Perimenopause, Stress & Burnout with Dr Keri Krieger

Listen to the full episode.

If you’re in your late 30s, 40s, or 50s and you’ve started thinking, “What is happening to me?” — you’re not alone. For many people, perimenopause doesn’t arrive as a gentle transition. It can feel like your body suddenly changes the rules. Sleep gets weird. Anxiety ramps up. Energy drops. Periods shift. Your mood feels less predictable. You might feel inflamed, puffy, sore, or like your resilience has vanished overnight.

In Episode 165, Chris and Filly sit down with Dr Keri Krieger — an acupuncturist and Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) with two decades of clinical experience — to talk about the impact that stress and unresolved burnout can have on perimenopause, and how to care for yourself in this phase of big change and eldership. You can explore Dr Keri’s work at kerikrieger.com.

At Chris and Filly Functional Medicine, we see this pattern often in burnout functional medicine: perimenopause isn’t “just hormones”. It’s a whole-body transition that can amplify whatever has been simmering under the surface — chronic stress, nervous system dysregulation, depleted reserves, unprocessed burnout, and the identity load of being the one who holds everything together.

When You Ignore Burnout Signals, Perimenopause Can Feel Like the Big Crash

Dr Keri shares how ignoring earlier burnout signals and pushing on with work and life led to a big crash during perimenopause. That story is deeply relatable for high-functioning people who’ve spent years overriding their bodies.

Burnout rarely comes out of nowhere. It’s usually preceded by signals:

• needing more caffeine to function
• waking tired even after sleep
• feeling more reactive or flat
• gut issues that come and go
• periods becoming heavier, lighter, closer together, or more unpredictable
• feeling “wired but tired”
• more sensitivity to stress, noise, or people
• a sense that you’re coping… but only just

In health and wellness culture, it’s common to normalise these signs. We call it “busy”. We call it “getting older”. We call it “just life”. But in root cause medicine, these are data points. They’re your body asking for support before it has to force a stop.

Perimenopause can be the moment when the body says, “I can’t keep doing it this way.” Not as punishment — as protection.

The Connection Between Burnout, Chronic Stress, and Perimenopause

One of the strongest threads in this episode is the connection between burnout, chronic stress, and perimenopause. Stress doesn’t just affect your mood. It affects your physiology.

Chronic stress can influence:

• cortisol rhythms and the stress response
• blood sugar stability and cravings
• inflammation and pain sensitivity
• sleep quality and recovery
• gut function and nutrient absorption
• neurotransmitters and emotional regulation
• thyroid and metabolic function

When perimenopause begins, the body is already navigating hormonal shifts. If your system is also carrying years of stress load, the transition can feel more intense.

This is why burnout functional medicine matters in perimenopause. You’re not just “treating symptoms”. You’re rebuilding capacity — the ability to adapt, recover, and regulate.

Why Dr Keri Took a Year Off to Heal (and What That Teaches Us)

Dr Keri shares that she took off a year of work and lived on savings to deeply heal and embody what she preached. That’s a bold choice — and it highlights something important: deep healing often requires more than a few tweaks.

Now, most people can’t take a year off work. But the principle still applies: perimenopause is not the time to keep pushing harder. It’s the time to listen, simplify, and support your system like it matters (because it does).

In integrative medicine, we often talk about “inputs” and “outputs”. If your outputs (workload, pressure, responsibility, emotional labour) stay high while your inputs (sleep, nourishment, recovery, support) stay low, the body will eventually force a recalibration.

Perimenopause can be that recalibration.

Common (and Not-So-Common) Symptoms of Perimenopause

Dr Keri and Chris and Filly discuss common and not-so-common symptoms of perimenopause. Many people only expect hot flushes, but perimenopause can show up in a wide range of ways.

Common symptoms can include

Sleep disruption, mood changes, anxiety, irritability, fatigue, cycle changes, brain fog, weight changes, night sweats, and reduced stress tolerance.

Not-so-common (but still real) symptoms can include

Heart palpitations, dizziness, joint aches, increased histamine-type reactions, changes in digestion, new sensitivities, and a sense of feeling “not like yourself”.

From a holistic health perspective, symptoms are not random. They’re signals from systems that need support — nervous system, adrenals, gut, detox pathways, mitochondria, and more.

This is also where personalised medicine becomes essential. Two people can both be in perimenopause and have completely different symptom patterns, because their underlying drivers are different.

Why Perimenopause Symptoms Are Never Just About Hormones

A key message from this episode is that perimenopause symptoms are never just about the hormones.

