What if the answer to stress isn’t simply learning how to relax?
For many women in their 40s and 50s, stress is not an occasional event. It is woven into everyday life — work, children, ageing parents, financial pressure, relationships, the mental load and the hormonal changes of perimenopause and menopause. And when you are constantly time-poor and stretched, your own health is often the first thing to slip down the list.
In this episode of The Health Edit, naturopath, author and speaker Susan Hunter explores the Stress Edit and why so much conventional stress advice misses the mark. She explains how chronic stress can show up in the body, even when you don’t necessarily feel stressed, and why the goal isn’t to eliminate stress but to help your nervous system come out of high alert and return to rest and repair.
Susan explores why meditation, yoga, breathing and supplements can all be useful, but cannot simply be layered on top of a life that is structurally too much. Through the story of Serena, she looks at what can happen when instead of asking women to cope better, we first create the space and support their bodies need to recover.
This episode is an invitation to stop treating stress management as another thing you need to be good at and start looking at what is creating the load in the first place.
In this episode, Susan explores:
Why chronic stress is so common for women in their 40s and 50s
How work, family, caring responsibilities and the mental load can affect women’s health
How perimenopause and menopause can affect sleep, mood and your ability to recover from stress
Why stress doesn’t always feel like worry or anxiety — and how it can show up physically in the body
The early warning signs of stress, from jaw tension and headaches to gut symptoms and 3am waking
Why the body’s stress response can leave you feeling wired, exhausted or burnt out
What we can learn from Serena’s experience of living constantly “locked and loaded”
Why meditation, yoga and supplements can’t compensate for a life that is structurally too much
What nervous system regulation actually means and how small moments of breathing room can help
How sleep, movement, food, time outside, connection and joy can support your nervous system
When symptoms shouldn’t simply be written off as “just stress” and need further investigation
How to identify what you can take off your plate and create more breathing room in your life
Being resilient to stress doesn’t mean life is easy.
It means being able to deal with the hard things without your body staying stuck on high alert long after they are over.
The question is not simply: “How can I be less stressed?”
It is: where does stress show up in my body, how much of my stress is coming from my circumstances, and what is the smallest bit of breathing room I could create this week?
Because the real goal isn’t calm for the sake of calm.
It is getting back the clarity, energy, patience, health and presence that stress may have been quietly taking from you.
Take the free five-minute Health Edit Diagnostic to discover which area of your health may need the most support right now.
Order Susan’s book, The Health Edit: Where to Start and What to Change for Women Over 40.
