Podcast: Boosting Your Energy So You Can Write More with Dr. Rachel Meredith
hosted by sue campbell
Sue Campbell talks with Dr. Rachel Meredith, a naturopathic physician and licensed acupuncturist, about practical ways writers can improve their physical energy to enhance creative output. With over 25 years of practice experience, Dr. Meredith shares actionable advice for writers struggling with fatigue, particularly those over 40.
Key Topics Covered
Understanding energy management using the "healthcare dollars" analogy
The importance of proper hydration for energy levels
Sleep optimization and common sleep disruptors
Caffeine dependency and strategies for reducing intake
Essential supplements for energy: B-vitamins and magnesium
Nutrition guidance for sustained energy
Special considerations for perimenopause and menopause
Key Takeaways
Daily water intake should be your weight divided by 2 in ounces
Optimal sleep duration is 7.5-8.25 hours
B-vitamins and magnesium are safe supplements for most people
Inflammatory foods like gluten and sugar can impact energy levels
Protein-rich breakfasts help stabilize blood sugar throughout the day
Resources Mentioned:
Dr. Meredith's practice: Receptive Medicine in Portland, Oregon
Recommended supplements: B-complex and magnesium glycinate
Suggested medical tests: ferritin, iron, TSH, free T3, and free T4
Guest Bio
Dr. Rachel Meredith is a naturopathic physician and licensed acupuncturist with over 25 years of experience. She practices at Receptive Medicine in Portland, Oregon, where she takes a holistic approach to helping patients optimize their health and energy levels.
The Write Anyway podcast is produced by Pages & Platforms and the Happily Ever Author Club.
Some links are affiliate links, we get a small commission when you purchase, but you don't pay more.
transcript
Anne Hawley: Hello and welcome to the Write Anyway podcast from pages and platforms and the happily Ever Author Club. In today's episode, Sue Campbell talks with Dr. Rachel Meredith about ways we can improve our physical energy to get more of our creative work done. Dr. Meredith is a naturopathic medicine doctor who also holds a degree in Chinese medicine, and she's been in practice here in Portland, Oregon for over 25 years.
Sue Campbell: Hello, Dr. Meredith. Good to see you.
Rachel Meredith: Good to see you.
Sue Campbell: I always call you Dr. Rachel in my head, so I'm trying to remember to call you Dr. Meredith on the podcast 'cause we've known each other a very long time. So I get to call you Dr. Rachel.
Rachel Meredith: Yes, either is fine.
Sue Campbell: So Rachel is my primary care physician and she's a naturopathic doctor and a licensed acupuncturist with a practice called Receptive Medicine in Portland, Oregon.
And she and I chat a lot. I see her once a month, and we're always like formulating and wishing people knew certain things and so this is my chance to talk with Dr. Meredith and share some of the knowledge that she's given me over the years. So Rachel, the first thing that I really wanna ask about is in our audience, there are a lot of writers who say that they don't have time to write, but when I poke a little bit further, it's actually that they don't have the energy to write. And we have an audience that I think it's fair to say a lot of them are 40 and older. A lot of them are women who are dealing with either perimenopause or menopause.
So any advice that you can give us from a, you know, holistic health, your holistic health perspective, that would help people think about how they can get their energy back up.
Rachel Meredith: Absolutely. I'm happy to talk about it. It's actually one of my favorite questions and I could go off about this, so at any point if you have. Follow up questions, just jump in. So I totally agree that I think that is the main obstacle for most people, and especially in terms of your purpose and being very productive.
You know, obviously you wanna feel like your cup is overflowing, and I think creatively comes from that. So the analogy that I like to give people is that imagine you're given a hundred healthcare dollars. Each day and you can decide what you're going to do with it. For a lot of my patients, they'll come in and I'll ask them, on a scale of one to 10, how's your energy?
And for most people, that number ranges between, you know, 3, 4, 5. Six. So let's say you've come in and I'm asking you that question and your energy's about a six outta 10. The analogy is that you should be starting each day with a hundred healthcare dollars that you can spend on whatever you like specifically writing.
And if you're only at 60%, you've already lost 40% of your account. So if you're busy, like most people are, if you're spending a hundred percent of your resources each day, but you only start with 60, then you know the simple math is that you're at negative 40 or you're running onto your health credit card at the end of each day.
