Dr Andrea Robertson - Osteopath, Naturopath, Nutritionist

Thirty different plant foods a week. Not thirty serves. Thirty different ones.
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It sounds impossible until you start counting properly.
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Herbs count. Spices count. Nuts, seeds, wholegrains and legumes all count. A handful of mixed seeds on your porridge is four plants before breakfast is finished. The parsley and the paprika count. So does the tin of chickpeas.
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Most women I say this to get to about twelve when they first count, and are somewhere near thirty within a fortnight without changing very much at all. It is mostly a matter of variety rather than volume.
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Aim for these two specific things to build in.
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→ Cruciferous vegetables, daily. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, rocket, brussels sprouts, bok choy. These are the ones that support how your body clears oestrogen, which matters a great deal through a transition where your oestrogen is swinging.
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→ Fermented foods, introduced carefully. Have a tablespoon of sauerkraut, not a jar of it. Go slowly. Too much too fast is exactly why so many people decide fermented foods do not agree with them, when where they went wrong, is they went from none to lots in a week.
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Your gut microbiome is one of the five systems that shifts through perimenopause. Of all five, this is the one you can start on tonight, with whatever is already in your fridge.
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Episode 13 of my podcast, Nourish, Heal & Rise, covers all five systems that shift during perimenopause, so eat more plant foods, and then go listen to my podcast!
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Listen or watch on Apple, YouTube or Spotify, or visit www.andrearobertson.health/podcast/13
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Andrea x
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Dr Andrea Robertson
Osteopath | Naturopath | Nutritionist
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Renee came to me waking at three most nights, with an anxiety she could not explain and had not had before. She had been living like that for over a year.
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We did not chase her hormones. We worked the systems underneath them.
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Protein-rich structure through her meals. Cruciferous vegetables and fermented foods built into her week. Magnesium in the evening, and a wind-down routine she committed to rather than just thought about.
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Over about four months, the 3 a.m. wake-ups became the exception rather than the rule.
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Her anxiety did not vanish entirely. But the intensity dropped enough that she described feeling like herself again for the first time in over a year.
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That is what this looks like when it works. Not the disappearance of every symptom. A real return of capacity, resilience, and the sense that your own body is on your side again.
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That work is what the 12 Week Whole Health Solution was built for, because perimenopause rarely responds to a single change in isolation. It responds to all five systems being addressed together, over months.
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Start Monday 21 September and you finish Monday 14 December. Through it, and feeling different, before December arrives.
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The first step in getting started is booking in a complimentary Discovery Call with me.
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Book in here: www.andrearobertson.health/whs
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Andrea x
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Dr Andrea Robertson
Osteopath | Naturopath | Nutritonist
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If your nervous system is the system running the show through perimenopause, and in most women it is, here is where I start.
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→ Magnesium bis/glycinate, in the evening. A twelve-week supplementation study in perimenopausal women specifically found improvements in sleep quality, cognition and psychological wellbeing. Glycinate or Bisglycinate is the form I prescribe most often, because it is well absorbed and specifically supportive of sleep.
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→ Protect your morning light and reduce your evening light. This sounds almost too simple to be worth mentioning. Circadian rhythm regulation directly influences cortisol's daily pattern, and a disrupted rhythm is one of the most common and most fixable contributors to that wired-but-exhausted feeling.
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→ Be honest about caffeine and alcohol. Both place additional demand on an already taxed HPA axis, which is your three stress organs working together. Wine carries a histamine load on top of that, so for some of you it is two problems in one glass. Alcohol is also a hepatotoxin, a liver toxin. Not ideal at a time when your liver is already working hard on hormonal changes.
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→ Add movement that calms, not only movement that challenges. Alongside your resistance training, build in walking outdoors, gentle stretching or breathwork. The goal is not simply more exercise. It is the right balance between what builds you up and what settles you back down.
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And then the one nobody schedules. Genuine downtime. Not sleep, and not scrolling. Actual unstructured recovery.
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I want to be direct about that last one, because it matters more than any supplement I could recommend.
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We address this, plus all other perimenopause and menopause symptoms and drivers in my 12 Week Program which is designed to help women find their best health and body composition. Book in a complimentary call with me to see if the program is the right fit for you. https://www.andrearobertson.health/whs
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Andrea x
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Dr Andrea Robertson
Osteopath | Naturopath | Nutritionist

Too tired to think straight at three in the afternoon. Wide awake at three in the morning.
