Episode 7
Episode 7: Fix Your Fatigue with nutritionist Karina Antram
After struggling with a debilitating combination of fatigue and burnout during her career as an HR leader, Karina decided to take matters into her own hands. She retrained as a nutritionist, and now runs her own clinic, providing support to people with fatigue, stress and burnout.
This year, she released her bestselling book, Fix Your Fatigue. Karina recently starred on Channel 4’s Steph’s Packed Lunch, as well as The Chris Evan’s Breakfast Show.
She talks us through her experience of fatigue and how she came to recognise that tiredness isn’t normal. We learn how to make simple adjustments to everyday favourites – from jam on toast to spaghetti bolognaise – and talk through the five steps people can take to fix their fatigue.
Transcript
Alex Regan
Hello and welcome to Leeds Voices, the weekly podcast brought to you by the University of Leeds. I'm Alex Regan and this week we're talking about subjects very close to my heart, and that is fatigue. As a dad to two children under three, there isn't a waking moment where I'm not incessantly complaining about sleepless nights, low energy and just general brain fog.
::Alex Regan
But luckily this week we're joined by nutritionist, author and Leeds alum Karina Antrim. Karina retrained as a nutritionist after suffering a debilitating combination of fatigue and burnout during her career in H.R. and her new book, Fix Your Fatigue, aims to empower people to make simple adjustments to their everyday diets to help combat tiredness. And better still, Kareena's brought her message to the nation after being featured on Channel Four.
::Alex Regan
Steph's packed lunch, as well as the Chris Evans breakfast show. Ed Newbould spoke to her last month and she gives us five easy steps for people to fix their fatigue.
::Ed Newbould
I always start with the warmup question of what did you have for breakfast? But this is actually really relevant with you. So do you mind telling me what you had for breakfast this morning.
::Karina Antram
So that's a good question. I love talking about breakfast, I think breakfast really sets you up for the day. But because I'm a nutritionist, obviously I'm going to say that. But no, I had a good breakfast this morning. It it was a Bircher muesli, so I made it the night before, soaked oats in oat milk.
::Karina Antram
So I used a well, I didn't use particularly oat milk. I had oats with some almond milk by a company called Planche. And then I added in some grated apple because great step was contains pectin, which is brilliant for the gut. And I added in some flaxseed and some lin seeds and then some berries for antioxidant properties and some Greek yogurt.
::Karina Antram
Because Greek yogurt is a prebiotic and that breakfast for me, if I have that or porridge, I just find it's really good at sustaining energy levels throughout the morning. And I have had a very busy morning this morning with client calls and obviously doing this podcast.
::Ed Newbould
I guess a lot of people would that myself included, I would have liked to use lots of toast with jam on them. Is that not particularly healthy?
::Karina Antram
So if you are eating toast, what I would suggest you do is switch your toast for sourdough because it contains prebiotics that feed the gut, which is ultimately what you want. You want to enhance your gastrointestinal health and your gut microbiome. If you like toast, I would have a banana and the nut butter. So things like almond butter, cashew butter, because again, you don't.
::Karina Antram
going to get a slump at about: ::Karina Antram
But change the bread that you have and just change to topping other toppings are great as an avocado is sort of poached eggs, anything like that, too. It's not going to enhance your sort of blood sugar first thing. The reason I chose Leeds because it was a well-recognized university for sort of the business business and management side, had a very good business school.
::Karina Antram
So that was probably my primary reason for choosing Leeds. But also it was a large university and I was I'm from Brighton originally and that was a large city and I wanted it to be moved to another city. I knew I didn't want to attend a London university because not only they're more expensive, but I don't think you get that feeling of fitting away from home.
::Karina Antram
And I was really keen to sort of, you know, fly the nest and kind of to be independent. So for me, Leeds ticked a lot of my boxes. I ended up absolutely loving it. I met some brilliant friends, brilliant people. I really enjoyed the course. I think for me, I probably being very honest with you, had prioritized partying more than working, but I have no regrets because I ended up with the degree I wanted and I ultimately I really enjoyed my time at Leeds.
::Karina Antram
I had a lot of fun. I tried to set up my own business straight when I was 20, coming out of university, and it was a big failure and I've had a number of failures in my career, but I think failure is really important. So I was importing a health juice, tea and jam from Malaysia and I did it for about a year because I'm somebody who came out of university and I was hungry.
::Karina Antram
I felt really entrepreneurial. I was, you know, really wanted to do. I was ambitious and I was driven. And I decided actually the best way for me to pursue what I loved, which was around sort of food, health, wellness, was to run my own business. But I think looking back in hindsight, I was too young and too inexperienced at the time to really take it forwards.