So a lot of my work is identifying, you know, why. Are you at 60%? So I'm gonna try to simplify this as much as possible so people can start making changes at home. But the very first step, I think, is awareness. What truly is your energy? Again, if it's at 60%, then the goal is. What can you do that day to make sure that you have at least $61 at the end of the day?
That means that each day you're putting a little bit more into that savings account. So things that cost money are. Being dehydrated, not getting enough food, not getting the right types of food, and we can get more into that later. And also energetically, what are you doing that feels like a drain?
Maybe it's conversations with people that bring you down or it's doing something that you don't really want to do. So if you can make a list of first what your energy is and then what takes energy away and what. Gives you energy, then you can start at least having awareness in terms of what micro changes do you need to make? And for a lot of people, the first thing I want them to do is be hydrated. It doesn't cost any money, so you wanna take your weight, divide that by two, and that's how many ounces of water you need each day. So if you were 200 pounds, you need 100 ounces each day of pure flat water, not sparkling water 'cause it's dehydrating not tea, which I highly recommend and is delicious, but is also very mildly dehydrating.
And you know, obviously not caffeine or alcohol, each cup of those will deplete you by an eight ounce cup of water. So that is a very nice place to start and most people will have trouble getting in enough water during the day. So if that is your issue, try to just tackle it as a creative solution.
For some people, I have them just line up 10 cups, and then that's their job. You have that physical reminder during the day, or if you're very easily distracted, wear a camelback. You can be sipping on water while you're starting to write, but for a lot of people, that simple step will usually increase your energy at least 10 or 20% if you're going from dehydration back up to healthy hydration.
Sue Campbell: That's a fantastic, easy place for a lot of people to start. And you know, that's one that I still struggle with sometimes and try to remember. Okay. Flat water. Dr. Rachel says Pure flat water. Pure flat water. I. Another thing, which I think naturally flows from the energy conversation is sleep. And I read a statistic, which I 100% believe that almost all Americans are under sleeping, right?
We're not getting enough sleep, much less quality sleep to truly recharge our batteries and maintain health. What's the standard spiel that you give to people about getting enough sleep?
Rachel Meredith: Yeah, absolutely. It's an area to look at and I always start there, especially if there's severe fatigue, because you know, if there's severe insomnia. Then you wanna seek care from a, you know, intelligent or naturopathic physician who can actually identify the cause. For some people, low in iron or anemia can cause insomnia.
For others, it's undiagnosed hypothyroidism. For others, adrenal fatigue. And these are all things that can be tested and you can see, oh, those are not an issue for me, or, yes, this is an area that we need to start with. So first rule out if there's a medical issue and then second, you know, most people are aware of the common things that cause sleep disturbances.
Caffeine is a huge one. So if there is any fatigue whatsoever, I highly recommend, you know, very slowly weaning off caffeine and just seeing what your energy is off of that. Because for some people, even just having a cup or two of decaf, which still has five milligrams of caffeine in it, can actually be quite disruptive to the sleep cycle.
So, an ideal amount of sleep is seven and a half hours to eight and a quarter. If you're tired, you should be then getting a little bit more and winding down about an hour or two before bed, getting off those screens. Dark room, most people know all this common language, but it can make a drastic improvement in how quickly you fall asleep and the quality of sleep itself.
Sue Campbell: And I just have to underscore what a game changer this can be. Like when I came to you and Dr. Rachel won't tell you my medical stuff, but I'll tell you some of it. I had hypothyroidism, I had adrenal fatigue, and I had undiagnosed sleep apnea. And I was a wreck when I first started seeing Dr. Rachel back in probably 2018 I think it was.
And just addressing those issues improved sleep quality, and my energy was completely transformed. I felt like I went from dragging myself through the world, and I had like a three-year-old at the time just dragging myself through the world to, oh my God, I'm someone who can function again.
It is so worth it to solve for any sleep issue that you have. I also wanna address the elephant in the room around caffeine because most writers will tell you, you will pry caffeine from their cold, dead hand. That was one of the first assignments you gave me was, you need to stop drinking coffee.
