Claire was chatting to her friend Emma — a doctor in London — when she let it slip.
The exhaustion. The snapping. The apologies.
Emma went quiet.
"Claire, that's not a character flaw. Your body is doing that to you on purpose."
She called it the Double Crash — the true problem, not Claire herself.
Around 2pm, two things happen at once. Your blood sugar drops from the morning. And your body's natural energy rhythm dips at the same time. Two crashes, hitting together.
"Your brain doesn't experience that as tiredness. It experiences it as everything falling apart at once. The patience goes. The focus goes."
Claire laughed. "You're literally describing my life."
"I'm describing every mum I know."
That was the part that hit hardest.
Every snap. Every apologetic bedtime.
It finally had a name. The Double Crash.
But she'd spent years blaming herself for it.
"So what do I actually do about it?"
"Well, what are you doing now?"
"Coffee. More coffee."
"Right. And does it work?"
Claire didn't need to answer that.
"Coffee doesn't touch the blood sugar drop.All it does is make you feel alert for 30 minutes then you know the rest"
"What about just eating something? I usually grab a biscuit or whatever's lying around."
"That's the trap. A sugar hit at 2pm gives you a spike — feels like a fix for twenty minutes — then crashes and resets the cycle over and over."
"So basically everything I've been doing is useless."
"Not useless. Just not designed for what's actually happening. The Double Crash can only be fixed by targeting both problems."
"So what can I do?"
Emma paused.
"Honestly? I've been taking something myself for about six months now. A colleague recommended it."
She explained it simply. A honey blend designed to prevent the Double Crash from taking over.
The honey holds your blood sugar steady through the afternoon. The green tea helps to keep you here.
"It's not a caffeine hit. It's not an energy drink. It just… stops the 2pm thing from happening."
"That's it?"
"One spoon at 1pm. That's it."
Claire almost didn't try it.
It sounded too simple. But Emma wasn't the type to recommend things lightly — and she wasn't recommending it as a doctor.
She was recommending it as a mum who'd been through the same thing.
She ordered it that night.
The first week, she began to notice.
Still not fully convinced.
The second week, she was sure.
She made it past 4pm without clenching her jaw. She didn't snap when her son asked for another biscuit. She sat with him instead.
Three weeks in, her son asked why she was smiling more after school.
She nearly cried.
Not because anything dramatic had happened.
Because nothing bad had.
She just got to be her. All day. The version her kids had only ever got before lunchtime.
That was five months ago. She hasn't apologised for being "grumpy mummy" since.