::Karina Antram
I learned a lot and I made a lot of mistakes, which I think has been useful for later on in life. But then I realized I need to get a corporate job. And I think the one thing I would urge people to do, if you're sort of in this sort of career, kind of, you know, you leave university looking for sort of the right career for you is I focused my career around two things, status and what I was going to earn because that was most important to me at the time.
::Karina Antram
So I chose a job at an investment bank just doing the admin. And initially and it ended and ended up going into each other. But it was never the right career choice for me at all. I was so ill suited to it, but all I cared about at the time was paying my bills, paying my, my rent, and I just wanted to make sure that I had a job that was seen to look good.
::Karina Antram
You know, I had a status driven company on my CV and it made me feel good, but actually it wasn't the right advice at all. I shouldn't have done that because I think that's what led for me being unwell for a number of years. You know, I ended up burning out several times, which is why I ended up writing my book Fix Your Fatigue, which you can talk about in a moment.
::Karina Antram
But I was in a cycle of exhaustion in and in these very high performance, high stress cultures because I ended up moving into private equity and also management consulting for firms like Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte, all firms that you probably want to work for because they seem to be the right firms, you know, to really enhance your career and the greater promoting you.
::Karina Antram
But I just found those environments weren't right for me and my personality type, and I wish I'd taken more time and conducted more due diligence to think more carefully about the choices that I was making around my career.
::Ed Newbould
You mentioned briefly that the burnout.
::Karina Antram
So yeah.
::Ed Newbould
Can you explain a little bit what happened there and when you realized that something needed to change?
::Karina Antram
I think with fatigue it always starts with a triggering event. And for me, my trigger event actually was when I was 18. I had glandular fever. And the problem is something like gland fever is the Epstein-Barr virus, which is what it's linked to, stays latent in your cells and then reactivates under stress. I then had a series of very stressful jobs and very high performance coaches so that every time that I would be in a stressful environment, this virus would reactivate again and give me these really chronic flu like symptoms.
::Karina Antram
And I'd always have coughs and cold. I was always unwell. And I think the problem with fatigue is that unless you identify the root cause and unless you really manage it, it never really goes away. It just keeps coming back. And I was in this burnout cycle for years because I didn't quit my job. It was only when I quit my job and retrained as a nutritionist that I realized, Oh my gosh, all those years university I spent where I was read unhealthy eating a very poor diet, you know, drinking a lot have really impacted me later on in life.
::Karina Antram
And the one thing that I would urge university students is there's recent scientific research to suggest that if you were a youth binge drinker, particularly at university, it can really change the composition of your gut microbiome later on in life. And I generally believe all my stomach and gastrointestinal issues were due to the amount that I was drinking at university coupled with the virus of the Epstein-Barr.
::Karina Antram
So I think you really have to make sure that whatever stage you are in your life. Yes, absolutely. Have fun, but do make sure that you're still optimizing your health and wellbeing. It's so hugely important that I ended up returning as a nutritionist, which is my profession now. I run a clinic called Nokia Health, supporting people with fatigue and stress and burnout.
::Karina Antram
I've got incredibly busy clinic at the moment and I think that's probably because since COVID we have a number of long COVID cases and also burnout at the moment in corporations seems to be unprecedented levels. A lot of people are walking around extremely fatigued. So it's my mission now to empower people to take control of their health. It's something I absolutely love to do, and I also have my own personal experience to help people as well.
::Ed Newbould
Was there a single thing that you changed that made the biggest difference, or was it an accumulation?
::Karina Antram
I think it's the accumulation and change of your daily habits because your daily habits accumulate over time. It's like almost in a way, thinking about it, changing the needle by 1% every day. And that has long term effects. So I think there's never one singular tip. There's never one thing that you can do. It's a combination of tiny little factors to integrate within your day to make you feel better.
::Karina Antram
And I think that's what has had the biggest impact in my life. It's the change in my daily habits.
::Ed Newbould
You've released a book this year.
::Karina Antram
Yes, in March, the second it released. Yeah. With Penguin Random House. Yes.
::Ed Newbould
Can you tell us what kind of motivated you to write a book?
::Karina Antram
Yes, all.
::Ed Newbould
Of it down.
::Karina Antram
So for me, I've always toyed with the idea of writing a book for a number of years, and back when I was really fatigued, I felt there was nothing in the market that really spoke to me. Well, all the books were either written, you know, very, very heavy on the science or they were difficult to digest. And I thought, what actually, if not really thought about the tired reader, You know, when people are exhausted, the last thing I want to do is pick up a book which is absolutely full of, you know, scientific research.
