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http://www.livingholistichealth.com.au/

Living Holistic Health, 275 Ryrie Street, Geelong (2026)

09/10/2026

Today is World Mental Health Day. 🌿

A simple ask from all of us at Living Holistic Health in Geelong and on the Bellarine: check in on yourself today. Then check in on one other person.

Checking in on yourself can be as small as pausing to notice how you're actually going. Are you sleeping? Eating regular meals? Getting outside, even for ten minutes? Spending time with people who feel easy to be around? These everyday basics are the first things to slide when life gets full, and noticing that they've slipped is useful information in itself.

Checking in on someone else can be a text, a call or a walk together. You don't need the right words or a fix. "How are you going, really?" and then listening is often enough. If they're not okay, you can help them find support. You don't have to be the support on your own.

If you or someone you know is doing it tough, these services are free and open 24/7:
📞 Lifeline 13 11 14
📞 Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636
📞 Su***de Call Back Service 1300 659 467
📞 13YARN 13 92 76 (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander crisis support)
In an emergency, call 000.

Your GP is a good first stop too. They can help you work out what support fits, including a mental health care plan if you need one.

We don't diagnose or treat mental health conditions; that stays with your doctor. Our part is the nutrition, herbal and lifestyle side.

Share this with someone you're thinking of today. 💚

General information only, not individual medical advice. Always discuss supplements and herbal medicines with your treating practitioner.

09/10/2026

Lactate isn't the villain. Whether your gut can clear it is the question.

This is a late entry in our "Your Gut Is Not Like Las Vegas" series, prompted by research too relevant to wait. On 29 September a Mayo Clinic team published a study in Cell that analysed stool from 1,364 people with a range of cancers and 287 people without, adjusting for other health conditions as many microbiome studies don't. One finding: adults aged 50 or younger with bowel cancer had higher stool lactate and more Veillonella parvula, a bacterium that feeds on lactate. The authors are careful and so am I. It is an association, not a cause, and tumours produce a lot of lactate themselves.

The headlines went straight to the disease. I want to talk about the chemistry, because it applies to far more people.

Lactic acid bacteria ferment fibre and starch into lactate all day long. In a healthy colon, a second team of microbes takes the baton. Some turn lactate into butyrate, the main fuel for the cells lining your colon. Others, Veillonella among them, turn it into propionate, which travels to your liver. That relay is why healthy stool usually holds less than 3–5 millimoles per litre of lactate. Not because little is made, but because it is cleared almost as fast.

The relay breaks when the colon turns too acidic. In a 2007 laboratory study, lactate was fully cleared within 24 hours at pH 5.9 or 6.4. At pH 5.2 it kept being made but stopped being used, so it built up. In ulcerative colitis, stool lactate can reach 100 millimoles per litre. And in the rare extreme, D-lactic acidosis, mostly after part of the small intestine has been removed, D-lactate reaches the blood and the brain: confusion and slurred speech, often after a carbohydrate-heavy meal. That one is medical care, always. It is also the clearest example of why your gut is not like Las Vegas.

So what helps the relay? A wide range of fibre, including resistant starch from cooked-and-cooled potatoes, rice and legumes, built up slowly. Fermented foods if they agree with you; a Stanford trial found they raised microbiome diversity. And anything you take for your gut chosen for a reason and reviewed, rather than taken by default. If fermented foods reliably make bloating or brain fog worse, that's useful information for your GP or practitioner, not something to push through.

We do not diagnose bowel conditions and we do not treat them, but we do support you through them. Blood in your stool, a lasting change in bowel habit, unexplained weight loss or ongoing abdominal pain goes to your GP first. If you're 45 to 74, the free National Bowel Cancer Screening Program kit is quick, private and done at home.

Full article: https://www.livingholistichealth.com.au/natural-medicine-news/lactic-acid-bacteria-gut-lactate

New to the series? Part 1 — the gut microbiome and multiple sclerosis — is here: https://www.livingholistichealth.com.au/natural-medicine-news/gut-microbiome-multiple-sclerosis

— Adrian Stone, Nutritionist & Naturopath, Living Holistic Health

General information only, not medical advice. Nothing here replaces care from your GP, and nothing here is a reason to start, stop or change any medication.

