Wellness by Designs - Practitioner Podcast

Beyond Exhaustion- Navigating Burnout with Kath McFarlane & Jo Cooper

• Designs for Health • Episode 113

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Explore corporate burnout solutions with experts Kath McFarlane and Jo Cooper, who transitioned from high-stress careers to functional medicine. Learn about burnout's impact on mental health, productivity, and business costs. Discover strategies to combat burnout through holistic wellness approaches, focusing on nutrition, movement, and emotional well-being.

Episode highlights:

  1. Personal burnout experiences in investment banking and law
  2. Remote work's role in exacerbating burnout
  3. Gen Z and millennial burnout trends
  4. Health Reflex: A holistic approach to corporate wellness
  5. Nutrition and supplementation for burnout recovery
  6. Integrating wellness into daily work routines
  7. The fertility-burnout connection
  8. Creating resilient, productive workplaces

About Jo: 

  • 8+ years as a corporate lawyer with HSBC, AEGIS Research and AAPT, in Hong Kong and Sydney
  • 4+ years owning and running a cooking school centered on healthy living with a Euro-Asian focus
  • Entrepreneur, Cookbook author “Our Tamarama Kitchen”
  • LLB (UTS), MIntRel (Sydney University), BScNutrDiet (Endeavour) – ongoing 2018-24, Dip Putonghua (Beijing Language & Cultural University)


About Kath:

  • 15 + years as a Naturopathic Practitioner
  • Previously, 10+ years investment banking with Société Générale Australia Ltd, SG London Commodity Derivates, SG Singapore and UBS
  • 5+ years commercial experience with CSR and TNT
  • B. Bus (UTS), Adv Dip Naturopathy

About Health Reflex
The Health Reflex is a game-changing preventative health and wellness company that has developed personalised programs to help individuals such as you live and work to your potential. Our core principles are rooted in evidence-based medicine, with an unwavering dedication to proactive healthcare, enabling individuals to set their own path to health and wellbeing. We base our approach on four key pillars: nutrition, physical activity, social connections and emotional wellbeing.

Connect with Health Reflex:  Wellness Programs | The Health Reflex

Shownotes and references are available on the Designs for Health website


Register as a Designs for Health Practitioner and discover quality practitioner- only supplements at www.designsforhealth.com.au


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DISCLAIMER: The Information provided in the Wellness by Designs podcast is for educational purposes only; the information presented is not intended to be used as medical advice; please seek the advice of a qualified healthcare professional if what you have heard here today raises questions or concerns relating to your health




Speaker 1:

Music. This is Wellness by Designs, and I'm your host, andrew Whitfield-Cook. This is Wellness by Designs, and I'm your host, andrew Whitfield-Cook. Joining us today is Kath McFarlane and Jo Cooper, both from the corporate world, who are both now functional medicine practitioners. Kath is a naturopath and Jo is a nutritionist, and today we're talking about navigating burnout. Welcome to you both. How are you? Great, great, thank you. Thanks for having us Our pleasure. Now could we start a little bit with your backgrounds, because you both come from that corporate world. Kath, if I could start with you, where do you come from? What was your trigger? What on earth made you leave that behind to move into naturopathy?

Speaker 2:

earth made you leave that behind to move into naturopathy. Well, I've been a naturopath in clinic for about 15 years, and prior to that I was in investment banking with a French bank and a Swiss bank trading commodity derivatives, and I did that for a long period of time. But I guess that it wasn't my true calling and and in that time I actually experienced burnout myself. So I know what it feels like to be exhausted, lose your motivation and and your sense of value in yourself yourself.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's really key. So you have a poignant appreciation of what patients or people are going through. So who are coming to seek help from you? Jo, how about yourself?

