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Ananda Mahony Naturopath & Nutritionist

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Grange, QLD
Ananda Mahony Naturopath & Nutritionist

I help resolve chronic pain & skin issues and get people back into life and feeling more confident.

As a naturopath and clinical nutritionist Ananda’s practice focus is twofold: chronic skin conditions and integrated pain management for both acute and chronic pain. Ananda will work with you to effectively manage:

Acute and Chronic Pain – migraines, trauma and injury associated pain, reproductive pain conditions, neuropathic pain, low back pain, fibromyalgia and pain matrix conditions

Skin Conditions – eczema, psoriasis, acne, rosacea

Digestive Disorders

Stress Management

Autoimmune Conditions – pain and disease management

Other areas of clinical focus include digestive disorders such as IBS, stress management, thyroid and adrenal health and environmental or food allergies.

13/02/2026

‘Hangry’ neurons might be a factor in pain persistence!

A recent paper caught my attention examining sensory neurons in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG) and their relationship with satellite glial cells (SGCs), which are part of the immune system. Historically, SGC–neuron interactions were viewed as pain promoting.

Xu et al. (2026) suggest something different. SGCs can actively suppress acute and chronic pain by transferring healthy mitochondria to DRG neurons.

This points toward mitochondrial dysfunction and cellular energy failure as contributors to pain persistence, not just nerve damage or inflammation. Which also raises a broader question about systemic mitochondrial health in chronic pain.

What’s the clinical implication?
Supporting cellular metabolism, neuroimmune communication and mitochondrial health may represent a foundational strategy in chronic pain care.

Even though this research is focused on details, it reinforces my understanding that pain is relational (between systems and parts), metabolic and a whole body issue.

#ᴄʜʀᴏɴɪᴄᴘᴀɪɴ

07/02/2026

For as long as I can remember every time I put on sunglasses I felt dizzy and visually unsettled, a bit like my eyes couldn't orient properly and I I persisted, I ended up feeling nauseous. So, most of the time I would last about 5 minutes (and only in very bright sunlight) before packing them away again.

Then my friend and fellow naturopath (Katrina - thank you!) pointed out something I hadn’t thought about: that lens colour matters for the nervous system.

She generously took me off to an optometrist to try different coloured lens glasses. Turns out my nervous system is a fan of orange and rose tints. I had none of the the previous reactions and I felt a sense of visual calm (or something like that) wearing them.

So these are my new rose-tinted lenses and I can wear them as often and for as long as I like. More than that, my body actually settles when I put them on.

I was reminded strongly through this process that sensory input and visual processing is one of the ways my nervous system interprets safety. Apparently I love a rose tinted world!

And it reminds me to keep coming back to the premise that if something “should” work (like wearing sunglasses for eye protection) but your body says no, to listen.

For me this was an example of changing the input, rather than pushing through it.

29/01/2026

How you talk to your body matters in chronic pain.

In persistent pain states, the issue is rarely tissue damage alone. Pain is shaped by nervous system sensitisation, prediction, and context.

Research from pain science and psychology, including Ellen Langer’s very early work on mindset and physiology, shows that interpretation and expectation can meaningfully influence bodily outcomes.

From a pain neuroscience lens, this is expected. The brain is constantly asking:
Is this safe or is this a threat? Language, beliefs, and self-talk act as threat or safety cues that influence pain processing.

When the message is:
“My body is damaged,”
“I can’t do this,”
“This will make things worse,”

the nervous system stays in protective mode, amplifying pain signals.

When the message is:
“Let’s explore this gently,”
“This is uncomfortable but not dangerous,”
“Capacity can change,”

the nervous system has more room for down-regulation, movement variability, and recovery.

Trying a new movement, revisiting an avoided activity or challenging a long-held pain story...these are not just positive thinking exercises. They are inputs into a sensitised nervous system.

The question is not whether your body is listening. It always is.

The clinical question then becomes is the internal messaging we use reinforcing pain and protection, or supporting safety and adaptation?

19/01/2026

With neurodivergence, the risk profile for physical illness is meaningfully different from the general population.

🔹 There is more than double the prevalence of connective tissue differences, particularly joint hypermobility.
🔹 Rates of chronic pain, chronic fatigue, dizziness, and autonomic dysfunction (dysautonomia) are significantly higher.
🔹 In people with Ehlers Danlos syndromes, the likelihood of being autistic is approximately seven times higher, and the likelihood of having ADHD is around five higher than population norms.