Like, not even decaf, no caffeine, no tea, no nothing. And there was a part of me that was so angry, not with you, but just in general, like, I believed you. I trusted that was the right call, but I was in such a pout about it. So again, it was worth it. And I'm actually back to the point now where you let me have some green tea.
What do you tell patients who don't believe they're going to be able to get through a day without caffeine as they're making that transition?
Rachel Meredith: Again, I just highly recommend working with a practitioner who can bring about small changes, compassionate care. So they're gonna be doing some handholding to get you there. But again, it doesn't have to be forever. It's more for knowledge purpose. So if you're someone that's normally drinking three cups of caffeine and your energy's, again, that six outta 10, and you slowly wean off and you feel absolutely fantastic, your energy comes up to an eight outta 10, that itself is gonna motivate you.
And in terms of weaning off, I mean, caffeine is a very strong drug. And so I think, again, the importance is making sure that your first very well hydrated before you start finding your alternatives. So something, a cup of tea that you might actually enjoy. My favorite, if you enjoy the taste is licorice because it will actually prolong the half-life of cortisol, which is one of our main energy hormones. And then again to do it very slowly for a lot of people that get headaches weaning off caffeine, that's actually a surefire prediction that your body's actually having a hard time processing it. People that don't have difficulty with caffeine, they don't have difficulty with their fatigue or adrenals, they can go off of it, no problem.
So if you've tried in the past and it's been hard, again, work with somebody. Also do it as slowly as you possibly can. So. Two and a half cups for a couple days, two, one and a half. One. Make it as slow as you can, and in terms of something that you can provide yourself to give you some natural energy, b Vitamins is my favorite, so I'm not gonna prescribe a lot of supplements to people that I haven't seen as an individualized patient, but B vitamins, everyone can go on. You cannot get too much of them. Your body will just urinate them out. And you'll notice if you get a really high quality B complex, which is what I recommend, if your urine turns bright yellow that is a good sign that you are actually absorbing the B one thiamine. And that is just the breakdown product as it comes out.
So it's actually showing that you are absorbing it, whereas most people think, oh no, I'm just losing all those B vitamins. No, you're processing them, absorbing them, breaking it down and setting it free. So taking one or two B complex with breakfast and with lunch can help you on that path to both wean off caffeine and increase your energy.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, and now I'm of the opinion that you'll pry my B vitamins out of my cold dead hands.
Rachel Meredith: It's a good healthy change.
Sue Campbell: Yes. Well, let's talk a little bit, as long as we're on the subject of supplements, again, work with someone, everybody if you can of all understanding. Also, not everyone can work with an alternative medicine provider like you're a naturopath. Sometimes people for their insurance, it's only allopathic available to them.
And sometimes, you know, they don't have insurance at all, so we wanna just encourage you to make whatever changes within your power to make and keep working towards that. But I know we've talked before, Rachel, about magnesium, so I wanted to cover that before we move on to nutrition is there any other supplement that is just a no brainer that everyone can take?
Rachel Meredith: Yes. There's a few things that I recommend for everyone. It's sort of my longevity protocol because there's nothing that you should have any negative reactions to, ever, and you cannot get too much of them. So your body will excrete if there's any excess in the system. So we talked about B vitamins, breakfast and lunch, not after 2:00 PM or it actually might keep you awake, it's so good at giving you energy. Magnesium is another one. The reason I love magnesium so much is it provides so many different roles within the body. So the first is helping the liver detoxify. Most people know that the liver's our main detox organ and it will just help that process. It also will help for a healthy heart.
It's also exceptionally calming, so if. If I were to recommend only two supplements to everyone, it would be one or two be complex with breakfast and lunch and one, two, or three magnesium in the evening. So the caveat, if you take a little bit too much magnesium, it can cause a loose stool. And if you suffer with constipation, actually that's a nice way to treat that.
But I usually recommend to start with one or two of magnesium glycinate, it's really important to look at the form of the salt of the mineral. So magnesium glycinate is the most easily absorbed, and if cost is an issue, I usually recommend get the highest quality supplement available to you and just take less rather than get a cheap supplement and take a bunch of it because it's not well absorbed. Again, if money's really tight, even just taking one magnesium glycinate today, about 150 milligrams, will definitely improve your quality of sleep and your sense of relaxation.
