Francesca Lyon, lead nutritionist at FUTURE WOMAN, explores the idea that proper self care is not about baths, massage and face masks. It is about understanding what your body needs to feel safe and truly supporting your nervous system.
Women spend on average £4k a year on self care activities: from massages to bath essentials to spa days. And yet, we’re more stressed than ever. So rather than exclusively focusing on bathtime rituals this year, I encourage you to think about self care differently in 2025!
As a practitioner, I believe true self care involves understanding and responding to your body and your nervous system to support your long term health. Something that we can support through testing and your personalised recommendations.
We REALLY don’t know how stressed we are!
One of our biggest takeaways of 2024 was learning how many of our clients didn’t realise how deeply stressed their bodies were until they tested their cortisol!
We had a look at the data and found some really interesting patterns. Of our clients who said they were stressed ‘all the time’, the majority were revealed to have low cortisol in testing (a sign of chronic, long term stress). In contrast, clients that said they felt stressed only ‘occasionally’ were much more likely to have very high cortisol levels in testing (a sign that stress is happening right now). This says to me that we’re not the best predictors of our own stress levels!
Stress significantly impacts our menstrual cycles and hormone health
Our stress levels are vitally important for our reproductive hormone health, as our female bodies constantly weigh up whether survival or reproduction is most important. That’s why we’re so passionate about testing cortisol alongside reproductive hormones in the Advanced Hormone Test – a dysregulated stress response lies at the root of so many hormonal issues for our clients.
I can think of one client in particular from last year who only scored herself as 3/10 in terms of stress, but testing showed her cortisol was extremely low and likely the driver of her irregular periods. By supporting her adrenal glands, pulling back on cardio exercise and nourishing her body with the right nutrients we were able to bring her cycles back into a regular pattern within 3 months. Following her personalised plan turned out to be a much deeper form of self care than the occasional bubble bath!
How can we improve our stress levels in 2025
Stress can be many things. We tend to associate it with work, relationships or financial difficulties. But what about things like dysregulated blood sugar, too much exercise, inflammation, pain, shift work or poor sleep? These can also place huge stress on our bodies. This might explain our disconnection to our own stress levels – we’re not as in tune with the physical stressors we can experience on a day to day basis and the impact they’re having on us long term.
With the Advanced Hormone Test, we’re able to investigate not only your reproductive health but also your stress hormones, for a more complete picture of your hormones. And alongside your results you’ll receive a personalised 3 month health plan with supplement, diet and lifestyle changes.
So let’s look at 7 ways we can help you to truly manage your stress levels this year for REAL self care!
1. Get to know your true stress levels
One of the best ways to understand how your body is responding to stress is to test your cortisol, one of our body’s main stress hormones. Cortisol can be high (hello acute stress) or it can also be low (long-term chronic stress) – both impact the nervous system, immune system and of course your hormone health too.
While free cortisol blood testing can be a useful measure of stress, it’s not the whole picture. In fact it usually represents less than 5% of your total cortisol. That’s why we also look at metabolised cortisol (how much has been cleared by the liver in one day) to provide a clearer picture of how much stress you’re dealing with (hormone metabolites are only detectable in urine).
If stress is an issue for you, there’s lots we can recommend in terms of supplements as well as dietary and lifestyle interventions in your personalised plan to bring metabolised cortisol back to within a healthy range.
2. Know your cortisol awakening response (CAR)
Our cortisol follows a daily rhythm. It should rise within an hour of waking by around 50% and then decrease naturally across the day until it reaches its lowest point just before bed. For many clients struggling with hormonal issues, this pattern can be flat, inverted, low or too high – all of these are a sign of dysregulation of your HPA axis.
A depressed CAR (see an example below) can be a result of long term, chronic stress as well as sleep issues, past trauma, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, depression and even autoimmune diseases.
By contrast, an elevated CAR can be the result of acute or anticipatory stress, imbalanced blood sugar, pain and/or depression.
Addressing your CAR forms a key part of your personalised healthplan.
3. Address inflammation
As mentioned previously, stress can be internal and sometimes even hidden. Underlying inflammation from factors such as poor oestrogen metabolism, imbalances in the gut microbiome, autoimmune diseases or underlying viruses can all lead to increased stress in the body.
By analysing your inflammation markers in testing, we can identify if this is a priority for you to help reduce stress.
4. Understand how exercise impacts YOUR body
Many women opt for cardio or high intensity workouts when they’re busy or stressed at work as a way to reduce adrenaline. This can feel like a wonderful release in the moment, but if you have low cortisol or a dysregulated CAR then this will make things so much worse! Too much cardio can be a slippery slope to HPA axis dysregulation, often resulting in missing or irregular periods.
For this reason, every personalised health plan now includes recommendations for exercise, tailored to you, your cycle and your cortisol results in order to reduce stress.
5. Eat a diet that’s sustainable and personalised to you
If I had a penny for every time a client told me they eat ‘healthy’, only to find that they’re significantly undernourishing themselves! As women we’ve grown up with huge pressures around food and dieting, and it can mean we sometimes look at food as the enemy. But skipping meals and/or cutting out food groups can be a significant contributor to stress. Nourishing our bodies with the right nutrients and balancing our blood sugar are two hugely impactful changes that support our nervous systems.
We provide lots of support around this in your personalised plan so that you have a clear idea of what and how much you should be eating to feel your best.
6. Sleep, sleep and more sleep!
I often say that if you have to choose between sleep and exercise, always choose sleep!
True self care is allowing your body to properly rest. Sleep allows us to repair the body and mind. Women in particular need sleep to help regulate emotions, blood sugar, and hormones. Prioritising sleep and aiming for 8-10 hours a night is a true form of self care.
If sleep is an issue for you, we can help you address this in your plan by assessing your progesterone levels as well as other factors like melatonin and, of course, cortisol!
Of those who tested with us last year, more than 60% noticed improvements to sleep and energy after following their personalised plan for just 6 weeks!
7. Address past trauma to reduce stress
You might be surprised to find this on the list, but a history of past trauma has a huge impact on our nervous system and therefore stress levels. Research shows that our perception is the biggest determinant of what we find to be stressful – and our histories and childhoods all play into our perception.
To provide a couple of examples – there’s a strong link between low cortisol levels and hypervigilance; and PTSD has a big impact on our cortisol awakening response too.
Investigating and addressing past trauma through different types of therapy, hypnosis or journalling can have a huge impact on your nervous system and overall health.
Feel your best in 2025
Hopefully I’ve now convinced you that real self care is about understanding your body and providing it with exactly what it needs to feel its best.
Of course, the typical activities you’ll find in a list of stress relieving tips like journaling, meditation, nature walks, breathwork and yoga are all hugely important as well. But testing and following the steps in your personalised plan from the Advanced Hormone Test, we can help you make a meaningful impact on your stress this year. And it’s also a lot cheaper than a year’s worth of bath products and massages!