Yes, hormones are changing. But the way you experience those changes is influenced by your baseline health, stress load, and nervous system state.

If you’ve been living in survival mode for years, your body may have less buffer. Less resilience. Less capacity to adapt. That can make symptoms feel louder.

In mind body medicine, we also consider the emotional and identity load many people carry in midlife: caring for kids, ageing parents, running a business, holding a household together, being the dependable one. That load matters. Your body feels it.

This is why root cause medicine looks beyond a single hormone test. It asks: what’s driving the pattern? What systems need rebuilding? What needs to be released? What needs to change?

The Psychological and Identity Shifts of Perimenopause (and the Culture We Live In)

Dr Keri speaks to the psychological and identity shifts in perimenopause that we need to navigate personally and as a culture.

Perimenopause can bring big questions:

• Who am I when I’m not endlessly productive?
• What do I want now?
• What am I no longer available for?
• What boundaries do I need?
• What parts of me have been suppressed to keep everyone else comfortable?

This is where “eldership” becomes a powerful frame. Not in a woo way — in a grounded way. Perimenopause can be an invitation to become more honest, more self-led, and more aligned.

And that alignment can be deeply healing. Because when you stop living against yourself, your nervous system softens. When your nervous system softens, your body can heal naturally more easily.

HRT: To Medicate or Not to Medicate?

The episode also touches on HRT — to medicate or not to medicate. This is a nuanced topic, and there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.

From an integrative medicine perspective, the most helpful stance is usually: informed, personalised, and non-judgemental.

Some people feel significantly better with HRT. Others prefer to explore non-hormonal support first. Some do both. What matters is understanding your symptoms, your risk factors, your preferences, and your bigger health picture.

And regardless of the HRT decision, the root cause work still matters: stress load, sleep, nourishment, nervous system regulation, and the deeper patterns that keep the body stuck in burnout.

Short-Term SOS Support vs Deeper Healing Interventions

Dr Keri and Chris and Filly discuss the difference between short-term SOS support and deeper healing interventions.

Short-term SOS support might look like

Supporting sleep, stabilising blood sugar, reducing inflammation, calming an anxious nervous system, and making the day-to-day more manageable.

Deeper healing interventions might look like

Addressing unresolved burnout patterns, rebuilding depleted systems, working with trauma and stress physiology, and shifting the identity-level “push through” programming that many people have lived by for decades.

This is the heart of Ending Body Burnout: not just getting through the week, but creating a body and life that actually feels sustainable.

If you’d like to explore a structured approach that blends functional nutrition, nervous system work, and root cause medicine, you can learn more about the Ending Body Burnout Method.

Learn More From Dr Keri (and Her Peri-Menopause Workshop)

If you’re loving Dr Keri’s approach, you can explore her work at kerikrieger.com.

You can also sign up for Dr Keri’s peri-menopause workshop here: Treating Peri-Menopause: An Integrated Approach with TCM — and use code FILLY for 25% off.

A Gentle Next Step If You Want Support Now

If perimenopause is colliding with stress and burnout and you want help connecting the dots — symptoms, nervous system, hormones, gut, and the deeper patterns underneath — you’re warmly invited to book a Discovery Call or connect the dots with us. It’s a calm, no-pressure way to explore what support could look like for you.

And if you’re ready for a deeper, structured approach to Ending Body Burnout, you can explore the Ending Body Burnout Method.

Listen to the full episode.

Chris & Filipa Bellette are the Founders of multi award-winning health practice Chris & Filly Functional Medicine, which is best known for ending body burnout (for good!) in “busy” people with energy, mood and gut issues. They have worked with over 3,000+ burned-out clients in the past combined 30+ years, with their own passion for ending body burnout coming from their own personal experience of body, mind, family & business breakdown, after a prolonged period of physical and mental stress.

Filipa is an accredited Clinical Nutritionist, Functional Medicine Practitioner, Coach & Trauma Therapist. She is also a Ph.D. Scholar, author & regularly featured the media, such as Forbes, Body+Soul and The Daily Telegraph. Chris is a Burnout Recovery Coach & an accredited Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner, with a Bachelor of Human Movement Science. He has existed in high-performance realms of the sporting (think national athlete) & business industries and knows what it takes to get out of hustle-and-grind culture to thriving. 

They were recently awarded as the Tasmanian State Winner & National Finalist for the Telstra Best of Business Awards, and Winner of the Australian Women’s Small Business Champion Awards.