Speaker 3:

I have a corporate lawyer background, so I worked in the corporate world as a transaction lawyer for HSBC in Hong Kong and also in Singapore and Sydney, and whilst I enjoyed it, I found it pretty tough once I had children. So when I had babies, I gave up the corporate world and then decided to concentrate on the children and then got into cooking in a big way. I have a real passion for food, and so I ended up setting up a cooking school, followed by writing a cookbook that was published in about 2015. Published in about 2015. So after that, I then decided to study nutrition, because my passion was so great and everyone kept asking me for advice on food and nutrition, so that's how I pivoted.

Speaker 1:

Law is a pretty high pressure job as well. Any issues of burnout yourself that made you aware of what was going on.

Speaker 3:

Definitely around me. So in banking and finance, you know the hours are really long, and especially in Asia, working in Asia, where people you know you're at the office at six in the morning and leaving at seven, eight o'clock at night. So it's go, go, go. And when I did it there was very much a face value. Like you had to be in the office, you know, a lot of the time you had to show your face. Whether you're productive or not was another question.

Speaker 1:

But you had to actually be there, gotcha. So how big an issue is burnout in the corporate world and what are the costs associated with burnout? Jo, I'll start with you this time. Could you go first?

Speaker 3:

Yeah well, burnout is huge, to the point that in 2019, the World Health Organization has actually categorized it as a syndrome, and they've categorized it. It's it's under they under international classification of diseases, number 11, and they have characterized it using three criteria, and the first is feelings of energy depletion and exhaustion increase. The second is increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of being negative or cynicism related to one's job, and also that reduced professional efficacy. And you know we see this all the time and part of this has been exacerbated even further. So that was in 2019, sort of pre-pandemic, and that's just been exacerbated since COVID, where you know we're living in this hyper-virtualised world.

Speaker 2:

And we found some research that the WHO studied in 2019 that they estimated that the cost of burnout by 2030 would be $16 trillion, which is absolutely phenomenal. And in 2016, the World Economic Forum was estimating that the cost of absenteeism and presenteeism which is where people might show up to work but they're actually not fully engaged in their work or they'll take time off work and it's not related to injury or illness, and that in 2016 alone was costing the global economy $332 billion a year. So you can only imagine that that has really escalated post the pandemic. And when you ask the question, how big is it?

Speaker 2:

As Joe was sort of alluding to before, with this hyper-virtualised world, post-pandemic, we're seeing more people on the screen and we know that from the literature, excessive screen time is associated with mental health issues and greater risk of burnout. And we know, too, that working from home, whilst it's got its benefits, it's not all positive and we are concerned because we can see it when we speak to these corporates that there's more risk of people getting burnout. And you look at working from home, for example, a lot of people are actually just working back-to-back meetings, so they'll start at eight and they'll end at 6. And often clients will say to Joe and I oh, I didn't have lunch until 4 o'clock, I just got caught up in my work.

Speaker 2:

Or they'll say I haven't gone outside so they see no sunlight. Their steps are probably less than 500 per day and for some people, especially those who love working from home, sometimes there's a tendency for social isolation. And we know, speaking to some HR departments, that they're now starting to implement systems where they monitor their staff more closely and they'll be looking at their keystrokes per hour and clients and workers are saying to us that creates a lot more stress.

Speaker 2:

So, prior to the burnout sorry, prior to COVID burnout was a big issue 2019. But we believe that it's Exacerbated.

Speaker 3:

It's growing, yeah, since COVID because of the whole change in the landscape of working. Yeah, and if you throw into the mix, it's really a mix.

Speaker 1:

Figure me, you go.

Speaker 2:

No, I was just going to say. If you throw into the mix artificial intelligence, which has escalated in the last 10 months, that's a big thing that we all need to be mindful of too. That's all about speed of processing and scalability, and that's good for a machine, or doable for a machine, but us humans needing to achieve more productivity in a shorter amount of time, is a recipe for a lot of stress.

