Zestt Wellness

06/01/2026

05/01/2026

How to Change Without the Turmoil 🌊 The Anti-New Year’s Resolution

I start my day by swimming in the ocean, not a difficult task in the summer months. It’s fair to say my swims are longer when the skies are blue. Every day is different too: the tide, the sky, the waves.

The last few days, the waves have been big, and I’ve avoided the turmoil by diving underneath them. Occasionally, I dive too late or come up too early and end up in the washing machine!

When faced with a wave, you have three options: surf on top (sadly, I am not athletic enough for that), face it head-on and let it do its damndest, or dive under it and come out the other side to a sea of calm.

That got me thinking about how often we take the road that seems straightforward, yet leaves us in a world of turmoil. This is especially true at this time of year, when many of us decide we want to become healthier, fitter and faster.

January health plans often face the wave head-on. We change everything at once: new diet, new exercise routine, new rules, new expectations. It feels decisive. Brave, even. But it’s all too much - the wave is too big.

Diving under the wave looks different. It means choosing one deep, stabilising habit; not ten surface-level ones.

It might be:
🍖 Adding protein to breakfast to support muscle and appetite
🚶 for 30 minutes after dinner
🏋🏾‍♂️ Strength training twice a week
🥦 Eating one extra fibrous plant food each day

These changes don’t look dramatic. But beneath the surface, they reduce blood sugar levels, preserve muscle, improve energy levels and create habits that last beyond January.

This year, instead of trying to conquer the ocean, choose one wave to dive under.
You may be surprised how calm the water is on the other side.

💥 And - Try Zestt Gut+ Lozenges with pre and pro-biotics to support your metabolic health ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Available online now at www.zesttwellness.com

15/12/2025

Zestt Sleep+ Survey & REWARD 💥😴

We’re developing a new Zestt Sleep+ product and we want to get it right.

Sleep issues are complex. Many sleep products are generic, using the same ingredients to treat both getting to sleep and staying asleep, without considering things like body temperature regulation, breathing, or underlying physiological drivers.

We’re currently testing and refining different bioactive combinations and delivery formats, and we have some important decisions to make about which sleep pathways to target.

👉 That’s where you come in.

We’d love to learn more about:
• The sleep challenges you experience
• What you think might be causing them

Your insights will help us design Sleep+ products that actually meet real needs; not one-size-fits-all solutions.

📝 Take our 5-minute Sleep Survey

🎁 As a thank you, you’ll receive a 20% discount code at the end of the survey, valid for the next 2 months on any Zestt product
(online only, excludes subscriptions)

🔒 Your privacy matters
All responses are completely anonymous and confidential. The data will be used solely to inform research and development of the Zestt Sleep+ product range.

💬 Link in comments 👇
Thank you for helping us build better sleep solutions 💙

10/12/2025

🎄 Zestt Xmas Special! 🎄

Give yourself (or a loved one) the gift of better breathing this Christmas 🎁

✨ Buy a 2-Pack of Zestt Breathe+ Lozenges and get 1
Zestt Breathe+ Liquid FREE!

🛒 Simply:
1️⃣ Add a 2-Packs of Zestt Breathe+ Lozenges and 1
Breathe+ Liquid to your cart
2️⃣ Type Xmas at checkout to receive your free
Breathe+ Liquid

💚 Online only — while stocks last!

👉 Head to zesttwellness.com
and make the most of this festive offer today.

09/12/2025

I downed a couple of handfuls of cashew nuts yesterday. As I munched away, I wondered whether it was the cashews or the salt I was enjoying.

Cashews are not the villains they’re sometimes made out to be. They’re a nutrient-dense snack packed with healthy fats, protein, fibre, starches, copper, zinc, iron, B-vitamins and vitamin K.

So… what about the salt? 🧂

The World Health Organisation recommends no more than 5g (one teaspoon🥄 ) of salt a day. Yet globally, most of us sit between 7.5 and 12.5g—well above ideal levels.

Over the last decade, a number of studies have pushed back on the idea that “salt is evil.” High blood pressure is driven by many factors, including sugar intake, ultra-processed foods, weight gain, sleep, medications and genetics. Some analyses even show a J-shaped curve—meaning both very high and very low sodium intakes are linked with increased cardiovascular risk, with the lowest risk at moderate intake.

So what really matters?
Where your salt comes from, and what else it’s packaged with.