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Both of those, in the same body, on the same day. And most women describe it to me almost apologetically, as though it must be something they are doing wrong.
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There is a reason it happens, and it is not simply getting older.
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Your cortisol runs on a daily rhythm. Think of it as a curve rather than a level. It should be highest in the morning, which is what gets you out of bed, and lowest at night, which is what lets you fall asleep and stay there.
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Through perimenopause that curve loses its shape. So the energy turns up when you need to be asleep, and vanishes when you need to be working.
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Here is the part I want you to hold onto. Circadian rhythm regulation directly influences that daily cortisol pattern. A disrupted rhythm is one of the most common contributors to the wired-but-tired feeling, and it is also one of the most fixable things on the list.
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Not the only one. This week on episode 13 of my podcast, Nourish, Heal & Rise, I go through all five systems that shift through perimenopause, and what to actually do about each of them. This episode goes live on Wednesday morning.
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We look at your blood sugar. Your gut. Your inflammation. Your histamine load. And your nervous system.
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Education is the first step, however a personalized approach is what makes lasting change. We do exactly this in my 12 Week Program which is designed to help women find their best health, for the long term. Book in a complimentary call with me to see if the program is the right fit for you. https://www.andrearobertson.health/whs
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Andrea x
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Dr Andrea Robertson
Osteopath | Naturopath | Nutritionist
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Let me be straightforward about this, because a lot of women are on these medications and very few are being told the whole picture.
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There is no shame in using a GLP-1. Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro. They help a great many women and I have clients doing well on them. Keep your prescribing doctor in the loop and keep working with them.
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What they do well is physical hunger. Many women tell me the food noise simply goes quiet, and at higher doses it goes quieter still.
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What they do not touch is the pattern behind the food noise.
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It’s 9pm at night. You sit in the same chair. You think about the same food. That pattern was learned over years and it lives somewhere the medication does not address. Even though the volume is turned down while you are on the medication, nothing has gone back and changed what created the food noise in the first place.
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Which is exactly why coming off is where so many women struggle. The noise comes back, because it was never resolved. And if you have been paying six hundred dollars a month, that return brings a whole set of feelings with it.
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There is a second thing worth knowing, and this is the part I care about most as a clinician.
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When you lose weight, you lose fat and you lose muscle. If you have not been strength training the whole way through, you can come off having lost weight but carrying a higher percentage of body fat than when you started. More visceral fat means more inflammation, and inflammation is upstream of most of what I treat.
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So if you are on a GLP-1, use the time well. Build muscle deliberately. Get your protein up. And do the work underneath, so that when you stop, there is something in place that holds.
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We address this in episode 12 of my podcast, Nourish, Heal & Rise, with psychologist & coach Georgie Beames. We delve into whats underneath the food noise.
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Listen or watch on Apple, YouTube or Spotify, or visit www.andrearobertson.health/podcast
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Andrea x
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Dr Andrea Robertson
Osteopath | Naturopath | Nutritionist
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Start on Monday 14 September and you finish on Monday 7 December.
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Twelve weeks, done before the Christmas rush properly starts. Not white-knuckling through December telling yourself January is when you will sort it out.
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I want you to picture the other version. December arrives and you are already through it. You already know which foods love you back and which ones do not. You already sleep. You already have the energy for the part of the year that usually flattens you.
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That is the whole reason the timing matters to me.
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The 12 Week Whole Health Solution is where the underlying drivers get addressed rather than managed. Functional pathology testing and a proper review of your actual numbers. One to one consults with me and my team. Weekly group coaching calls and weekly check-ins. Nutrition, mindset, movement and nervous system work together, because they were never separate. And the work of identifying your own food triggers, which are not the same as anyone else’s.
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Over four hundred women have been through it now.
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It starts with a complimentary Discovery Call. That is a conversation about where you actually are, not a sales pitch. If it is not right for you, I will tell you.
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Book your Discovery Call here: www.andrearobertson.health/whs
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Andrea x
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Dr Andrea Robertson
Osteopath | Naturopath | Nutritionist
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