You Cannot Out-Supplement Chronic Stress

You can eat well, take the supplements, do all the right things, and still feel depleted. The conversation I wish more women were having in their late 30s and 40s.

You may not feel stressed.
You may simply feel… tired.
A little more forgetful than usual. Slightly impatient with your children. Less resilient than you used to be. Waking up at 3 a.m. thinking about school lunches, deadlines, finances, your marriage, your parents, your body, and whether you’re somehow dropping balls you can no longer even see.

That. Is. A. Lot.

If you don’t give yourself credit, here - I will!

Many women between 37 and 45 don’t necessarily describe themselves as stressed. They describe themselves as holding a lot.

This stage of life is interesting: You may be growing in your career while managing a household. Raising children while trying to maintain relationships. Supporting others while quietly attempting to support yourself too. There are often competing priorities and many women become experts at carrying them all gracefully.

And then, somewhere in the middle of life moving forward, your body begins changing.

You may have experienced it. Or perhaps you haven’t noticed it yet. I certainly didn’t think much of these “symptoms” until recently. At 41, I realised my body had been sending me clear messages for a while — I just wasn’t ready to listen.

Hormones begin fluctuating during perimenopause, and suddenly things that never bothered you before feel harder. You notice your patience becoming shorter. You recover more slowly after difficult days. You feel emotionally stretched by things that once felt manageable.

You may even catch yourself wondering, Why can I suddenly not cope the way I used to?

You are not imagining it.

As estrogen and progesterone begin shifting, your relationship with stress shifts too. These hormones influence mood, resilience, sleep, and how your nervous system responds to pressure. The body you had at 32 is not the body you have at 40.

This is biology. And since you know this now, this is an invitation and an opportunity for you to work differently with your body.

Stress itself is not the enemy.

We need stress. It helps us meet deadlines, respond to challenges, and protect ourselves when necessary. The challenge is that many women today rarely move out of stress mode completely. There is the pressure of work, the mental lists running in the background, constant notifications, responsibilities, worries, and the invisible emotional labour that often goes unnoticed.

Your body was designed for moments of stress, not for years of carrying invisible weight.

Over time, chronic stress can begin influencing far more than mood. It can affect sleep, digestion, hormones, inflammation, blood sugar regulation, and immune function. The body starts working harder to maintain balance while quietly using more resources than it was designed to spend continuously.

This becomes particularly interesting when we look at autoimmune disease.

Around 70–80% of autoimmune diseases occur in women, and many women begin experiencing symptoms during midlife years.

Researchers still do not fully understand all the reasons why, but hormones, genetics, immune changes, environmental factors, and long-term stress are all pieces of the puzzle.

For many women, the signs arrive long before a diagnosis does.
Fatigue that sleep doesn’t seem to fix.
Brain fog, which I don’t even think we know how it feels; we may just be used to it...
Digestive issues.
Anxiety.
Joint pain.
Feeling unlike yourself without being able to explain why.

Sometimes these signals are dismissed as simply being busy, stressed, or getting older. Stress alone does not create autoimmune disease, but it can influence the gut, inflammation, immune function, and hormones - systems that constantly communicate with each other.

And your gut, which we explored a few weeks ago, is listening too.

Stress changes digestion and can affect the environment within the gut. It influences how we absorb nutrients, how our immune system responds, and how our bodies interpret safety and threat. The body is constantly adapting to the messages we give it.

Let me pause here. Do you realise what you just read in the previous paragraph?

Stress influences how we absorb nutrients. Think about that for a second. You may be eating well, prioritising protein and vegetables, buying supplements, trying to do all the “right things”... but if stress is affecting your gut and digestion, your body may struggle to access and use those nutrients optimally.

You cannot continuously run on stress and expect your body to perform as if nothing is happening. You cannot ask your body for energy, resilience, focus, and healing while keeping it in survival mode.

Your body remembers. It keeps score. It cannot do anything else than give the output of the quality input you give it. This is not just nutrition, although this is one of the fundamentals you should start with. Sleep. Movement. All of these to be discussed in future letters.

But your body is also always communicating.
Perhaps the invitation here isn’t asking, How do I manage stress better?

Perhaps the question becomes: Where am I carrying more than I was ever meant to carry alone?

And not to be too poetic here, the truth is - you know exactly what “is wrong”... A need to…

Rest a little more.
Simplify.
Soften.
Receive support. (refer to the nervous system article talking about our challenge to receive)

But here is the question I keep coming back to: How seriously are you taking yourself? Your health. Your joy. Your ability to cope. Enjoying life?! Adding value to someone. Because the “lack-version” of yourself is not what you really want to give someone, is it?

And don’t get me wrong, I know we go through periods of “running it thinly”. When finances are scarce, when there are kids, a career, a relationship - all that you are trying to save or keep happy. BUT, if you are reading my stuff, I know you are a woman who believes your soul is here to have an adventure, you are here to experience life fully (the good and the challenging), and that you will always be okay. You will. That is just it. You will always be okay.

5 Gentle Invitations for a Nervous System Carrying Too Much

1. Ask: “What can I put down today?”
Many of us automatically ask, “What else do I need to do?” Try asking a different question: “What can I release?” Maybe it’s a task, a responsibility, perfectionism, or the belief that you have to hold everything together. Carrying less is also a form of self-care.

2. Create a daily pause ritual
Even five minutes can signal safety to the body. Sit outside with your coffee. Walk barefoot on the grass. Breathe slowly before opening emails. The nervous system often needs moments of stillness more than it needs more information.

3. Support your body before it asks loudly
Stress uses resources. Nourish yourself with protein, fibre, healthy fats, movement, hydration, and rest before you reach the point of depletion. Many women become very good at caring for everyone except themselves.

4. Share the invisible load
Women often carry emotional and mental lists that nobody sees. Talk to your partner, a friend, or someone you trust. Ask for help. Let someone carry something with you. We were never designed to do life entirely alone.

5. Listen for whispers before they become alarms
Your body rarely goes from fine to burnout overnight. Fatigue, irritability, digestive discomfort, poor sleep, feeling disconnected from yourself — these may be gentle signals asking for your attention. Curiosity often serves us better than pushing through.

This next chapter of womanhood isn’t about becoming stronger by carrying more. This chapter is about finding your passions, your rhythm to live a balanced life, however that looks and feels; but this is the part of your life journey to figure this out and start implementing it, start making it normal!

What is one thing you can put down this week?

Next week we’ll explore sleep, because if stress is the invisible weight, sleep may be one of the body’s deepest forms of repair.

xoxo
Cerina