How Salt Works in the Body

Salt is essential for life. Sodium helps regulate fluid balance, nerve signalling and muscle contraction. Sodium and potassium work together to hydrate cells and maintain the electrical impulses that allow the heart to beat and the brain to communicate. We need some salt every day.

The real problem is the modern food environment. Most of us consume far more than the body needs—without realising it.

How Salt Raises Blood Pressure 🩸

Extra sodium → more fluid in your blood vessels → more pressure on your vessel walls.

Studies show that in people with high blood pressure, cutting sodium intake can lower blood pressure within days to weeks, sometimes to levels similar to those achieved with blood pressure medication. Salt reduction also helps people with high blood pressure and chronic kidney disease.

💁🏻‍♀️ Why Women Can Be More Salt-Sensitive

Biology is nuanced. Some people are “salt-sensitive,” meaning their blood pressure rises more when they eat salt.

Women, especially after menopause, tend to be more salt-sensitive than men.

Why?

✅ Oestrogen protects blood vessels and kidneys. When it falls, salt sensitivity worsens.

✅ Hormones controlling fluid balance behave differently in female vs male bodies.

✅ Emerging research shows high salt can alter gut microbiota differently in women, affecting blood pressure.

So yes, if you’re 45+, you may get a bigger blood pressure hit from the same salty meal than a man would.

🥨 Where Most Salt Comes From

Around 75%+ of sodium in Western diets comes from processed and restaurant foods, not home cooking.

The usual culprits:

😞 Breads and bakery items
😞 Processed meats (ham, bacon, sausages)
😞 Cheese
😞 Sauces (especially store-bought, like tomato sauce)
😞 Canned soups
😞 Instant noodles
😞 Savoury snacks

If it comes in a packet, can, bottle or fast-food bag, assume it’s donating to your blood pressure. And that donation is bigger if you’re a menopausal woman 🧍‍♀️

Salt Substitutes & Potassium

Potassium helps counterbalance sodium. This is one reason fruits, vegetables, beans and nuts are so heart-protective.

WHO now supports low-sodium salt substitutes (part sodium chloride, part potassium chloride) to reduce hypertension.

BUT- if you have kidney disease or take certain medications, check with your doctor before switching.

☘️ The Bottom Line

Salt isn’t evil; it’s essential. But in a world where most of our food is pre-salted, it’s easy to overshoot.

For most adults, especially women after menopause and anyone with high blood pressure, reducing sodium is one of the simplest, most powerful levers you have to protect your heart and brain.

You don’t need flavourless food. You need to be intentional about where your salt comes from.

🥜 And as for me…I probably need to limit my cashew-nut habit, or at least move to an unsalted version (sigh).

09/12/2025

🎄 Zestt Xmas Special! 🎄

Give yourself (and your lungs) the gift of better breathing this Christmas 🎁

✨ Buy a 2-Pack of Zestt Breathe+ Lozenges and get 1 Zestt Breathe+ Liquid FREE!

🛒 Simply:
1️⃣ Add a 2-Packs of Zestt Breathe+ Lozenges and 1 Breathe+ Liquid to your cart
2️⃣ Type Xmas at checkout to receive your free Breathe+ Liquid

💚 Online only — while stocks last!

👉 Head to zesttwellness.com
and make the most of this festive offer today.

27/11/2025

I have a reading chair where I look out on the Lancewoods in my garden as they are buffeted by the coastal winds. 💨

I studied the Lancewood (Pseudopanax crassifolius) as an undergrad botanist; its evolutionary history stayed with me. It remains in its spindly juvenile stage for 15-20 years; it evolved to grow tall quickly to escape grazing moas.

It’s an odd-looking tree to say the least. Its thin trunk belies its strength, made possible by its its trunk being:

✅ High in lignin (a strengthening, rigidifying plant polymer), densely wound with long fibres oriented vertically, like tightly packed cables.
✅ Low in soft parenchymal tissue.

The Lancewood demonstrates that strength 💪🏼 can be rendered by what is unseen (or not logical) at first glance.

Similarly, human strength and resilience originate from your gut microbiome, a world of unseen microbes living within you that drive your mood, immunity, sleep, appetite and digestion 🩺

Your microbiome, in turn, is influenced by how you sleep, what you eat, your stress levels, and your interactions with nature and each other.

A healthy microbiome population helps buffer you from the equivalent of coastal winds - so tend it with care, nourish it well and let the resilience woven through the natural world remind you of the strength rising quietly within 💜

24/11/2025

Improve VO2 Max even when in your 90s!