Sue Campbell: Love it. Okay, let's talk about nutrition while I take my sip of plain flat water. Nutrition, I think is a big issue again, for most of America, like North America, United States, south America, central America nutrition is something that we're not really taught. There's a lot of conflicting information out there around nutrition. What do you tell your patients about nutrition, especially as it relates to having enough energy through the day?
Rachel Meredith: Yes, I love to simplify this process, even though changing nutrition can be a big challenge. But basically a huge part of my practice is helping people feel more vital, have more energy through lowering inflammation. So inflammation, we can think about it at a being little fires that are being produced throughout the body and we're working to dampen those. So obviously drinking enough water is a great way of doing that, but nutritionally, you can also think about getting vegetables that are really high in a water content as another way to lower information. So cucumber, jicama, asparagus.
You know, trying to have one new vegetable each week that you enjoy the taste of, and that will really help with your energy. In general, inflammatory foods foods that create inflammation are gonna be more taxing. They are gonna make you more tired. So the number one food that I see as a fatiguing food is gluten, and the reason for this is that when anybody eats gluten, it's gonna cause a little bit of a secretion of cortisol.
In a sense, you are wasting some of those healthcare dollars. Radically changing to a gluten-free diet can be tricky. But you might just start by focusing on like, well, what are whole grains that I enjoy that could replace that? So, so doing rice in a stir fry rather than a sandwich or doing quinoa as your side, or perhaps going for tacos again rather than the typical sandwich meal.
So avoiding gluten will improve your energy and then another food that is very fatiguing is sugar. So usually we get fatigued and then the body looks at that as a fight or flight response and sends out more cortisol. We have more stress from that. Eating sugar will kind of blip up your energy temporarily, but then drop you lower than where you started from.
So things that can help you have less sugar cravings. The B vitamins, getting those for breakfast and lunch will really benefit you. Being hydrated, actually dehydration the body might think of as hunger. So it wants quick foods like sugar. So instead, again eating regularly. And things like a higher protein breakfast will improve your energy probably more than anything else I can recommend.
So looking at breakfast more like we look at dinner, breakfast is what's gonna stabilize your blood sugar throughout the day. So leftovers from dinner or any kind of chicken, fish and rice tacos, step outside of that American mold of thinking that breakfast needs to be sweet because that will also lower your sugar cravings and jump up your energy.
Sue Campbell: Fantastic. And just a reminder, you can make all of these changes a little bit at a time. If you're someone who you know benefits from tapering and making little changes at once. What I found was once I made one change, it actually made me want to make other changes. It's like the better you feel, the better you wanna feel, the more empowered you are to be like, oh, this is working, what else can I do? And for me, I'm, you can tell me if I'm an anomaly, Rachel. I think sometimes I am, but I would rather flip the switch faster often, I feel like I'm if I try to taper on something, I just find myself like going back to it and going back to it and going back to it. Whereas I'm just like, no, I can't do that anymore. I don't do that anymore.
For some people out there, you may benefit just from throwing the switch and doing it in a really complete way, and other people I think, benefit from weaning a little bit.
Rachel Meredith: Yes, I think that everybody is a little bit different. So again, your choices really should be individualized, and if you can't afford a practitioner on your journey, then perhaps finding a friend that might wanna make some similar changes, so that you can agree to encourage one another. I do highly recommend at some point, and it doesn't have to be at the beginning but to go off the foods that are very fatiguing because I like people to see that drastic jump.
So, for me that's avoiding gluten sugar, caffeine, potentially cow dairy, and making sure there's enough protein at breakfast and lunch. So a lot of times it can be helpful to add things in before you take anything out. So to really make sure you've gotten some source of protein, vegetable, and good complex grain at each meal. Make sure that you're hydrated. Perhaps try to get that little extra half hour of sleep and then start the work of looking at pulling things out so that you can notice, well, how do I feel off of it? And I used to, at the beginning of my practice, be a little bit more moderate and say, do we'll, do a little list of less of this and a little less of that. But I found that when people, if they were able to make those changes for a week or three days or 10 days they just couldn't believe how much better they were feeling at the end of that time. So absolutely start as small as feels comfortable to you.
