Jo Brownlow Holistic Health

Jo Brownlow Holistic Health Certified Functional Medicine Health Coach, Personal Trainer and NLP Practitioner. Helping people find their path to a healthier, happier life

21/04/2026

We’re going back to Batu Batu — and this retreat is building on everything I loved about the first one. 😍

This reel is a look back at what we created earlier this year, and a hint at where I want to take it next.

There’ll be movement, nervous system support, bootcamp in nature, tools for regulation, and deeper education around hormone balance for women through the ages. 🧘‍♀️🌿

Not just symptoms. Not just surface-level wellness. A wider look at how stress, gut health, detoxification, blood sugar and nervous system state shape how women feel. 🧠🌸

If you’d like to be first to hear more and have priority when spaces open, you can join the waitlist here: https://batubatu.com.my/the-batu-batu-balance-retreat

Your child can be eating breakfast… and still be setting themselves up for a crash later. 😬This is one of the easiest pa...
18/04/2026

Your child can be eating breakfast… and still be setting themselves up for a crash later. 😬

This is one of the easiest patterns to miss in exam season.

A lot of kids are simply not that hungry first thing, which is where breakfast gets tricky. That often means toast, cereal, something sweet, or nothing at all… and then by later morning they are flat, distracted, hungry again or looking for sugar. 😵‍💫📉

I see this with Harry too. He is quite resistant to breakfast, so I do have to persuade him. The options I can often get into him are eggy bread, boiled egg and soldiers, or an omelette. Not perfect every day, but much better than starting the day with quick carbs and no staying power.

For kids who do not want to eat much first thing, a smoothie can work really well. It is often easier than asking them to sit down to a full meal, and adding protein makes a big difference. Nuzest is my favourite protein powder — message me if you want my discount code. 😉💌

In my next post, I’m going to make this practical and share realistic ways mums can start improving food at home without turning every meal into a battle.

What breakfast tends to work best for your child? 💛

One of the biggest problems with junk food is not just what it contains — it’s what it replaces. 😨🍟This is something I’m...
13/04/2026

One of the biggest problems with junk food is not just what it contains — it’s what it replaces. 😨🍟

This is something I’m thinking about a lot at home right now too. It is easy to assume that if a teen is eating enough, they must be fine. But exam season asks a lot from the brain, and quick grab-and-go food often does not provide much of what the brain actually needs. ⚡

Focus, memory, motivation and mental stamina all rely on nutrients. Protein gives amino acids for neurotransmitters. Omega-3s support brain structure and learning. Iron, zinc, B vitamins and choline all help the brain do its job properly.

So the issue with junk food is not just that it is “bad”. It is that it starts to replace the foods that would actually help the brain cope better. 🧠💡

In my next post, I’m going to talk about one of the biggest problems I see in teens during exam season: the breakfast blood sugar crash.

Which of these nutrients do you think your child is probably getting the least of right now? 🤔

Struggling to understand what’s really going on with your child? 😥Focus, meltdowns, sleep, anxiety, gut issues — it’s of...
12/04/2026

Struggling to understand what’s really going on with your child? 😥

Focus, meltdowns, sleep, anxiety, gut issues — it’s often not just behaviour. There are deeper root causes that can be supported. 🧠💪

Join us for an evening exploring how gut health, stress, inflammation and the nervous system all connect — and where to start.

📍 Location: Neural Connections, Singapore
📅 Date: 29 April - 7–8:45pm
💰 Price: $25

PM me for further information and/or to sign up and I’ll send you the link!

If your child is eating more junk food while revising, there is usually a reason. 🤔🍟This is very real in my house right ...
06/04/2026

If your child is eating more junk food while revising, there is usually a reason. 🤔🍟

This is very real in my house right now with Harry and GCSE prep.

A lot of our kids are already used to quick dopamine from phones, scrolling, gaming and constant stimulation. So when they come off that and are expected to sit in front of revision, it is no wonder it feels dull. 🤷🏻‍♀️🎮

Then junk food offers another quick hit.

The problem is that food is not meant to work like entertainment. It is meant to nourish, stabilise and support the brain. Highly processed food often gives the reward, but not much real nutritional value.

