Ananda Mahony Naturopath & Nutritionist

01/04/2026

Have you been 'justed'?

It's a concept I read about in an article by herbalist Sally Kingsford-Smith. It goes something like this:
"It's just heavy periods"
"It's just perimenopause"
"You just need to relax."
"You just need to lose a bit of weight."
"You just need to sleep more."

'Just' makes complex, real, lived experience sound like a simple fix you've been too lazy to try.

Have you ever been justed by a health practitioner or by yourself?

24/03/2026

“If I don’t address sleep and nervous system dysregulation, pain stays reactive.”

In this short podcast with Dr Karina Patel from Inside Sleep Matters, I discuss the patterns I see repeatedly in clinical practice. Poor sleep, stress hormone disruption, unstable blood sugar, and a nervous system stuck in stress mode often sit beneath chronic pain.

When sleep and nervous system regulation aren’t addressed, pain can remain easily amplified. When these foundations are supported, outcomes begin to shift.

Pain rarely exists in isolation and for this reason among many others, it reminds me that whole-person care is so important.

I will be talking about this and the links between nutrition and sleep at the upcoming Sleep Matters conference.

🎧 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Inside Sleep Matters, Why Chronic Pain and Poor Sleep Feed Each Other
🔗 Learn more about Sleep Matters 2026 at sleepwell.education

22/03/2026

Most chronic pain patients I see have already seen a bunch of health care professionals. Often they've had all the things...scans, physio, anti-inflammatories, maybe surgery but they're still in pain.

It is often viewed as treatment failure but I think more often than not there is a significant assessment gap.

When pain persists beyond tissue healing timelines, we need to start asking different questions. It's no longer "what's damaged?" It's "what has the nervous system learned, and what is sustaining that state?"

The nervous system being on high alert is well-established in the pain neuroscience literature.

What's less commonly applied in clinical practice is assessing the drivers that maintain it - the immune system getting all turned up and edgy, HPA and then cortisol dysregulation, the gut driving inflammation, sleep architecture disruption as some of the key factors.

Swipe through for a breakdown of what this looks like in clinical reasoning and why treating the periphery alone is often an incomplete strategy.

06/03/2026

Rosacea and oxidative stress 🍓

One of the more under-recognised mechanisms in rosacea pathogenesis is the imbalance between reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and antioxidant capacity.

Studies consistently show that individuals with rosacea demonstrate elevated markers of oxidative stress alongside reduced levels of antioxidant production.

The result is cumulative oxidative tissue damage that drives inflammation, compromises barrier integrity, and amplifies neurovascular reactivity.

Dietary antioxidants can support this system as meaningful nutritional input into a pathway that is under-resourced in rosacea-affected skin.

Key antioxidant foods to embrace:

🍓Polyphenol rich foods - generally purple, dark brown, red and blue. So berries of all kinds including blueberries (this is the blue food!), dark rye, black olives, red onions (and yellow actually), walnuts, flaxseeds and hazelnuts.
🍓Dark leafy greens - aren't these in EVERY nutritional prescription ever? But really, they are included for a reason. They are full of lutein, zeaxanthin and vitamin C which support tissue-level antioxidant activity.
🍓Green tea (EGCG) - also a polyphenol but gets its own listing because it is particularly beneficial for rosacea prone skin. It has documented capacity to reduce oxidative skin damage.
🍓Carotenoid-rich vegetables - these are the red and orange foods. They contain fat-soluble antioxidants that work at the cellular membrane level.
🍓Extra virgin olive oil - exert anti-inflammatory effects.
🍓Brazil nuts contain selenium, which is an essential cofactor for glutathione peroxidase, a primary antioxidant enzyme in skin tissue.

The clinical focus is not any single food and rather than focusing on cutting out foods (unless they are known triggers), I recommend, that if you can, start to include some of these foods every day. It is building a consistent, varied antioxidant intake that supports the skin's capacity to manage oxidative load over time.

Save this if you want to understand rosacea beyond the surface. ⬇️

26/02/2026

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.