreational drugs and heavy metals can keep you locked in dysregulation.

In the upcoming weeks, I am going to look at ways you can balance your nervous system through your lifestyle and your diet, including some vitamins and nutrients that can counteract the effects of neurotoxins.

Sunday, 8 March 2026

Nervous system dysregulation keeps you stuck in chronic stress, and presents itself as fatigue, depression, anxiety, insomnia, belly fat and mood swings. The nervous system is not meant to be in a constant state of fight or flight. If you don’t regulate your nervous system, HPA axis dysfunction occurs, and the result is disease, poor mental health and relationship challenges.

The HPA axis includes the hypothalamus, pituitary and the adrenals which work to identify if there is a threat, and then help the body react appropriately. Unfortunately, modern living can cause this system to remain switched on.

Here are five signs to help identify if you have a dysregulated nervous system:

1. Impaired stress resilience: you find that small things cause you to have a big stress reaction (this is very common with perimenopause).
2. Mood disturbances: depression, anxiety and sudden irritability are common symptoms.
3. Chronic fatigue: it is exhausting to be on high alert all of the time.
4. Struggling immune system: you start catching colds very often (chronic stress supresses the immune system).
5. Poor sleep: especially if you are waking between 2:00am-3:00am each night.

In my upcoming newsletters, I am going to look at what causes the dysregulation and discuss ways to balance the nervous system.

Sunday, 1 March 2026

We have discussed how red light therapy can support weight loss, heal muscles and wounds, build bone density and help to increase testosterone. There are more benefits of red light therapy to discuss, but I want to take a pause and spend the next few weeks looking at nervous system dysregulation.
Nervous system dysregulation keeps you stuck in chronic stress, and presents itself as fatigue, depression, anxiety, insomnia, belly fat and mood swings. The HPA axis (hypothalamus, pituitary and adrenals) works to identify if there is a threat. Once a threat is identified, the adrenals produce cortisol which signals to the body that it needs to move.

The nervous system is not meant to be in a constant state of fight or flight. If you don’t regulate your nervous system, HPA axis dysfunction occurs, and the result is disease, poor mental health and relationship challenges.

Over the coming weeks, I am going to break down how to identify a dysregulated nervous system, look at what causes the dysregulation and discuss ways to balance the nervous system.