Sue Campbell: All right, so last thing I wanna talk about, 'cause it impacts a lot of people and I think it's really underused, is perimenopause and menopause. So lots of changes taking place in energy levels, in mood and things like that. What sort of advice would you give to people going through this and how might they get some help in managing some of those symptoms?
Rachel Meredith: Yeah, if you can't go see a naturopathic physician who's just naturally gonna be looking at your lab work for how your organs are functioning we try to get people not just in the normal range, but actually into the optimal range. So an example of that is a lot of people who go and see a regular medical doctor, md, they'll test for iron, but they won't test for your iron storage, and a lot of women actually are low in ferritin, which is your iron storage, and that is actually a cause of fatigue. So asking your MD or your naturopath or whoever is your primary care to run a ferritin and iron is very important. And then running not just the TSH, which is how the thyroid's functioning, but also having a look at how much hormone is being secreted. So that's the free T3 and free T4 if you wanna write a list to request. So those two things are very important because if you're going into perimenopause and you don't have enough iron, or you're anemic, or you don't have enough thyroid or your hypothyroid. And the third thing on that list would be how your adrenals are doing, which is kind of a specific test as well.
But that just simply relates to, is my energy fantastic? No. Then there's probably something going on with the adrenals as well. So when those numbers are low, you really wanna address those first and then go to the next level of how are the estrogen and progesterone levels. And common symptoms of having low estrogen and progesterone: sleep disturbances, issues with more frequent injuries or joint ache ,dryness in the vaginal area, or lowered libido, memory loss, or foggy mind, insomnia, flashing of heat or night sweats, which can happen during the day or the night. And mood swings as well.
So there's a number of things that can cause that, but I always like to educate people. Start with going to your ND or MD and test for your thyroid and your ferritin, and iron. And you can also test for estrogen and progesterone on the labs.
Then work with somebody who can identify if you are indeed low and need some support with that because it can be life altering to get those hormones where they should be, not just normal. So example of TSH normal is 0.5 to 5 or 4.5, but in terms of having great energy, we want that TSH to be between one and two.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, that was something when I first started seeing you where if you're in that normal quote unquote normal range, but way at the other end your western, allopathic doctor is gonna be like, no, that's totally fine, but you're still dragging yourself through your day. So I think that's one of the things, and I'm not anti allopathic medicine.
I wear an insulin pump. I have type one diabetes. I need my endocrinologist. And I need Dr. Rachel Meredith, right, to make me feel like a whole complete, healthy human being. But it's important to realize the philosophical differences between the two styles of medicine so that you can get the help you need.
I find personally, I'm not gonna put you on the spot, Rachel, unless you wanna weigh in, that for chronic things like issues where you're just like, I just feel bad and I don't know why, your MD, your medical doctor, is gonna check for egregious things and if he look fine, he is just gonna shrug and say sorry.
Whereas if you go to a naturopath, they're gonna look at the big picture and really optimize your health and figure out what are the preventative things, what are the nutritional things, the whole big picture. And really help you work towards feeling your best rather than just stopping the bleeding, so to speak.
Rachel Meredith: Yes, exactly. I think, the big take home is work with some kind of a practitioner to get more knowledge about your body and get as much testing as they will possibly allow. I like to do a lot of testing because I'm a scientist and I like to have clear results about exactly what is the cause for this specific individual person, because you can have 20 patients with fatigue and I might treat them all differently. But yeah, if you've gone and run your blood work and your traditional MD has said, yeah, there's nothing wrong, but you don't feel well, you don't feel energetic, you're not sleeping well, you have low energy, there is a ton that you can do at home to start that path of making changes in terms of magnesium, B vitamins, getting, you know, really good sourced protein like dal for breakfast could be a nice choice. So finding some variety with what you're eating that's going to give you energy and then propel you forward.
Sue Campbell: Fabulous. Well, I think that's a great place to end. Dr. Rachel Meredith, thank you so much for being here with us today. And I hope everyone feels a little more empowered to take control of their own energy levels.
Rachel Meredith: Great. Thank you so much for having me, Sue..
Anne Hawley: And that's it for this week's episode of the Write Anyway podcast. If you'd like a weekly dose of writing insight and mindset and marketing tips in your inbox, subscribe to the Write Anyway newsletter at pagesandplatforms.com/subscribe.
Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.