Speaker 1:

But you know, one of the issues I see here is this the metrics that are used. For instance, you spoke about keystrokes. Okay, I can do keystrokes, I can just do that. Heaps of keystrokes. It's going to be gobbledygook, it's not going to be quality output. So I wonder if part of the message that these corporate and measurers need to learn is quality of output, not numeracy of output. You know, in the end it's got to be for the benefit of the company they're working with, surely? But who measures these things?

Speaker 3:

end. It's got to be for the benefit of the company they're working with, surely?

Speaker 1:

But who measures these things Like? It's accountants?

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Sorry, accountants, I'm lambasting you a bit. Kath, you said a very interesting word there. You said hyper-virtualised. That's so important.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, you see, we even see it in children. You look at prior to isolation, kids were, yes, they were on their phone, but isolation. When we were locked down at home, the only way that children could interact and communicate was through Snapchat or WhatsApp or what have you. And then we've come out of isolation and we've seen it even as mothers. We've seen it in our children and their friends that they are just addicted to their phones so much more than, say, five or ten years ago. And that's for the children. And then you look at the workers as well. What one of our clients said to us recently prior to COVID, she's a high level executive. Prior to COVID, I didn't even know what Skype was. Now she does 10 team meetings a day.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 3:

And obviously it's starting sorry, I was just going to say it's starting children at a really young age to not switch off, which is part of this hyper-virtualised world that we live in. And an interesting study by Asana in 2022 looked at over 10,000 knowledge workers across seven countries and they found that approximately 70% of workers experiencing burnout last year so 21, were Gen Z and then 74% of those were millennials.

Speaker 1:

Wow, and I found that a really interesting fact which is only going to get worse with this later generation as well. I take the point my eldest son was at uni and he's a very confident man. He stands upright and he was walking through uni going g'day how are you going? And people were looking up from their phones and going what Like this? They couldn't believe that somebody would actually say hello. It was the weirdest explanation of interpersonal communication. It was so strange to me. But anyway, guys, when we're talking about your approach versus others' approach to burnout, tell us what you do differently compared to others in the corporate world.

Speaker 2:

Well, we created our wellness company called the Health Reflex, and one of our main goals is to focus on corporate wellness and help workers and senior executives understand what burnout is and see those little white flags that they're getting as individuals before they hit the brick wall, and Jo and I have a really shared passion there around that.

Speaker 3:

Coming from the corporate space, we understand the pressures that we're all on that we're all on, and so that's, and part of that also is working with the CEO and the executive team to help them to identify within their team members and co-workers and employees the little white flags that can lead to burnout.

Speaker 3:

And that's really critical because you know when you're looking at a corporate, your corporate's only as good as your employees. Your greatest asset, their greatest asset are their employees and you know if your employees aren't working to optimum potential, then your company's not going to perform to optimum potential. So if we can get in there and provide a toolkit as such for top level management, for them to actually experience it and to know and to have these toolkits on how to live a better life and how to improve mental resilience and physical resilience and to improve quality of life, which is what we all want, what everybody wants then you know that's a really good thing. And then to help identify within their team when somebody's falling off the wagon or when you know one of those three things that the World Health Organisation have identified sort of that apathy and that loss of interest or, you know, identifying the fatigue and the exhaustion then they can step in there before that person gets burnt out.

Speaker 2:

And one of the things that we believe makes our program, or our corporate foundation program, different is that it's targeting the four pillars of health, and that's nutrition, movement, emotional well-being and social connection.

Speaker 2:

And we're also making a personalized approach and we're trying to take it away from the screens, because that's part of what's causing the problem. And we now know that a lot of the wellness companies in this space that are app-based or platform-based they're not successful, and there was an article that came out in the New York Times in January this year that was looking at the research around that. And we know, too, when we speak to CEOs and HR departments, that they're saying that their employee engagement in app-based wellness programs or one-off seminar at lunchtime about sleep or nutrition doesn't have long-lasting effects. So what we're working to do is give our clients self-health literacy and support them. Give them, make them accountable while they're doing our programs, because they are the recipes for success and it's it's helping people understand their bodies and improve their connection between the brain and the body, because when we're all on the screens, we're all in the head.