07/10/2026

Four autoimmune diseases, four organs, four specialists — and one gut pattern.

Part 5 closes the series where Part 1 opened it: with autoimmunity. Rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, lupus, type 1 diabetes. Nothing in common on paper. In the gut, the same shift keeps turning up: fewer of the bacteria that make short-chain fatty acids, more of the ones that inflame, a wall that lets more through than it should.

Some of the detail is striking. In 2013, a New York team found that people with new, untreated rheumatoid arthritis carried far more of one organism — Prevotella copri — than healthy controls, and in mice the same bacterium made gut inflammation worse. In Hashimoto's, two meta-analyses found the strongest correlations were between thyroid peroxidase antibodies and bacterial abundance, and diversity actually ran higher, not lower, so "more diversity is good" fails here as it did in Part 1. In lupus, one gut commensal ran five-fold higher and moved with kidney inflammation. And in the TEDDY study of 783 children followed from three months of age, no single bacterium predicted type 1 diabetes; what the protected children had more of was the machinery for fermentation, whichever species carried it.

None of it is proof of cause. The rule holds to the end: your gut is not like Las Vegas, and association is not cause. Immune disease reshapes the gut as surely as the reverse, and an underactive thyroid slows the bowel on its own.

The trial data is honest, which is why I like it. Forty people with rheumatoid arthritis, randomised to a Mediterranean diet or standard healthy-eating advice for twelve weeks: both diets became measurably less inflammatory, and neither group's symptoms changed significantly in that time. Twenty-eight trials of probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics and faecal transplant pooled across autoimmune disease: lower CRP and TNF-α on average, but the studies disagreed so widely on strain, dose and duration that the authors call the result exploratory. Flares, joint damage and antibody levels were mostly not measured.

So if a practitioner tells you a capsule will "calm your immune system", ask which trial, in which condition, measuring what.

The steadier work is the same as in every part of this series. Fibre for the short-chain fatty acid producers that run low in autoimmunity. A Mediterranean-style plate that lowers the dietary inflammatory load. Digestive symptoms taken seriously rather than filed elsewhere. Sleep and stress load looked at. And all of it planned around the treatment your specialist has prescribed — including when it is taken. Nothing here is a reason to change an immune medication or a thyroid hormone dose.

We do not diagnose autoimmune disease and we do not treat it, but we do support you through it. Alongside your rheumatologist, endocrinologist or GP, never instead.

Full article: https://www.livingholistichealth.com.au/natural-medicine-news/autoimmunity-and-the-gut

Part 5 of 5. Missed the start? Part 1 — the gut microbiome and multiple sclerosis — is here: https://www.livingholistichealth.com.au/natural-medicine-news/gut-microbiome-multiple-sclerosis

— Adrian Stone, Nutritionist & Naturopath, Living Holistic Health

General information only, not medical advice. Nothing here replaces care from your GP, and nothing here is a reason to start, stop or change any medication.

05/10/2026

Changing the diet changed the depression. In a randomised trial. In Geelong.

That is Part 4, and it is the strongest evidence in this whole series. SMILES, from Deakin University, randomised 67 adults with moderate to severe depression to twelve weeks of dietary support or the same amount of social support, on top of whatever treatment they already had. The diet group's scores fell substantially more, and 32% reached remission against 8% of the controls. The number needed to treat for remission was four.

Small trial. Couldn't be blinded. Alongside treatment, not instead of it. All true, and it still stands: in a randomised trial, changing what people ate, while their other treatment continued, moved the needle more than the same amount of attention without the diet.

