Tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix?
I help women whose energy, digestion and sleep have changed understand what’s actually going on.
In clinic in Rutherglen & Yarrawonga · Online across Australia
BHSc (Naturopathy) · BN · ANTA member · Food-first
I’m Tania Lewis, BHSc (Naturopathy), BN, a naturopath for women whose energy, digestion and sleep have changed.
I see clients in Rutherglen and Yarrawonga, and online across Australia. Before naturopathy, I spent fifteen years as a registered nurse in public and private hospitals.
Most women who see me are tired. Often their digestion or sleep has changed too, and they’ve been dealing with each one separately. I look for what’s sitting underneath, and I explain it in a way that makes sense to you.
You’re tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix
Your digestion’s not what it was. You’re waking at 3am, or sleeping through and waking tired anyway. By mid-afternoon there’s nothing left in the tank. You don’t feel like yourself, and you can’t point to when that started.
You eat reasonably well. You’ve had the blood tests, maybe more than once. Each time, your GP has looked at your results and told you everything is normal.
You know your body. This doesn’t feel normal.
Three problems, or one?
Tiredness that rest doesn’t touch, digestion that’s changed, and sleep that doesn’t restore often show up together.
That’s why dealing with them one at a time hasn’t got you far. And it’s why being told your bloods are normal hasn’t helped either.
Reference ranges are set wide, because they’re there to flag disease. A ferritin sitting at the very bottom of the range still gets marked normal. So does a fasting glucose that’s fine while insulin is quietly climbing. On paper, nothing’s wrong, yet you’re still tired every day.
Perimenopause and menopause can be part of the picture, because oestrogen influences blood sugar regulation and sleep. But a life stage explains when something started. It doesn’t tell me what’s driving it.
“Your doctor is looking for disease. I’m looking for patterns and dysfunction.”
How I work
Most nutrition advice targets the symptom. I want to know what’s driving it, and what your body needs. Food is the foundation.
Supplements often come in early, to kickstart things or top up what’s run low. Some levels are too low to rebuild from food alone in a reasonable time. I’ll tell you why each one is there, and when it can stop. Sometimes changing what you eat is the right first move, and supplements wait. Either way, the longer goal is for food and daily habits to do most of the work.
In my clinical experience, low energy, gut trouble and poor sleep often come back to the same few things: what’s happening in your gut, how much inflammation your body is carrying, and how well it’s handling blood sugar. Stress, hormones and your body clock come into it as well. Sometimes they’re the cause, sometimes they’re caught in the fallout.
So I don’t chase each symptom on its own. I work out which driver is running the show, and start there. Here’s what that looks like. Fatigue is not always iron. What about B12? Are you eating enough protein? Can you actually digest it? Do you have enough stomach acid to absorb what you’re eating?
Before we meet, I ask for any blood results you’ve had, old ones included, and read them against optimal ranges. If you haven’t had tests for a while, we’ll work out which ones are worth doing.
Often, the results women bring in usually include ferritin and TSH, and not much else. I want to see the whole iron picture, B12, active B12, fasting insulin, vitamin D and a full thyroid panel. Ferritin rises with inflammation, so on its own it can look fine when iron isn’t. Active B12 shows how much your cells can actually use. Fasting insulin can rise while glucose still looks fine. TSH alone doesn’t tell me whether you’re converting thyroid hormone into the active form your cells use.
If there are gaps, I’ll tell you which tests would fill them, and why.
I work alongside your GP, not instead of them. I never ask anyone to stop prescribed medication. If something needs a medical diagnosis, I’ll send you back to your GP.
Three steps to a plan that fits
What to expect over the next few months
This takes a season, not a fortnight. Care may take three to six months, sometimes longer. There’s no overnight fix and no magic pill, and the changes are yours to make.
“Most women who come to me have been unwell for years, not weeks. I’m not going to undo that in one consult, and I won’t pretend otherwise.”
- Every three to five days. The lining of your gut renews itself (Verma et al., 2025). So gut changes, if they come, usually show before blood changes.
- Around 120 days. The life of a red blood cell. That’s why, if you retest, it’s at the end of care, not partway through.
The order matters: Reset, Rebuild, Restore. Driving repair before inflammatory load has come down tends to produce flares.
Along the way, I track energy, sleep and stress out of ten, and your bowel habits on the Bristol Stool Chart. So you can see what is and isn’t shifting, well before any retest.
Verma, M., Garg, M., Yadav, P., Khan, A. S., Rahman, S. S., Ali, A., & Kamthan, M. (2025). Modulation of intestinal signal transduction pathways: Implications on gut health and disease. European Journal of Pharmacology, 998, 177531. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejphar.2025.177531
Conditions I support
Frequently asked questions
An Initial Clinical Assessment is 60 to 75 minutes, $220. Follow-up Consultations are 30 to 45 minutes, $150. Pathology and supplements are billed separately, at your cost.
Not necessarily. If you have recent results, send them and I’ll read them before we meet. If not, we’ll work out which tests are worth doing. Nothing gets repeated for no reason.
Yes. I work alongside your GP, not instead of them. I’ll read your existing results, and I’ll refer you back to your GP when something needs a medical diagnosis.
It depends on the practitioner. My practice is grounded in physiology, pathology interpretation and clinical reasoning. Every recommendation comes with the mechanism behind it. And where the evidence is thin, I’ll tell you.
That’s a fair question, and I can’t promise it will be. What I can tell you is how I work. A full history. Every result you have is read against optimal ranges. A plan that explains why each change is there.
They don’t need to be serious to be worth looking at. If your energy, digestion or sleep have changed and haven’t shifted with what you’ve already tried, that’s the pattern I work with. You’ve been coping with this for years, and that’s exactly why it’s worth looking at.
Yes. Most of the people I see are women whose energy, digestion and sleep have changed. But I see men and women of all ages, and the way I work is the same.
If nobody’s been able to tell you why, that’s the gap I work in.
An Initial Clinical Assessment is where we start: 60 to 75 minutes, $220.
Not sure yet? A free 10-minute Clarity Call is a chance to ask questions and see whether I’m the right person to help. No clinical advice, no obligation.
Rutherglen, Wednesdays and Thursdays, 74 Main Street.
Yarrawonga, Tuesdays, The Bridge of Health, 31-33 Belmore Street.
Online across Australia.
Contact by email: info@simplynaturopathics.com.au