Speaker 1:

Do you find that your approach, being a nutritionist and a naturopath, let's say, rather than a psychologist or an occupational therapist, something like that that your love of food, love of herbs, love of being in and being part of nature, let's say do you find that having that lens gives you a unique perspective, that they go oh, hang on, this is a really different way of looking at things. Do you find that the CEOs, that the executive teams, they sit up and listen because you're different?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we've had a comprehensive it's a holistic approach to health and a lot of people haven't ever come across that before, so it's something new. And we've been surprised because they do listen, because what we do is evidence-based, it's not soft or fringe or kumbaya-ish. We're actually providing them with evidence-based practice.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And then a lot of the people that we're speaking to, those high executives. They want to perform really well. They're often those a type personalities and we hear with burnout that they're more highly represented in the burnout because they'll go that extra mile and they'll work those extra hours. Yeah, so it's worth mentioning that too.

Speaker 1:

Take us through how this looks like. In a program, you obviously get a meeting to talk about your program. Tell us how that looks, about incorporating that into the workers' lives. To say, okay, you have to take time out from being productive or less productive, you have to stop that, take time out and then do these things to become more productive. Take us through how this actually looks.

Speaker 3:

Well, part of it we want to create, you know, health reflexes for them.

Speaker 3:

So not necessarily taking time out of their own productivity, but actually, if they are taking time out, it's teaching them to take time out for self-care, basically, and actually understanding the why, why we are asking them to do something and to implement very incrementally little things into their day-to-day life.

Speaker 3:

So you know, for example, a lot of these workers are on their screens the whole time. So setting an alarm or being mindful okay, after an hour of solid work, setting an alarm for 10, 15 minutes just to even walk around the office and say hello to some fellow co-workers you know, have that social connection or, if they're working from home, to walk around the block or take their dog for a walk or to just engage with nature in a way, so just being mindful of the really little things that they can do to help their wellbeing. I mean, that's just one example. We also give them a therapeutic meal plan and we've crafted that really carefully to try and make it as easy and possible for them to prepare nutritious meals so they're not skipping breakfast and that they can grab and go, and also understanding the ingredients in the in the meals that they're preparing and how they're going to help their body and help their mind and make them more productive at the end of the day and increase that quality of life.

Speaker 1:

Kath, you're a naturopath. Do you get a chance to incorporate your love of naturopathic medicines, like, for instance, herbs, in this practice?

Speaker 2:

Oh yes for sure, for sure. I mean when I think about burnout. One of the top herbs that I go to is beautiful withania, that non-stimulating adaptogenic herb. I really love using that, and time and time again I'll hear patients come back after about two weeks and they'll say my energy's better, I'm no longer two out of 10. I'm not crying at the drop of a hat or short fuse and my focus and my mental processing is a little bit better. And another beautiful herb that I'll use in that typical burnout patient might be saffron, and saffron is a lovely example of plant medicine and one of the active constituents that makes saffron neuroprotective is the yellow colour of saffron. And we know in addition to saffron being neuroprotective, it's also anti-inflammatory and it's a beautiful antioxidant too. So it's perfect for that brain that's on fire, which is often the case in some presentations of burnout.

Speaker 1:

Do you ever get the chance to do any testing prior to instigating treatment? And I know this can be an expense, but I'm just wondering about those people that might be really flagging, really lagging, forgive me, in their work enjoyment, their work performance. Do you ever get, maybe the chance to perhaps do a CAR, a cortisol awakening response test? So, for instance, if somebody had really high cortisol you might use phosphatidylserine for a short term just to blast it, you know, just to get that down, and then move over to these beautiful nourishing herbs like ashwagandha and afron and things like that. Do you ever get the chance to do testing? Or is that an expense that some people might shirk away from?