Underneath it, the largest gut studies in this series say the same thing. Across 59 studies of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and psychosis, the same butyrate-making bacteria run low and the same pro-inflammatory ones run high — the microbiome distinguished illness from health, not one diagnosis from another. In a Flemish population study of more than 2,000 people, the butyrate producers tracked with quality of life, and the depletion seen in depression survived correction for antidepressant use. And in rats, transferring the gut bacteria of people with depression produced anxiety-like behaviour and anhedonia. In rats. Hold it loosely.

The rule from Part 1 holds: your gut is not like Las Vegas, and association is not cause. Depression changes the gut — through stress, sleep and eating — as surely as the gut changes mood. The two feed each other.

What does the gut work look like? Unglamorous. Fibre for the butyrate producers, fewer ultra-processed foods, regular meals, sleep protected, movement most days, and iron, B12, vitamin D and thyroid checked because each can drag mood on its own. Probiotics? The pooled trials show a modest benefit as an add-on to usual care, and no clear benefit on their own. Diet has the stronger evidence.

If you're in a bad place right now: Lifeline 13 11 14, or 000 if you are in danger. Nothing here is a reason to change an antidepressant; that conversation belongs with the prescriber.

We do not diagnose depression or anxiety and we do not treat them, but we do support you through them. Alongside your GP, psychologist or psychiatrist, never instead.

Full article: https://www.livingholistichealth.com.au/natural-medicine-news/depression-anxiety-gut-brain-axis

Part 4 of 5. Next, on Wednesday: autoimmunity beyond MS.

— Adrian Stone, Nutritionist & Naturopath, Living Holistic Health

General information only, not medical advice. Nothing here replaces care from your GP, and nothing here is a reason to start, stop or change any medication.

02/10/2026

Constipation often shows up years before the first tremor.

That is the most striking gut story in this whole series, and it is why Parkinson's researchers have spent twenty years asking whether the disease might, in some people, start in the gut and climb the vagus nerve to the brain.

The numbers: across 17 studies and more than three million people, constipation carried 2.36 times the odds of a later Parkinson's diagnosis. In the years before diagnosis, about one in five people who went on to develop Parkinson's were constipated, against one in nine controls. In mice, misfolded protein injected into the gut wall climbed the vagus nerve into the brain, and cutting the nerve first stopped it. In Denmark, people who had that nerve cut for ulcer surgery had somewhat lower rates of Parkinson's twenty years on.

Part 3 of the series, and the rule holds: your gut is not like Las Vegas, and association is not cause. Most people with constipation will never develop Parkinson's; it is one of the commonest symptoms in medicine, and Parkinson's is diagnosed by a neurologist on movement signs, not a bowel history.

And the part the marketing skips: this year a meta-analysis of the five randomised trials of faecal microbiota transplantation in Parkinson's found no significant benefit on movement, daily function or cognition at any follow-up. The most aggressive gut reset we have moved nothing that matters to a person with Parkinson's. If that doesn't do it, a capsule from the health-food aisle is not going to.

What does help is unglamorous. Treat the constipation as a real problem rather than living with it. Fibre, fluid, daily movement, meal timing worked out with the prescriber, and a Mediterranean-style plate that feeds the fibre-fermenting bacteria that run low in Parkinson's — the same bacteria that run low in condition after condition in this series.

We do not diagnose Parkinson's disease and we do not treat it, but we do support you through it. Alongside your neurologist, never instead. Nothing here is a reason to change a Parkinson's medication.

Full article: https://www.livingholistichealth.com.au/natural-medicine-news/parkinsons-and-the-gut

Part 3 of 5. Next, on Monday: depression, anxiety and the gut-brain axis.

— Adrian Stone, Nutritionist & Naturopath, Living Holistic Health

General information only, not medical advice. Nothing here replaces care from your GP, and nothing here is a reason to start, stop or change any medication.

30/09/2026

Ask a parent of a child with ADHD about tummy aches, constipation, or "just not eating", and you'll get a knowing look. Ask an adult with ADHD about their gut and you'll hear about IBS, reflux, or a bowel that has never been regular.

For years that was anecdote. This month it became a number.