Thanks for the handwritten letter ... We loved it 💜

22/11/2025

The Athletes’ Gut Problem 🤸 5 Key Triggers + The Menstrual Cycle Factor

Your intestine is 7-9 metres long! The small intestine is roughly 6-7 metres and is highly folded to optimise nutrient absorption. The large interesting (colon) is about 1.5 metres long.

That’s a lot of tubing for something to go wrong and go wrong it does, especially for elite athletes who push their bodies to the limit.

Here are the reasons gut issues are common for athletes:

🧠 1. Reduced Blood Flow to the Gut

🍀 During exercise, especially endurance or high-intensity training, blood is redirected from the digestive system to working muscles and skin (for cooling). This can reduce intestinal oxygen by up to 80%, damaging the gut lining and impairing digestion and absorption. This, in turn, can:
🍀 Increase intestinal permeability, “leaky gut,” allowing bacteria and endotoxins to enter the blood system, triggering an immune response leading to inflammation and discomfort
🍀 The effect is greater in hot environments or with dehydration.

💧 2. Dehydration and Electrolyte Imbalance

🍀 Sweating and insufficient fluid replacement can concentrate the gut contents and alter motility (making food move through the gut faster or slower). Dehydration slows gastric emptying, and an electrolyte imbalance can cause nausea, cramping, and diarrhoea.
🍀 Sodium and potassium losses affect smooth muscle function in the intestines.
Athletes often under-replace fluids during long events, which can compound gut distress.

🍞 3. Nutrition Timing and Composition
Many athletes consume carbohydrate-rich gels, drinks, or bars during training or competition.
🍀 Excess simple sugars (especially fructose) and artificial sweeteners can draw water into the intestine, leading to diarrhoea or bloating.
🍀 Large pre-event meals, high-fibre, or high-fat foods slow digestion, which can cause reflux or cramps when combined with exertion.
Inadequate adaptation to fueling strategies, “training the gut,” also plays a role.

🦠 4. Microbiome Disruption
Regular heavy training can alter the gut microbiome balance (the trillions of microbial species in your gut):
🍀 Stress hormones, like cortisol, can affect gut motility and microbial diversity
🍀 Frequent antibiotic use or restricted diets can further disrupt microbial stability
🍀 Microbiome imbalance (dysbiosis) can contribute to inflammation, poor nutrient absorption and even mood disturbances (not helpful if you need to be performing at your peak).

🏃‍♂️ 5. Mechanical and Mental Stress
🍀 Repetitive jostling (like running or cycling) mechanically agitates the intestines. When combined with pre-competition anxiety, this triggers the gut–brain axis, increasing motility and urgency.
🍀 “Runner’s diarrhoea” and “exercise-induced nausea” are partly driven by sympathetic nervous system overactivation.
Menstrual effects on gut stability

Female athletes often experience additional gut challenges because the menstrual cycle influences digestion, inflammation, and gut motility:

🍀 In the luteal phase (the week or two before a period), rising progesterone slows digestion, which can lead to bloating, constipation and a heavier, more sluggish gut during training.
🍀 As hormone levels drop right before menstruation, many women experience a sudden increase in prostaglandins, which stimulates uterine contractions but can also increase gut motility, triggering diarrhoea, cramping, or nausea.
🍀 Low iron stores, more common in female endurance athletes, can worsen gut sensitivity and impair oxygen delivery to the intestinal lining, amplifying exercise-induced gut symptoms.

The result is that digestion feels different across the cycle, and certain training loads or nutrition strategies may be better tolerated at specific times.

Understanding these hormonal rhythms helps female athletes tailor fueling, hydration, and recovery strategies to minimise gut distress and improve performance.

🩺 How Athletes Can Mitigate Gut Issues
Train the gut: gradually introduce nutrition strategies during training to improve tolerance.

✅ Hydrate strategically: maintain electrolyte balance and monitor sweat losses.
Adapt diet: reduce high-FODMAP foods or artificial sweeteners before events.
Support gut-lining integrity: include glutamine (helps reduce leaky gut), probiotics (support a healthy microbiome), and polyphenol-rich foods to help protect the intestinal barrier.

✅ Manage stress: recovery, sleep, and breathing practices help modulate gut-brain signalling.

20/11/2025

We are so pleased to be the naming sponsor of the Otago Sparks for the next two years and we look forward to supporting the team as they strive for excellence on and off the field.

