Fine on Paper, Running Low

Tess Brouwer (0:06)

Welcome back, Dream Team. Today is for the woman and the man supporting the woman who is getting everything done, but doesn't quite feel like themselves. Does that ring a bell?

Layne Beachley (0:16)

100 percent.

Tess Brouwer (0:17)

Nat is a Chinese medicine practitioner, acupuncturist, author, speaker, educator, founder of Pagoda Tree, author of Fertilize Yourself, Well and Good and Beautiful You, and the host of The Wellness Collective. You are a super woman.

Nat Kringoudis (0:32)

You make me sound like I'm doing a lot of things. Yes.

Tess Brouwer (0:34)

Well, you're helping a lot of people. How does that sound?

Nat Kringoudis (0:37)

Yes. But it's just an evolution. You don't wake up one day and have all of those things.

Tess Brouwer (0:43)

For more than 20 years, she's treated and worked with thousands of women across fertility periods, hormones, stress, and perimenopause and menopause. So I'm the peri, you're the menopause.

Nat Kringoudis (0:53)

Oh yes.

Tess Brouwer (0:53)

In this duo.

Layne Beachley (0:54)

It's great fun, isn't it?

Tess Brouwer (0:56)

After treating thousands of women, Nat noticed patterns that show up again and again. Women overriding exhaustion, normalizing pain, pushing through changes they don't quite understand, and looking for more discipline when their body may actually be asking for something a bit different.

Layne Beachley (1:11)

I wish I found you 10 years ago.

Tess Brouwer (1:14)

Today is about noticing those patterns, how to protect your energy, understand the signals, and work with your body instead of constantly fighting it. Nat, welcome to The Awake Call.

Nat Kringoudis (1:26)

Thank you so much. I'm really excited about this. I say that all the time, but when I looked through the brief, I was like, this is actually going to be so fun.

Tess Brouwer (1:33)

Yeah.

I wanted to start off with a quick rapid fire, just to set the tone and warm us all into this, because I know that this is going to be incredibly informative. What is the one conversation women need to stop avoiding?

Nat Kringoudis (1:49)

I think just that inner voice, that intuition, it's never wrong. You know when you've made that decision and it's scary but right.

You absolutely know when you make that decision, it's scary wrong.

So it's at that point of course correcting, don't keep doing something. But the minute you make that choice and then you're like, that doesn't feel right. Trust it. We're not good at that. For some reason, we've lost it. But I really think it's the most important thing. Your body's never wrong. Your path is different to everybody else's. And the sooner we can get you on that, call it the slipstream, the easier it gets.

Layne Beachley (2:25)

Like it.

Tess Brouwer (2:25)

I love that. Okay. A woman says, I'm exhausted and overwhelmed and I don't know where to start.

Layne Beachley (2:32)

What are her first three steps?

Nat Kringoudis (2:35)

So I think the challenge is that we try and do everything. There's so many things available to us. We open up our phone, we look online. It's like, I should be fasting. No, I shouldn't be fasting. Oh my goodness. Am I getting enough sleep? Maybe I'm not. I need to. It's relentless.

Layne Beachley (2:51)

And it's conflicting.

Nat Kringoudis (2:52)

And it's conflicting. And so what I really try and get women to do is figure out what they need at this point in time. What's the loudest signal? What's the loudest symptoms?

And it could be, often we're doing the wrong things at the wrong time. So I see women and they give me all of the symptoms. And the thing is the symptoms can present the same, right? You can have night sweats, but it might not actually be a result of your hormones. It is a result of your hormones being in balance, but it's because you have been not sleeping enough and not eating enough.

And the stress is the thing I fix the most. So we're identifying where you are right now, and what's the one thing that's actually going to be the lever that moves you to the next stage, not doing everything all at once. And I know for the woman listening going here, but what is that? And I think it's potentially asking yourself a series of questions to try and figure out what's the first step.

Tess Brouwer (3:48)

I love this because my second, like the follow up to that was, is what is the one question to ask before assuming it's just hormones?

Nat Kringoudis (3:58)

The basics. Are you sleeping enough? Food actually, I would start rewind. Let's start with food because most women are undernourished. They're not eating enough. It doesn't allow for their nervous system to feel safe. I know from patients if they need to recover from something, so let's say, let's use COVID as an example, which is an awful example, but let's just say. Women being unwell and it having a long-term impact on their hormones, the first thing I got them to do was to start to eat regularly again, which is not revolutionary. Nothing that I'm going to say is going to be, I don't think, mind-blowing. It's reminders. But if your body doesn't feel safe and your nervous system doesn't feel safe, one of the quickest things you can do is start to eat.