A systematic review from Warwick Medical School pooled 23 studies and more than 1.9 million people, all with a formal ADHD diagnosis, and excluded diagnosed gut disease like Crohn's or coeliac. What's left is functional gut trouble. ADHD came with 48% higher odds of gut symptoms overall. 58% higher for IBS. Nearly double for constipation. More than four times for encopresis, soiling in children past toilet-training age. Every gut symptom they looked at was more common in ADHD.

Part 2 of the series, and the rule from Part 1 holds: your gut is not like Las Vegas, and association is not cause. The authors say plainly this doesn't prove ADHD causes gut problems. It might run the other way. It might be both, plus a third thing.

So what's the third thing? Probably several.

The gut bacteria are different in ADHD, but not dramatically and not consistently enough to be a test. A 2025 meta-analysis found no difference in how many kinds of bacteria, only in which ones. The famous study linking a bacterial shift to weaker reward signalling in the brain had 19 people with ADHD and 77 controls, and has never been cleanly replicated. There's a modest early-life signal too: antibiotics in pregnancy went with a 23% higher hazard of a later ADHD diagnosis across 2.4 million children. That's a reason to use antibiotics carefully, not a reason for guilt. Most children exposed do not develop ADHD.

In the research, about a third of children on stimulant medication report reduced appetite and about one in ten report stomach pain — low-certainty figures, but a known effect. Smaller, later, erratic meals are a straight road to constipation. But the gut link shows up in unmedicated people and children too young for medication, so medication is part of it, not the explanation.

And then the part I find most useful, because it's where the levers are. ADHD shapes how, when and what a person eats. Irregular meals. Sensory avoidance that drops the fibrous foods first. A weaker sense of the urge to go, so the signal is held and fades, which is the textbook route to chronic constipation and the reason the soiling figure is so much higher than the rest. Poor sleep. A nervous system stuck on: if the body is stressed, it cannot properly digest. Every one of those slows a gut. Every one of them can be worked on.

If your child has ADHD and gut problems, treat the gut as real and worth investigating, not part of the package. Fibre, fluid, regular meals, a toilet routine. Check iron, zinc, vitamin D and B12, because restricted eating depletes them. And if the gut changed when medication started, tell the prescriber. That conversation belongs with them, and they have options.

We do not diagnose ADHD and we do not treat it, but we do support you through it. Alongside your paediatrician or GP, never instead.

Full article: https://www.livingholistichealth.com.au/natural-medicine-news/adhd-and-gut-problems

Part 2 of 5. Next: Parkinson's, where constipation can show up years before the first tremor.

— Adrian Stone, Nutritionist & Naturopath, Living Holistic Health

General information only, not medical advice. Nothing here replaces care from your GP, and nothing here is a reason to start, stop or change any medication.

28/09/2026

Your gut is not like Las Vegas.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. What happens in your gut does not. Bacterial by-products cross the gut wall into the blood. Immune cells trained in the gut lining travel to the brain, the joints, the skin. Signals run up the vagus nerve in both directions. If there's a problem in your gut, it does not stay behind the velvet rope.

This is the first in a series on conditions nobody files under "digestive" where the gut keeps turning up in the research anyway: multiple sclerosis, ADHD, Parkinson's, depression, autoimmune thyroid disease. I'm starting with MS.

A study published this month in EBioMedicine sequenced the gut bacteria of 53 people newly diagnosed with MS, before any treatment, and followed them for a year. The news headlines said gut bacteria at diagnosis offer early clues to how MS will go.

Here's what it actually found. The gut was different in MS. The group that did worse at twelve months had different bacteria. It also had more motor symptoms and more spinal cord lesions at diagnosis, which neurologists already know predict a rougher course. So the real question, which this study can't answer yet, is whether the gut adds anything to what's already on the scan. The single clinical factor most tied to gut diversity in the study was whether the person had received steroids at onset, which tells you how tangled cause and effect are in a one-year window.

That's not me being dismissive. It's a good study. It's a pilot.