These overlaps reflect shared biological pathways involving connective tissue integrity, autonomic regulation, sensory processing, and neuroimmune signalling.

The core problem arises when these presentations are treated as separate and unrelated conditions.

In practice, this fragmentation leads to:
🔹 Missed diagnoses of hypermobility, dysautonomia, or connective tissue disorders
🔹 Under recognition of physical drivers of pain, fatigue, and cognitive load
🔹 Misattribution of physiological symptoms to anxiety, behaviour, or emotional dysregulation alone

Children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable.

It is not uncommon for pain related avoidance to be labelled as school refusal, autonomic symptoms to be framed as anxiety, fatigue and sensory overload to be interpreted as poor motivation or emotional instability.

In these situations, the focus shifts toward managing the behaviour rather than investigating why the body is struggling.

The result is that the visible response becomes the problem, while the underlying physical reality remains unrecognised and untreated.

An integrated assessment is needed, where neurodevelopment, connective tissue health, autonomic function, pain, and fatigue are viewed as part of the same clinical picture rather than competing explanations.

13/01/2026

Chronic pain is not just about what the body senses. It is about what the brain predicts.

Modern pain science is increasingly shaped by predictive processing. And I am fascinated by this...so many of our responses are the result of prediction rather than conscious response.

The brain does not passively receive sensory input and decide whether it hurts.
It actively predicts what the body is about to experience, based on past learning, context, emotion, threat and expectation.

Pain emerges when the brain’s prediction of danger outweighs the incoming sensory evidence.

In chronic pain, this predictive system becomes biased toward threat.
The brain has learned that certain sensations, movements or internal states are unsafe. Even neutral signals are interpreted as meaningful, urgent or dangerous.

This is why:
• pain can persist after tissue healing
• symptoms fluctuate without structural change
• imaging findings often do not correlate with pain severity

Importantly, predictive processing works both ways. The brain updates its predictions based on:
• sensory input from the body
• immune and inflammatory signalling
• sleep, nutrition and hormonal state
• emotional context and perceived safety

So, change happens when the system is given new evidence:
• the brain learns that sensations are less dangerous
• the body sends clearer signals of safety
• prediction errors accumulate and recalibrate the system....and we can influence this!!!

Chronic pain is not just the issues in the tissues. It is learned, reinforced and therefore modifiable.

Understanding predictive processing reframes pain from damage to neurobiological protection. Clinically that shift matters.

11/01/2026

New Blog - Rosacea Severity: The Role of Lipids, Gut Function & Histamine.

I know I bang on about this a lot but rosacea is more than a skin issue.

A 2026 disease severity analysis showed that rosacea clusters with systemic comorbidities, and severity increases when these aren't addressed.

Three associations stand out.
1. Hyperlipidemia and metabolic risk
2. Gut dysfunction and constipation
3. Allergies and histamine sensitivity

The strong correlation with comorbid conditions points to rosacea severity reflecting system load, not just a skin issue. Treating rosacea as such is outdated.

Personalised care means upstream comorbidities need to be assessed and addressed.

https://anandamahony.com.au/blog/rosacea-severity-the-role-of-lipids-gut-function-and-histamine

08/01/2026

Endometriosis Pain Is Not Just Period Pain.

Research consistently shows that pain sits at the centre of life with endometriosis, even in women with access to high quality medical care.

What is often missed is how pain disrupts life.

Research by Leuenberger, et al., (2022) shows that pain duration matters more than intensity. Pain lasting longer than one hour per day was the strongest predictor of disability.

Women reported significant limitations in:
🔹Basic physical functions: standing, walking, sitting, sleep, bowel movements
🔹Sexuality: nearly 80 percent reported impairment, with dyspareunia the most disruptive factor
🔹Psychological wellbeing: higher rates of depression, anxiety and fatigue
🔹Work, relationships and social life: pain frequency increased avoidance, fear and exhaustion

Importantly:

🔹Pain impact does not reliably correlate with disease stage
🔹Comorbid pain disorders resulted in significantly more daily limitations
🔹Repeated surgeries were associated with more chronic pain, not less
🔹Nervous system sensitisation and neuro inflammation appear to play a larger role than lesion size alone.

Endometriosis pain is not just a gynecological issue. It is a complex, nervous system driven, whole body pain condition.