Speaker 2:

Well, when we work with the corporate, we have our corporate foundation program, but within that we're working with individuals and we will formulate a treatment plan for each individual. So whether that involves some cortisol testing or it might just maybe just some basic nutritional testing or some hormonal testing, gut testing, microbiome map, we treat them the same way that we would in our nutritional practice or our naturopath, natural health practice. But you generally find that often the senior executives that they want to cover everything.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes they might consider dna testing as well okay now forgive me, kath, I cut you off and you were in the middle of teaching us about what herbs he used. Let's go back to that. So, ashwagandha saffron what else do you use?

Speaker 2:

I'll also consider lemon balm, and again I love that for its calming action, but it's also got that antiviral action too, and we know with people who are burnt out that if that's been going on for a long period of time that can affect their, their immune system, and one of the typical presentations of burnout will will often be someone that gets sick four or five times a year, just that constant bronchitis or sinus infection, and they never really get over it. So immune herbs are also beautiful too, and that's why I also consider the reishi and shiitake again beautiful for immune modulating, but also wonderful in states of exhaustion, and we see that in the literature too the mushrooms.

Speaker 1:

Uh, whenever, whenever I forget about incorporating mushrooms, I beat myself over my head, over my head, with a piece of wood. They're just so far reaching in their effect. Joe, can I move to you here? Do you use some nutritional foundation with people who are just exhausted, like, for instance, b vitamins at all? Do you tend to go a multi? Do you tend to use punchy doses. How do you instigate this?

Speaker 3:

Well, definitely B vitamins, for sure, because when people are lacking energy, b vitamins are crucial, are crucial. And CoQ10, you know, both cofactors in the citric acid cycle and energy production. So definitely the B vitamins are a really good one. And also vitamin C crucial because our adrenal glands require vitamin C and when we're burnt out or you know, it's adrenal fatigue, so we need to increase those amounts. So you know that's really important. And, of course, magnesium, magnesium is required in you know, over 300 enzymatic reactions in our body. But when we're burnt out or our body's under pressure, obviously we're using a lot more, so we need to replenish that. So you know that'd be my go-to key nutraceuticals that I would use definitely.

Speaker 1:

I've got to say because you know you've met with the executive team, upper management. They now give you the permissions to deal with both themselves and the workers who are great at greatest need, but then you have a personalised plan for every single one of those people that you engage with. That's a significant amount of time to invest your time in them. So I'm going to ask the question who looks after you guys?

Speaker 2:

Well, we try. It's great having Joe as a partner, because we're always there. We try to practise what we preach.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And a lot of how we've come up with this corporate foundation program is through our own experience and whether that's through meditation or breath work or mindset or eating well or herbs, we try to practise what we preach and we're not saying that. You know, we're sitting here and we don't get stressed from time to time and, yes, it is a lot of work, but we want to make sure that we're practising what we preach.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, a point that I was going to ask earlier I forgot, and that is you know, we talk about these things that we can do around the office have a break every half an hour, move around the office and go and say hello to people. That's wonderful, that's great. But for those people who are sitting in a chair, locked in a position, one of the worst positions you can be, separate evidence on the effects of seating, of sitting, on longevity, heart disease, even cancers. I think there's some evidence. But then we might say, oh okay, I've got a standing desk, but then people just stand, they don't move, they just simply stand in a static position. Do you have to awaken people to the benefits of not just moving but say, stretching those tense muscles, so like stretching backs out, stretching glutes, shoulders, things like that, when they're feeling stressed?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely, shoulders things like that when they're feeling stressed. Yeah, absolutely, and we even have, you know, a routine that they can do with bands. So taking, you know taking some TheraBands to work they're so small and they're easy and you can have them at your desk and do all sorts of great exercises. And if you've, you're working with a corporate and a team and everyone's got those bands on their desk, you know they can all set a time and go okay, guys, 15 minutes, let's do our band routine, all of them together, which is quite fun and, you know, breaks it up.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, we have little hats. I have this vision of an office where somebody you know they're doing a stretch with an arm and a let's go. So you see all these bands flying across the office. It would be rather colourful. Now you guys are. Forgive me, you go, jo.