Over the next few posts, I’ll be breaking down why junk food can make exam prep so much harder, what the brain actually needs to focus well, how blood sugar crashes affect concentration, and some realistic ways to improve food at home without every meal becoming a battle. 🍳🥦

My aim is to give you a clearer understanding of what may be driving the cravings and poor focus, along with practical ideas you can actually use.

Have you noticed your child wanting more junk food or comfort food when stress is high? 😬

02/04/2026

Are you using ChatGPT to analyse your blood work… and still don’t feel like it explains how you’re feeling? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Tools like ChatGPT are trained on standard medical frameworks, using general reference ranges and non-functional interpretations. That’s useful for identifying disease, but it often misses the earlier imbalances many people are actually experiencing. 😕⏳

Most blood tests don’t show early changes… they show issues once they’ve been there for a while.

Doctors are trained to diagnose disease, focusing on markers outside the reference range, whereas functional medicine looks a little deeper — not just is it in range, but:
✅ where it sits within that range
✅ how markers are interacting
✅ what symptoms are showing up
✅ and what’s happening in your life that could be influencing all of this

Because your results don’t exist in isolation.

Sleep, stress, hormones, gut health, and environmental load all shape how those numbers appear, and without that context it’s very easy to miss what’s really going on. 🤯🧬

AI can be helpful for organising information, but it can’t replace understanding you — your patterns, your history, your physiology — and then guiding the right changes to bring things back into balance.

If you’ve ever been told your results are “normal” but you don’t feel it, please message me or book a call to explore your results properly. 📝

Some of my favourite local brands helped make our Batu Batu retreat feel even more special. ☺️🌿We included TZO Skin’s Vi...
27/03/2026

Some of my favourite local brands helped make our Batu Batu retreat feel even more special. ☺️🌿

We included TZO Skin’s Vitamin A Serum and AM Cream, which definitely helped save a few burnt faces by the end.

Nuzest also included a selection of protein powder flavours and Good Green Vitality, and the Batu Batu staff very kindly let us use their liquidiser so the ladies could make pre-bootcamp smoothies and get some protein on board.

We also had Hap nose and mouth strips, which can be really helpful for better breathing at night, rest and recovery, and Heveya eye masks for our Yoga Nidra sessions. 🧘‍♀️🍃

Whole Kitchen provided breakfast for the early car journey and gluten free bread throughout the retreat, and Akesi probiotic drinks were part of breakfast and lunch too.

A big thank you to these lovely brands for contributing to the retreat and helping us make the experience feel so well supported, nourishing and special for the women who came. 🥹🌸

I used to lie awake at 2–3am, completely exhausted but unable to switch off, wondering why my body felt so wired when al...
19/03/2026

I used to lie awake at 2–3am, completely exhausted but unable to switch off, wondering why my body felt so wired when all I wanted was sleep. 😵‍💫💤

During Covid, I was juggling home schooling, studying, running a business, and doing too much exercise, often not eating enough alongside it. My husband was in another country at the time, and I was trying to hold everything together, pushing through because that felt like the only option. 😰

At the time, I would have called it burnout or adrenal fatigue.

Looking back now, I can see it was likely a combination of early perimenopause and a nervous system that had been in a prolonged state of high alert. 🚨

Progesterone was starting to decline — which normally supports those calming signals in the brain — while ongoing stress was disrupting my cortisol rhythm, so even though I was exhausted, my body wasn’t switching off in the way it needed to.

It felt like being permanently “on.”

I see this pattern often now, particularly in women in their 40s who are managing a lot and wondering why their sleep, energy and anxiety feel different to before.

When you understand the physiology behind it — hormones, stress signalling, nervous system state — it becomes much easier to support the body in a way that actually works. 🧘🏻‍♀️🍃

And importantly, to recognise this isn’t a personal failing, but a pattern the body has adapted to over time.

If this sounds familiar and you’re trying to make sense of your own symptoms, feel free to reach out — this is exactly the kind of pattern I work through with clients one-to-one. ❤️

10/03/2026

For all those amazing women out there, happy International Women’s Day! 💐

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