Kathryn Messenger, Author at Whole Naturopathy

Is vitamin B6 toxic?

September 3, 2025

You may have heard of vitamin B6 being in the spotlight lately, as an overdose can cause peripheral neuropathy. The symptoms of this include numbness and pain in the limbs and healing can be slow. An overdose usually occurs when someone is taking multiple supplements, or food products that have added B6. But the answer is not as simple as limiting B6, let me explain. Different forms of vitamin B6 There are different forms of B6, just like there are different types of dwellings: caravans, bungalows and houses. Imagine you live in a caravan and a storm causes it to roll down the road and hit a tree, causing the rain water to come pouring through the roof. There, in the middle of the night, in rain and...

How much difference does a naturopath make?

August 5, 2025

Herbal Medicine, Homeopathy, Lifestyle, Nutrition

I thought I’d share 2 examples of how working with a naturopath can make a difference in your health. I have chosen two very different examples from my clinic in the last 12 months. Sometimes the journey is very straightforward, other times, there can be a few bumps in the road (names have been changed). Case 1 - stress and fatigue Emma, late 30’s, works, school aged kids. She presented with anxiety (with panic attacks), fatigue, insomnia, and frequent colds. Upon questioning: Energy 2/10 Stress 7/10 Too tired to exercise Daily nausea and bloating Poor concentration and memory Sleep waking 3x/night I first prescribed an individual herbal medicine formula, a specific homeopathic, a mineral supplement, and a few foods to add to her diet. 2nd appointment (2 weeks later) Anxiety has...

How to lower your blood pressure

June 26, 2025

Cardiovascular, Nutrition

Hypertension (high blood pressure) is defined as consistently high arterial blood pressure: a systolic pressure of over 130mmHg or diastolic pressure of more than 90mmHg. It is a major risk for cardiovascular disease and is present in over one third of Australians. How does the pressure increase? Like water in a pipe, blood flows through your blood vessels: arteries and veins. When the blood vessels are narrow more pressure is required, and when the walls of the of the blood vessels are stiff, they don’t increase in diameter to allow for more pressure. This causes blood pressure to increase, rather than adjusting to these changes. What causes high blood pressure? Atherosclerosis (arterial plaque build-up) is the main cause of hypertension, but it is also caused by other factors such...

Breathing to move from 'fight or flight' to 'rest and digest'

Breathing to calm the mind

May 29, 2025

Lifestyle, Mental health

When you’re feeling stressed or anxious and especially if you’re feeling stuck in that state, it can be really helpful to have some tools that you can use, to move out of it, into your calm, rational mind. Autonomic nervous system Your autonomic nervous system has 2 modes: sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight), and parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). Don’t worry too much about the names of these 2 modes, they were given hundreds of years ago and the original theories around what they did, turned out to be untrue. Long term balance To balance your autonomic nervous system in the long term, you want to make sure your life includes activities that you find fun or relaxing: exercise, time in nature, and time with friends (especially...

If you had a day to yourself, would you spend it in bed?

April 15, 2025

Herbal Medicine, Lifestyle, Nutrition

People often come into my clinic for fatigue, and this is one of the questions I ask, as it tells me some important information: if you had a day to yourself, would you spend it in bed? Fatigue can present in so many different ways, and understanding the nature of it is the start of understanding exactly what is going on in your body. Some people start their day with fatigue, and it improves as the day goes on. Others start fine, but can hardly stay awake after lunch, and others get progressively more exhausted as the day goes on. For these people, when It’s bad enough, their ideal day is a day in bed, as they are just too tired to enjoy other activities. Adrenal fatigue If...

Should we eat butter and saturated fats?

Saturated fats – friend or foe?

March 12, 2025

Metabolic health, Nutrition

To watch this as a video, click here. When I was young, the messaging was that butter hardens your arteries, leading to cardiovascular disease, and it also makes you fat. I found an interesting research article that explains where that information came from and why it’s faulty. If you’ve been around a while, like me, you will remember the song from the ‘Life be in it’ TV ads, “Eat more breads and cereals…” At time where we were told to fill up on the carbs, and to limit our fat intake. Interestingly since then, we have seen an increase in cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity. The 2014 research article titled " The Questionable Benefits of Exchanging Saturated Fat With Polyunsaturated Fat” explains where much of this...

Targeting acne where it starts

February 27, 2025

Skin

Your skin is not just the shell to your body, it’s actually an organ, and whilst topical creams, lotions and balms all have their place, if the issue is due to the relationship between your skin and other organs, the topical treatment will likely fall short. Whilst hormones are usually the first place most people look, I actually find looking to the liver can be most helpful. The relationship between the liver and the skin is strong as the major role of the liver is in detoxification, and if the liver is unable to preform this task well, it’s often the skin that suffers as the body attempts to detoxify via the skin. But detoxification is not the only role of the liver, it also metabolises hormones....

How to look after your liver

December 5, 2024

Liver, Metabolic health, Nutrition

To watch this as a video, click here. Your liver is one of the major detoxification organs in your body. But not only does it work in detoxification, it also plays an important role in hormone regulation and blood glucose metabolism. It’s commonly known that too much alcohol is bad for your liver. But did you know that overeating, too much sugar or white flour products, as well as prescription medications (and recreational drugs) can increase the detoxification load of the liver? Some common signs of reduced liver function: Fatigue (especially after lunch or mid-afternoon) Brain fog Headaches Nausea Irritability, frustration, or anger Dry skin The good news is that the liver is an organ that can repair itself (at least at this point), and there are lots of...

A by-product of sugar can reduce sugar cravings

December 4, 2024

Metabolic health, Nutrition

To watch this as a video, click here I find it so interesting that one of the minerals that is removed from the sugar cane as it is processed is the same mineral that helps prevent sugar cravings, which is just another reminder that we should be eating foods in their natural form. When sugar is made When white sugar us made, the juice from the sugar cane is stripped of all its nutrients so that we're left with just the simple carbohydrate. Raw sugar has a tiny bit added back in and brown sugar a little bit more. The problem here is that if the nutrients were never removed, we wouldn't be constantly craving the sugar, so let’s look at adding them back into our diet. Molasses Blackstrap molasses,...

Lose weight with intermittent fasting

December 4, 2024

Metabolic health, Nutrition, Weight loss

To watch this as a video, click here. Intermittent fasting is where you use fasting for part of the day, rather than a longer term fast. It’s actually something we do each day, we finish eating at the end of the day and then we don’t eat again until breakfast (when we ‘break’ the ‘fast’). With the exception of small babies who need to eat around the clock, your body stores energy to keep you going through the night without any food. Digestion time It takes 5 hours to digest a meal, sometimes longer if it was a large meal, so what we generally do is space our meals that far apart to ensure we have a regular supply of energy throughout the day. Then overnight, your body...

Author: Kathryn Messenger

Is vitamin B6 toxic?

How much difference does a naturopath make?

How to lower your blood pressure

Breathing to calm the mind

If you had a day to yourself, would you spend it in bed?

Saturated fats – friend or foe?

Targeting acne where it starts

How to look after your liver

A by-product of sugar can reduce sugar cravings

Lose weight with intermittent fasting

Is vitamin B6 toxic?

Trouble getting your iron levels within range?

Springtime allergies

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