It was a 15-minute meeting with the Newcastle Knights recruiter. 6 weeks earlier he had shook my hand and told me I had a contract for the upcoming NRLW season. 

We had a meeting set 2 days prior to the contract signing cut off.

We had a meeting.

It was not simple. It was not calm.

I was yelled at, and by the end of it I had lost my NRLW contract.

I remember walking out and feeling like my body had gone completely quiet and completely loud at the same time.

My mind was trying to make sense of what had just happened.

My body was already responding.

That is what the stress response is designed to do.

When the brain detects threat, the HPA axis switches on. The hypothalamus, pituitary gland and adrenal glands start communicating so the body can mobilise energy, sharpen attention and help you get through the moment.

That response is not wrong.

It is protective.

The problem is not that the body reacts to stress.

The problem is when the body does not get enough opportunity to come back down.

Because the body does not separate life into neat categories.

Emotional stress.

Physical load.

Poor sleep.

Pain.

Under-fuelling.

Big training weeks.

Gut symptoms.

Hormonal changes.

Work pressure.

Conflict.

Injury.

Viral load. Vaccines, Illness.

They all draw from the same system.

I often explain this to clients as the body burden bucket.

Every stressor adds something to the bucket.

Some are obvious. A hard training block. A virus. A flare-up. A poor night of sleep.

Some are less obvious. Not eating enough across the day. Living in a constant state of urgency. Pushing through pain. Feeling unsafe in an environment. Carrying emotional stress without recovery.

The bucket can hold a lot.

Until it cannot.

And when it starts to overflow, symptoms can show up in places that seem unrelated.

This is where people often feel confused.

They come in with one clear problem, but the story around it is bigger.

A patient case

A recent example was a patient I had with bilateral heel pain.

On paper, it looked like a local issue.

Pain under the heel. Worse in the morning. Worse after load. Frustrating, persistent and limiting. She had already seen podiartists, physios and was in orthotics. Doing all the exercises under the sun.

So yes, we looked at the local factors.

Foot and ankle strength.

Training load.

Footwear.

Calf capacity.

Recovery between sessions.

But I also zoomed out. Other pracititoners had banged away at the same treatments and it simply was not working. SHe had this pain for over 2 years now.

Because tissue pain does not happen in isolation from the rest of the body.

This patient told me that she had put on 10kg when her pain had started, and we ran some bloods she was pre-diabetic and was inflamed.

It meant the heel was trying to recover in a body that was already carrying a high load.

That distinction matters.

Pain is real.

Tissue load is real.

Inflammatory load is also real.

When the bucket is full, the body can become less tolerant of things it used to manage.

The same run feels harder.

The same niggle hangs around longer.

The same recovery strategy does not seem to work as well.

The goal is not to blame stress for everything.

The goal is to identify which levers we can actually pull.

Here are five inflammation levers I look at often.

1. Sleep and circadian rhythm

Sleep is when the body does a large amount of repair, regulation and recovery.

We look at sleep timing, sleep quality, wake-ups, light exposure, caffeine timing and whether the body is actually getting a chance to downshift.

This does not need to be perfect.

But if sleep is consistently poor, the bucket fills faster.

2. Blood sugar and fuelling

Under-eating is a stressor.

Long gaps without food, low protein intake, high training load without enough fuel, or relying on caffeine to push through the day can all add strain.

For active women especially, consistent fuelling is not optional. It is part of recovery.

3. Nervous system load

This is not about telling someone to “just relax”.

It is about recognising when the body is spending too much time in a threat state.

Breath work, walking, boundaries, sunlight, gentle movement, therapy, better recovery planning and removing unnecessary stressors can all support regulation.

Small inputs, repeated often, matter.

4. Gut and immune triggers

For some people, gut symptoms, food intolerances, recent illness, frequent infections or ongoing immune activation can contribute to the overall load.

This is not about cutting out foods without a reason.

It is about paying attention to patterns and investigating properly when symptoms keep repeating.

5. Training load and tissue capacity

Sometimes the issue is not that the body is inflamed in a broad sense.

Sometimes the tissue is simply being asked to do more than it currently has capacity for.

That is where strength work, load management, technique, footwear, recovery and graded return to activity matter.

The body usually needs both local support and systemic support.

Not one or the other.

This is where blood testing can be useful.

Not because a blood test explains everything.

It does not.

But it can help bridge the gap between “I feel off” and “here are some things we can investigate”.

Depending on the person, that might include markers such as iron studies, B12, vitamin D, thyroid markers, glucose regulation, inflammatory markers and other relevant pathology guided by symptoms and history.

The point is not to chase random numbers.

The point is to build a clearer picture.

What is the body carrying?

What is it missing?

What is being asked of it?

And what can we change first?

That 15-minute meeting did not create every health challenge I have ever had.

Bodies are not that simple.

But it did teach me something

The body remembers load.

It adapts to survive.

And when we want it to heal, perform or feel safe again, we have to look at the whole system.

Not just the sore spot.

Not just the blood test.

Not just the training plan.

The whole bucket.

Get your functional bloods analysis today