What we do know, from 576 people with MS matched to the people they live with, same kitchen, same water: the bacteria that make butyrate, the short-chain fatty acid that feeds the gut lining and calms immune activity, run low in MS. Not fewer kinds of bacteria. Different ones. A 2024 meta-analysis of 26 studies found no consistent difference in diversity at all, only in which organisms were present.

And the strongest lever on those bacteria isn't in a bottle. One widely cited probiotic trial in MS was retracted in 2025. The evidence that holds up is fibre: vegetables, legumes, whole grains. In nearly 7,000 people with MS, the best diets went with about 20% lower odds of higher disability and of depression.

The rule for this whole series: association is not cause. "Heal your gut, heal your MS" is the single-cause story I dislike most in my industry. The truth is more useful. The gut is one contributor, sitting alongside genetics, vitamin D, Epstein-Barr and smoking.

We do not diagnose multiple sclerosis and we do not treat it, but we do support you through it. Alongside your neurologist, never instead. Nothing in the article is a reason to change a medication; if it raises a question, take the question to your neurologist.

Full article: https://www.livingholistichealth.com.au/natural-medicine-news/gut-microbiome-multiple-sclerosis

This is Part 1 of 5. Next, on Wednesday: ADHD and the gut.

— Adrian Stone, Nutritionist & Naturopath, Living Holistic Health

General information only, not medical advice. Nothing here replaces care from your GP, and nothing here is a reason to start, stop or change any medication.

25/09/2026

Search "cortisol belly" and you will be offered a supplement within three scrolls.

The story goes like this: you are stressed, stress raises cortisol, cortisol deposits fat on your stomach, and this product lowers cortisol. Neat, memorable, and mostly wrong. So let us do it properly, because there is a real idea buried inside the marketing.

The grain of truth. Cortisol does influence where fat is stored. Abdominal fat cells carry more cortisol receptors, and genuine cortisol excess, as in Cushing's syndrome, does cause central fat gain. That is rare, serious, and a GP matter.

The rest of the evidence is less tidy. The study everyone quotes involved 59 women in a laboratory; interesting, small, and it cannot say which came first. A systematic review of the whole literature called it inconclusive. A study of hair cortisol in 2,500 adults, which captures months of exposure, found a correlation with waist size of about 0.08. Real, but tiny. Something else is doing most of the work.

Here is what actually drives the shape change in your late forties. Oestrogen decides where fat goes; take it away and the body stores centrally and burns less. Only women who became postmenopausal gained visceral fat in a four-year study, and their fat oxidation fell by a third. Muscle is lost faster, which lowers your resting energy use, so eating the same at 52 as at 42 gains fat. That is arithmetic, not willpower. And it is reversible.

Where does stress genuinely enter? Through sleep. Restricting healthy young men to four hours a night for six nights raised their evening cortisol and pushed glucose tolerance towards a pre-diabetic range. A woman waking at 3am for a year is running that experiment continuously. Stress matters structurally. If the body is stressed, it cannot properly heal. What it does not mean is that a cortisol number on a page tells us what to do about it. "Adrenal fatigue" is not a diagnosis.

What reduces it: aerobic exercise most days, which has the strongest evidence for visceral fat. Strength training twice a week. Protein at every meal. Seven to eight hours' sleep. A daily practice that switches the system off. No bottle does this.

We do not diagnose or treat endocrine disease, but we do support you through the transition. We work alongside your GP, and menopausal hormone therapy is theirs to decide with you.

Full article: https://www.livingholistichealth.com.au/natural-medicine-news/cortisol-belly

That closes the six-part series; the pillar article on perimenopause symptoms links to all of them.

The article names the studies: Epel 2000, the 2015 systematic review of HPA-axis activity in obesity, the hair-cortisol study in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, the SWAN body-composition data, the 1999 sleep-debt study, McEwen's allostatic load, the 58-study review of "adrenal fatigue", and the 35-trial meta-analysis of aerobic versus resistance exercise for visceral fat. It also lists the features of cortisol excess that warrant a GP visit.