::Karina Antram
It's very heavy literature. You want something, it's easy to read that you can action quite quickly. So I made sure my book was was targeted very much to tired reader. At the end of each chapter there is a little recap section, so if you're so exhausted, you can't even read a chapter. You can just read the recap to get the key points.
::Karina Antram
And there's a bit of scientific research is very much an evidence based book is distilled from hundreds of scientific research papers. So a little bit of science, one question and one action. So, you know, instantly you can take a little micro action that might make a difference to the day afterwards and make you feel better. So I think for me, that's the reason why I wrote the book.
::Karina Antram
I wanted people to feel empowered to take control of their own health. And also, let's be honest, in this country, we have a health care crisis going on. You know, the NHS at the moment is completely abandoned. It's completely broken system at the moment and semi doctor nurses are so overworked, it's so under-resourced. It's it's never been more important since the pandemic to take control of your own health.
::Karina Antram
So I want to try and inspire people to do that in a way that feels easy, simple and accessible.
::Ed Newbould
Said that the book itself your fatigue. There are five steps, I think.
::Karina Antram
Yes. Write the.
::Ed Newbould
Book. Are you able to give a brief summary of what those steps are and the content of the book?
::Karina Antram
Yeah, absolutely. So I have divided the book into two halves. The first half is all around the principles of functional medicine. It's getting the reader to self-reflect and make sure that you're trying to get to the root cause as to why you feel tired. So it's a self-reflective phase. Is the first half. The second half of the book is the action side of things.
::Karina Antram
It's it's to see when you can start taking action. It's divine to five simple steps. It's the first step is about eating for energy. And it's all around big nutrition, which is brain immune and gut nutrition. And what I want people to do is think very carefully about what they're eating on a daily basis and building a balance plate, because so often people build plates where you look down and it's just a beige plate of food.
::Karina Antram
Whereas actually what we want is to have foods that contain polyphenols and phytonutrients and a diversity, because the diverse is what creates a really, really healthy gut microbiome. So the scientific research suggests that we need to eat 30 different plants a week, and plants can be anything from herbs and spices to nuts and seeds. But we want fruits and vegetables.
::Karina Antram
We want to make sure we're eating 30 a week.
::Ed Newbould
If you're making a making your tea, making like a spank bowl, say, what sort of additions would you make to supplement instead?
::Karina Antram
Well, we'll take the we'll take then. The spaghetti bolognaise is a good one. We'll take that. So what I would say, if you really want to optimize your spaghetti bolognaise is to to use half made to take out fit since the meat and I didn't 50% lentils because you increase it creating a plant based protein which obviously creates you know sort of it's not as much saturated fat that red meat can sometimes have.
::Karina Antram
I would say it's better for your digestion as well. So it's good. Red meat is something called a high thermic food. So it takes longer to absorb and digest in your systems, especially if you're having spaghetti bought in late in the evening. If you have something like lentils, it makes it easier to digest, I think, because lentils are a lower thermic effect food.
::Karina Antram
And also you could do things like adding in something like livers, like chicken livers, which you might think, oh gosh, but actually liver is quite cheap to buy. But it's a nutritional powerhouse. It contains every Vitamin A mineral, and it's a fantastic source of iron. And typically iron deficiency can also cause fatigue. So if you do just those two things, you know, you automatically supercharging or spaghetti bolognaise.
::Karina Antram
And what you also might want to do is use 50% less pasta and you might want to either switch your pasta to a wholemeal or a spelt type pasta again for added nutrients, or you might try it when she's 50% less pasta and spiralized vegetables. So spiralized carrots spiralized in a courgette and cook them. And that's a great way of getting more sort of micronutrients, your vitamins and minerals into a spaghetti bolognese as well.
::Karina Antram
So it's about making tiny little adjustments, tiny little tweaks to family favorites. It's the second stage of my book. The second step is a bit more of a deeper dive into the gut microbiome. And as we know at the moment, there's not only, I think, an increase in mental health issues at the moment in this country. That's why there's so many brilliant people at moment, you know, really shine a spotlight on mental health and university.
::Karina Antram
Mental health, I think can really take its toll as well. As you know, a lot of university students struggle with mental health and actually optimizing the gut microbiome is incredibly important because there's a direct link, there's a bi directional link between the gut and the brain. So it's important we do a lot around prebiotic and probiotic foods. We make sure we adopt stress reduction techniques and diagrammatic breathing in.
::Karina Antram
There's a lot that we can do to enhance our guts. It's incredibly important. The first aid, the third stage is about super supercharging your sleep and your exercise. So nutrition, sleep and exercise. I would say the really core foundational layers of wellbeing and sleep, lot of university students and just everybody generally at the moment just they don't sleep well.
