From Severe Bloating to Nomu Matcha: Tessa Stockdale on Chronic Gut Issues and Healing as a Founder

Two gut girlies sit down to talk.

In this episode, Jess is joined by Tessa Stockdale, co-founder of Nomu Matcha, the award-winning New Zealand ceremonial matcha brand she built with her mum Karen, for a conversation that started, fittingly, over a shared obsession with gut health.

Tessa takes us back six years to when her gut issues first started showing up in her mid-twenties. She was in advertising, early mornings, late nights, plenty of alcohol, high-intensity exercise on an empty stomach. The kind of lifestyle that looks pretty normal from the outside but, she now knows, was putting enormous stress on her body. What followed was months of severe bloating so extreme her mum asked if she was pregnant, constipation, brain fog, thunderclap headaches, and a histamine response that felt like boiling water in her gut.

She walks us through the medical journey, the gastroenterologist referrals to rule out stomach and ovarian cancer, the $250 specialist appointments, the lack of holistic perspective in the system, and then the moment she drove to Hamilton to see applied kinesiologist Kate Moffat out of sheer desperation. The session that changed everything, where the pressure of a hand on her leg identified leaky gut, an estrogen imbalance, IBS, and candida overgrowth, and finally gave her somewhere to start.

Tessa shares what the anti-candida diet actually looked like, how twelve weeks of eating nothing from a packet during COVID lockdown taught her more about food and inflammation than anything else had, and why the healing process, while transformative, also came with unexpected consequences. Developing a peanut anaphylaxis allergy. New intolerances she hadn't had before. A fear response around food that nobody warned her about. The exhausting mental tax of navigating every meal, every restaurant, every dinner with friends.

The conversation moves into the gut-brain connection, why 90 to 95% of serotonin is made in the gut, why anxiety and gut issues are so deeply intertwined, and why Tessa's move from Auckland to Mount Maunganui last year has given her something she says she's never had in her adult life: a balanced nervous system.

And then there's Nomu. Because Tessa's caffeine sensitivity, a direct result of her gut journey, is what led her to matcha, and a blunt comment from a barista at 7am who raised an eyebrow at a decaf order is what started it all. She and Kat talk about building a business while managing a chronic health condition, why hustle culture is not the only path to success, and why showing up well for yourself is actually what makes you show up better for your business.

This is an episode for anyone who has spent years trying to figure out what's wrong with their gut, anyone running a business while managing a chronic health condition, and anyone who has ever felt like healing one thing just opened the door to something else.

Find Tessa and Nomu Matcha at nomumatcha.com and on Instagram @nomumatcha_

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Website: wearethecyclist.com

Hit play. And maybe make yourself a matcha first.