SMASH 2026

If you’ve been unwell for a while, whether it’s autoimmune symptoms, chronic fatigue, perimenopause chaos, anxiety, digestive problems, pain, mould toxicity, long-standing inflammation, or even a diagnosis as serious as cancer, here’s something I want you to really take in:

Your body cannot heal if it cannot recover.
And recovery isn’t simply “rest.” It is a physiological state. A measurable one. And for most people, that state isn’t switching on , no matter how hard they try.

This is why the vagus nerve has become one of the most important conversations in medicine, and honestly, why so many people remain stuck even when they are doing absolutely everything right.

The vagus nerve is the master regulator of your internal world. It controls almost everything from your nose to your pelvis: your breathing, your heart rhythm, your digestion, stomach acid, pancreatic enzymes, bile flow, detoxification, blood sugar regulation, immune signalling, reproductive organs, and the entire gut–brain communication loop.

And here’s what most people never hear:
80% of the vagus nerve’s fibres run from the body up to the brain.
Your brain is reacting to the messages your body is sending, every second of the day.

When the vagus nerve senses safety, stability, and metabolic ease, everything changes. Inflammation reduces, digestion improves, blood sugar steadies, hormones regulate, immunity strengthens, mitochondria work more efficiently, and the body moves into repair.

But when vagal tone is low — when your system has been overwhelmed for too long — the message travelling upward is essentially:
“We are not safe. Conserve. Survive. Do not repair.”

And no matter what condition a person is dealing with — cancer, autoimmune disease, metabolic dysfunction, chronic infection, trauma, perimenopause issues — when the nervous system is stuck in survival mode, healing physiology cannot switch on.

This is where HRV (Heart Rate Variability) becomes one of the clearest windows into what’s actually happening.
A low HRV tells us your recovery system is offline.
Not recovering at night.
Not recovering after meals.
Not recovering after stress.
Not recovering from the day you are living.

And when recovery is absent, healing becomes almost impossible.

I’ve seen this over and over in my 20 years of practice. People who are committed, disciplined, doing everything right — meticulous with nutrition, supplements, testing, lifestyle changes — and still not improving. And it took me years to understand that it wasn’t a lack of effort or a missing supplement. Their physiology simply didn’t have the capacity to respond.

This truth was echoed so powerfully by Nasha Winters at a conference I recently attended. She described how two patients can receive the same treatment — identical in every way — and yet have completely different outcomes. The difference wasn’t the therapy. It was their terrain. Their vagal tone. Their resilience. Their ability to recover.

And if I’m honest, this has also been my own journey.

For years I pushed, worked, coped, “managed,” performed — all while slowly burning down my recovery capacity. It wasn’t obvious until my own body started showing me the signs. Even with all my functional medicine knowledge, I had to face that I wasn’t recovering deeply enough to truly thrive. Learning to build resilience, real resilience, physiological resilience, has changed my life. It’s changed how I practise. It’s changed how I think about health.

And I would never have made these changes without support.

This is where Joanna Bednarek enters the story. Joanna is not only an IFM-certified health coach — she is a vagus nerve ninja. Her understanding of nervous system recovery is extraordinary, not in a theoretical way but in a lived way. Joanna has navigated her own cancer recovery, and her healing was not a straight line. It was rooted in rebuilding her vagal tone, rewiring her stress physiology, and learning to create safety in her body again.

Working together over the years, combining my medical and biochemical lens with her nervous-system-based coaching, we’ve both witnessed something profound:
When you help someone reclaim their recovery capacity, everything else finally works.
Their protocols land.
Their inflammation comes down.
Their digestion regulates.
Their hormones stabilise.
Their glucose improves.
Their mood shifts.
Their energy returns.
Their disease process — whatever it is — becomes more manageable.

This realisation is exactly why we created SMASH 2026.

A programme that blends the science of resilience with real-world, real-time data — using Firstbeat and CGM to show you exactly how your body responds to stress, food, sleep, movement, meetings, emotions, conflict, screens, everything. Not theoretically — in your actual life.

If your vagus nerve is struggling, we’ll see it.
If your HRV crashes every night, it will tell us.
If your glucose spikes to the same foods others tolerate, we’ll know.
If stress keeps your physiology locked in survival mode, the data will show it.
And most importantly — we’ll teach you how to change it.

Because after two decades of clinical practice, my message is clearer than ever:

It doesn’t matter what diagnosis you’re facing — you cannot heal without recovery, and you cannot recover without resilience.

2026 can be the year you finally build the physiological foundation your body has been begging for.

Joanna and I are keeping SMASH small and personal, because this type of work needs intimacy, attention, and support.

If this speaks to you — if you want to finally understand your body, increase your capacity, and build resilience you can measure — then join through the link below.

SMASH 2026
Your body doesn’t need more pressure.
It needs more capacity.
And this is where it begins.

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