::Karina Antram
And for me one of my first signs was I became an insomniac. You know, when you don't sleep well, I would say that that's when things really start to decline. Your mental health can take a huge battering of mental, physical and emotional health. Once you start not sleeping, then you start making poor food choices. And that research shows you're more likely to reach for the sugar and for the unhealthy food.
::Karina Antram
Then you start not moving and that starts off the cascade of the vicious cycle. So I think the first thing I could or I should not urge anyone to do is optimize your sleep. And that's basic things like the same sleep and wake time, go to sleep the same time every night and wake up at the same time every day because we don't want to have circadian misalignment.
::Karina Antram
And then because also you're then acting outside of your credit types. Everyone has a natural chronotype that they adhere to. And if you if you say, for example, have a Netflix binge and you stay up to 2 a.m. in the morning, that can really cause circadian misalignment. You want to make sure you're doing basic things like having a routine.
::Karina Antram
And if you think about, you know, children and babies, they, they, they thrive under routine. But as adults, we tend to lose our routines. So it's actually important we start stabilizing routines and making this a sleep routine, a really core part of our wellbeing. So optimize your sleep is important. There's lots of lovely little tips in there about optimizing your sleep from things like two cups of magnesium flakes in the bath is really important because magnesium is a sleep inducer and having a tea like Valerian or Lemon Balm, again, really good optimizing sleep and a walk first thing in the morning within 30 minutes is brilliant because the the the light can actually reset the
::Karina Antram
nd actually even just walking: ::Karina Antram
Every university student can do that quite easily. It's it's cheap, it's free, you know, and you get you sort of fresh air as well, which is brilliant. And then the fourth that is all about energizing with supplements. Now, supplements are quite controversial because firstly they're expensive. And to be honest with you, supplements are expensive and you have to make sure you're buying a really good quality supplement.
::Karina Antram
The problem at the moment that we have in this country, it is also low quality isn't what it used to be. It's mineral. It's not as mineral rich. And also when we're transporting a lot of our fruit and veg from other countries, you know, getting them for me to be the nutrients are lost within that transportation process. So our food unfortunately is just not what it used to be.
::Karina Antram
And also 50% of the food that we eat these days isn't even classified as food, it's very ultra processed. So it's having a huge negative impact on our health moment. So sometimes in a lot of cases we do need to supplement. And I found supplements to me hugely beneficial. So I'm in the camp of I'm pro supplements, but I always adopt with my clients in my clinic a food first approach.
::Karina Antram
It's really important. And then you introduce some supplements and the final step is all about harnessing the power of your brain. So the one thing that I found when I was very fatigued was to actually my brain was absolutely spent. I was so cognitively fatigued and the one of there's a couple of things that I find was really beneficial, but things like doing morning pages first thing in the morning.
::Karina Antram
So you write down three pages without judgment of note first thing in the morning to completely declutter your mind. And it's interesting, the impact that has no day is huge because you start the day off afresh. You get rid of your worries, you anxieties, your thoughts, and it just clears the day ahead and you can start off in a more positive way.
::Karina Antram
And there's lots of hacks like that in the book that are really about optimizing your and harnessing the power of your brain, because without a strong mindset you can't thrive. And that for me is one of the biggest change that I've made to myself is is trying to really maximize my brain energy. So that's the sort of five steps in my book.
::Karina Antram
As I said, there's a big resources section at the back as well to direct people to as well. But it's it's a it's a good I think it's a good read. It's a good informative read. But I think it's just to reiterate that everybody should not realize it. Being tired all the time is not normal. So if you have somebody who is tired all day, every day and experiencing fatigue, please make sure you either reach out to your GP or reach out to a reputable practitioner and don't think that this is how you need to live life because there's so many you know, you want to live a life that is full of abundance and
::Karina Antram
you want to thrive. You want to be successful and productive, and if you're fatigued all the time, you can't do that. So I think that the key message from the book is getting to people to realize that the secret to happiness is having energy. And that's for me. Since I've had energy, I've achieved more in the past four years of my career than I have over a 20 year period.
::Karina Antram
Just because I now have energy. So if you don't have energy, think about why and start investigating and become your own private investigator for your own health.
::Ed Newbould
And I guess a good place to start is, is Fix Your Fatigue.
::Karina Antram
Absolutely. Read the book and I'd love to hear any feedback as well.
::Alex Regan
Thanks very much for listening to this episode of Leads Voices. It was presented by me, Alex Regan, your producer and reporter was Ed Newbould. Leeds Voices is brought to you by the University of Leeds Advancement Team. You can follow us on social media at Leeds Alumni or get in touch by email at Alumni at Leeds Dot AC dot UK.