Our reasons for sponsorship are many and include:
✅ A love of cricket (even Darcy the Canadian - he likens it to chess on a field).
✅ A passion for women’s sport and relief that it’s finally getting the airtime it deserves
✅ A desire to support a local Otago-Southland team with a global audience

On top of that, we have followed the Otago Sparks for many years and appreciate the personality and professionalism of the brand – a brand we want to be associated with.

17/11/2025

I am reading the latest Booker prize-winning novel, “Flesh” by David Szalay. In the book, the main character, István, responds with “okay” over 500 times. As a reader, you need to interpret what that “okay” means. And therein lies the magic of minimalist writing: asking the reader to think and interpret to create meaning.

It got me thinking about how we interpret our feelings daily. When I am asked how I am feeling, I am likely to reply, “Yeah, I’m okay.” Someone can take me at face value or interpret something in my body language which might suggest otherwise and probe further.

Similarly, we must interpret what our bodies are telling us. We tell ourselves (and others), “yeah, I’m okay, feeling tired, but that’s normal with age,” - isn’t it?

The onset of chronic disease starts many years before it shows up on blood tests or a diagnosis; many years of us telling ourselves that we are “okay,” while ignoring the warning signs of tiredness, poor sleep, digestive issues, aching joints and weight gain 😟

So are you okay? Really?

If something in you hesitates before answering, that’s your cue to look closer. Start by listening - properly listening - to what your body is trying to tell you. If anything feels off, get a medical check to rule out any underlying issues. Then give yourself an honest lifestyle audit. Choose one area to focus on, whether it’s sleep, movement, stress, or nutrition and make one small change, one tiny step - maybe it’s avoiding snacking after 8pm, or turning the lights out 30 minutes earlier.

Over time, build in more changes so that all the tiny steps accumulate, pulling you back from a slide into chronic disease and toward a life where “okay” is not a polite mask, but a genuine state of zest 🍀

“I’m okay, thanks!” 👌

10/11/2025

Don’t Wait for the Crash💥
Five Signs Your Body has Reached its Tipping Point

Tipping points exist in ecological systems in a way that parallels human health. Most of us understand that the planet is on the verge of an environmental tipping point (if not already past it). There are warning signs that the Earth is in crisis 🌏.

One warning sign is the demise of coral reefs. Coral animals live in a mutually beneficial relationship (symbiosis) with a type of algae. The algae are what give the coral its beautiful colours. The fragile relationship between the algae and the coral breaks down as the seawater temperature rises and the beneficial algae die. This causes coral bleaching, a warning sign that foretells a catastrophic collapse of the marine ecosystem.

Similarly, our bodies are interconnected ecosystems—a web of organs, tissues, blood, food, hormones and microbes. When one element becomes unbalanced, the system teeters until nothing holds you up.

The parallel between planetary decline and increases in rates of chronic disease strikes me as noteworthy. By making better choices for the planet (such as consuming and flying less and being more active), we can improve our health, and vice versa.

And like the coral reefs, before any tipping point, there are warning signs for your health journey that you should not ignore.

The trick, of course, is to know what to look out for. Here are five warning signs that you might need a health overhaul, which may come in the form of lifestyle improvements and/or medical care:

1️⃣ Persistent fatigue that rest doesn’t fix
If you’re tired all the time, even after a good night’s sleep, it’s a sign your system is struggling to maintain balance. It’s time to dig deeper to understand why this is happening to you.

2️⃣ Unexplained weight gain or loss
Sudden changes in body weight can be your body’s way of saying, something’s off. Hormonal shifts, inflammation, or a metabolic slowdown may indicate that a medical check-up and/or lifestyle changes are necessary.

3️⃣ Brain fog and mood swings
Most people have phases of feeling sluggish or struggling with emotional balance. It’s easy to put this down to the ageing process, but be more critical than that. Brain fog and mood swings should be occasional, not constant. Keeping a brain diary and noting when you feel this way (and for how long) helps identify contributing factors.

4️⃣ Digestive discomfort or bloating
The gut is your body’s coral reef, home to microbes that keep everything in balance. If you regularly experience bloating, bowel irregularity, or food sensitivities, your internal ecosystem may be under stress (Zestt Gut+ lozenges will help here too!).

5️⃣ Frequent infections or slow recovery
In nature, a weakened environment becomes vulnerable to invasive species; in humans, a weakened immune system leaves you open to frequent colds, slow wound healing, or lingering illnesses. It’s a clear call to rebuild your foundations.

The message from both nature and your body is simple: pay attention early so you can make the steps to bring your health back into balance.