Effective care requires:
🔹Multimodal pain management
🔹Attention to pain duration, not just severity
🔹Integration of pelvic, neurological, hormonal, psychological and lifestyle support

Until pain is treated as the central clinical problem, quality of life will remain compromised for many women with endometriosis.

We need to address and treat pain more intelligently, from a whole person perspective.

Reference: Leuenberger, Janine, et al. "Living with endometriosis: Comorbid pain disorders, characteristics of pain and relevance for daily life." European Journal of Pain 26.5 (2022): 1021-1038.

03/12/2025

New Blog: Chronic Pain Needs Top-down & Bottom-up Approaches

A common assumption is that pain comes directly from injury or damage in the body.

The bottom-up view (body to brain) explains persistent pain as the result of ongoing noxious signals that heighten pain perception and progressively sensitise the nervous system, even after tissues have healed.

But pain isn’t simply about what’s happening in the tissues. The brain is always involved.

A top-down perspective highlights changes within the brain’s own pain-modulating systems, along with a sensitised nervous system, which can drive pain independently of what the body is sending upward.

Read more: https://anandamahony.com.au/blog/chronic-pain-needs-both-brain-and-body-approaches

#ᴄʜʀᴏɴɪᴄᴘᴀɪɴ

01/12/2025

Chronic Pain & Maladaptive Stress

Chronic pain isn’t always driven by damaged tissues. Often it begins when the stress system stops switching off. A chronically activated fight-or-flight response disrupts cortisol rhythms, ramps up inflammation and sensitises both the spinal cord and brain. This makes the nervous system hyper-reactive, so even small inputs, think movement, pressure, emotional stress, can feel disproportionately painful.

This becomes a maladaptive biological loop. The stress system learns to stay on high alert, and pain circuits strengthen through repetition.

Fortunately, learned patterns can be unlearned. By calming the stress response, improving sleep, reducing inflammation and retraining the nervous system, the pain threshold becomes more flexible again. Chronic pain is changeable when we work with the driving factors.

28/11/2025

New Blog!
Chronic Pain: Stuck in Survival Mode

Once our nervous system is dysregulated, a triggering event, a small injury, surgery, infection, hormonal shift, or emotionally stressful period, can set off a prolonged pain condition in someone whose physiology is already primed. The nervous system isn’t just reacting to tissue damage; it’s reacting to the internal state of threat.

26/11/2025

A recent Mendelian randomisation study shows a causal link between genetically predicted intake of artificially sweetened foods and a higher risk of chronic pain, mediated in part by specific gut microbes.

The researchers analysed nine types of artificial sweeteners, 211 microbial taxa and seven chronic pain conditions, finding that changes in gut microbiota helped drive pain outcomes, especially head and neck pain, joint pain and sciatica.

This aligns with earlier data. A large 2001 cohort study reported that people consuming more than one serving of artificial sweeteners daily had more than double the risk of chronic headaches. Clinically I have observed that artificial sweeteners are a common aggravator for migraine and headache presentations.

Artificial sweeteners also sit firmly within the broader category of ultra-processed foods, which have known associations with inflammation and chronic pain.

While mechanisms are still being mapped, a consistent pattern is emerging: artificial sweeteners can shift microbial composition and metabolic activity, which may then influence immune signalling, inflammation and pain pathways.

This doesn’t mean everyone using sweeteners will develop pain. It does highlight that gut–brain–pain interactions are more significant than previously recognised and reducing artificially sweetened foods may improve pain outcomes.

Zhao, H., Guan, D., D**g, X., Yao, Y., & Ma, Z. (2025). Causal Effects of Artificially Sweetened Foods on Chronic Pain Mediated by Gut Microbiota: A Mendelian Randomization Study. Food Science & Nutrition, 13(6), e70503.

13/11/2025

Love a good review paper. This was my latest read: Gut microbiota-mediated pain sensitization: mechanisms and therapeutic implications.

The overall finding is that the makeup of one’s gut microbiome might tilt the balance toward pain or relief, depending on which bacteria (and metabolites) are abundant.

A healthy, balanced microbiome tends to support normal pain thresholds, whereas an imbalanced one might feed into chronic pain by continuously provoking the immune system or nervous system.

Next time I will discuss the microbiome targeted therapies that show promise for pain reduction.

Address

210 Days Road
Grange, QLD
4051

Opening Hours

Monday	1pm - 7pm
Wednesday	1pm - 7pm
Friday	8:30am - 1pm

Website

http://www.anandamahony.com.au/

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