Speaker 3:

Oh sorry, I was just going to say you know a lot of people in the corporate world. They're quite competitive, so they want to be using that black band or the red band and who's using what colour band. So you know, it can be quite fun and engaging if we you know, if the corporates are into that sort of thing.

Speaker 1:

Is there anything we haven't covered that you do, that you incorporate in your toolkit?

Speaker 3:

you do that, you incorporate in your toolkit Probably the mindfulness aspect, so that emotional well-being, looking at breathwork and mindfulness and all the evidence we talk about that a lot with corporates, because that's the aspect where a lot of them sort of glaze over, especially, you know, certain generations at the top um, they look at meditation as a bit soft. But once you start talking about the key benefits and the evidence to back this up, which there is quite a lot now, then they sort of take more of a, they sit up and they go okay, right, or, and we give them different, different types of practices so that they can find one that's right for them, because you know, meditation is not for everybody, but maybe breath work is, or physiological sighing, or you know something like that.

Speaker 2:

Another thing that we a big part of our program is around education. So it's really important to set up the why are you doing this, so the motivation, but also the how and the why is it important that you have protein three times a day? Or why is it important that you get outside and you get your steps up? For example, why is it important that we cut fried food down? Or sugar? Why is it important to be hydrated? So once you really explain some of those concepts, people people are a lot more compliant. Yeah so, and the other thing that is really important in our program is teaching people to understand what their body's trying to tell them, because so many people these days have no idea what their digestion is like or their bowel motions are like. They don't take any notice. So, a big part of it, we spend time helping people understand if you do this, you're going to feel this way. If you do this, you're going to feel this way.

Speaker 3:

And sort of getting them to understand that mind gut connection as well and to identify, through our module and how we teach them of, how certain things make them react. So, whether it's, you know, food, or whether it's before they're about to do a presentation or anything, to actually get that mind-brain connection going. So they really have a better by the time they leave our program. They have a really good understanding of their body and that's great, you know, that's fantastic.

Speaker 1:

That's fantastic. Now you guys are doing a seminar. Am I correct in saying this?

Speaker 3:

yes, we will be doing a webinar um a little bit down the track, um on fertility, which is a whole other issue and sort of the fertility in a polluted world, because, you know, a lot of people don't understand the impact of infertility that we're experiencing today. One in six globally are infertile, which has grown exponentially, you know, over the last 50 years and how our environment impacts our fertility status. But also burnout is part of that as well. Burnout really impacts fertility as well, for the you know, 34-year-old worker, a-type personality.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely so. Where can people find out more about this? Is it your website, the Health Reflex?

Speaker 3:

Yes, yes, the Health Reflex.

Speaker 1:

Is that a comau?

Speaker 3:

It is. It is a comau.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic. I look forward to seeing that. It's such a big issue. Fertility and burnout. I mean, if you couldn't think about two culprits that coexist in the corporate world, hand in hand. Um horrible stuff that's going on there. Um kath mcfarlane, um Joe Cooper. Thank you so much for taking us through this today. It's such an it's a pervasive issue. It's an sadly, it's a burgeoning issue. But I'm glad there's people at the forefront of the coalface, like yourselves, who've got a different slant on how to affect change in a positive way, in a truly healthful way for their patients. So I really can't thank you enough for what you're doing for the corporate workers. Well done to you both.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much for having us, Andrew. We've really enjoyed it. Yeah, thanks, Andrew.

Speaker 1:

And thank you everyone for joining us today. Remember you can find all the other podcasts and indeed the show notes for this podcast on the Designs for Health website. I'm Andrew Whitfield-Cook. This is Wellness by Designs.