— Adrian Stone, Nutritionist & Naturopath, Living Holistic Health

General information only, not medical advice. Nothing here replaces care from your GP, and nothing here is a reason to start, stop or change any medication.

24/09/2026

Andrographis has just been pulled from Australia’s low-risk medicines list. Is it actually dangerous?

If you’ve taken a cold and flu tablet in the past decade, there’s a fair chance it contained andrographis. From 17 September 2026, the TGA no longer allows it in new low-risk listed medicines, and it’s urging companies to recall existing products. The reason is anaphylaxis: 287 reports in Australia since 2005, including one death.

Adrian has written a full, balanced evidence review. It covers the herb’s centuries of use as the “King of Bitters” for digestion and liver health, what 33 trials and more than 7,000 patients actually showed for colds, the research in ulcerative colitis and in endometriosis (lab and animal only so far), why clinical trials and real-world safety data seem to disagree, and how New Zealand, Thailand, China and Europe handle it.

Read it here: https://www.livingholistichealth.com.au/natural-medicine-news/andrographis-evidence-safety-tga-recall

If you have andrographis at home, stop at any sign of an allergic reaction, and call 000 if symptoms are severe.

General information only. Please speak with your practitioner or pharmacist about your own situation.

23/09/2026

Three numbers jump at menopause. Everything else just drifts.

Of all the heart risk factors researchers tracked through midlife, only total cholesterol, LDL and a particle marker called ApoB changed sharply at the final period. Blood pressure, glucose, the rest — they crept up slowly with age, the way they do in everyone. That comes from more than a thousand women followed through their final period with annual blood tests, and it held in every ethnic group.

Here is the mechanism. Oestrogen helps the liver clear LDL particles. As it falls, that clearance slows, often by ten per cent or more within a year or two. It happens independently of weight, diet and age, which is why it catches active, healthy women completely by surprise. A reading you had at 40 is not a reliable guide to where you sit at 52.

Blood sugar shifts by a slightly different route. Fat moves towards the abdomen, resting energy use falls, and muscle is lost. In one study, only women who became postmenopausal gained visceral fat, and their ability to burn fat for fuel fell by about a third. Broken sleep makes all of it worse.

And hot flushes are information, not just a nuisance. Frequent flushes track with early changes in blood vessels, independently of the usual risk factors. A woman with frequent flushes is exactly the woman who benefits from having her lipids, blood pressure and blood sugar properly checked.

This is where I lose patience with the usual advice, because the answer is not a supplement and it is not a detox. It is the same unglamorous list. A Mediterranean-style pattern rich in soluble fibre. Aerobic exercise, which has the strongest evidence for reducing visceral fat, and strength training, which protects the muscle that keeps insulin sensitivity working. Enough protein. Consistent sleep. Weight loss for its own sake matters less than where the fat sits and how much muscle you keep.

Ask your GP for a lipid panel including ApoB, a one-off lipoprotein(a), an HbA1c and a blood pressure check, and repeat the lipids around your final period even if an earlier result was fine.

We don't diagnose or treat heart disease; that stays with your doctor. Our part is the nutritional, herbal and lifestyle work that sits alongside their care. A prescribed medication stays part of your plan; our work sits alongside it, never instead of it.

This is a critical window, not a problem to notice at 65.

Full article: https://www.livingholistichealth.com.au/natural-medicine-news/menopause-and-cholesterol

On Friday I close the series with the "cortisol belly".

The article draws on the SWAN lipid study, the 2020 American Heart Association scientific statement on the menopause transition, the Endocrine Reviews paper on oestrogen and glucose handling, the sleep-debt study, and the meta-analysis of 35 exercise trials. It also links to our guides on reading cholesterol results and the heart tests most people are not offered.

— Adrian Stone, Nutritionist & Naturopath, Living Holistic Health

General information only, not medical advice. Nothing here replaces care from your GP, and nothing here is a reason to start, stop or change any medication.

Living Holistic Health

09/10/2026

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