Services
I offer to my client’s personalised nutritional therapy which means that I work with you to create a more tailored, expert and personalised nutritional approach. I can help you with a number of women’s health issues including hormonal health, peri-menopause and menopause, breast health (fibrocystic breast disease, breast cancer prevention, and preventing breast cancer re-occurrence), thyroid issues, adrenal health and stress, gut health, IBS, healthy ageing, bone and joint health. Information about some of these conditions and how I can help are detailed below.
I use a careful, detailed assessment to define the unique needs of those who seek my nutritional guidance. Where required, I will request permission to communicate with your primary care physician or specialist to ensure cross-discipline continuity of care. The care and well being of all individuals seeking my help is paramount.
Peri-menopause
Peri menopause takes place over several years in advance of the menopause. It is frequently the time when we experience the most common symptoms of menopause. Because peri-menopause often takes place while we still have periods it can lead to confusion.
Peri-menopause can last for 4 to 8 years. During peri-menopause the ovaries gradually rebalance their oestrogen and progesterone production in preparation for the menopause and the final cessation of periods. With the average age for menopause being 50, peri-menopause generally starts for women in their mid 40s. However, it is possible for peri-menopause to start in the late 30s and early 40s.
For most women, peri-menopause is a completely normal, gradual process, and not a disease to be treated. Peri-menopause lasts until full menopause, i.e. the time when the ovaries stop releasing eggs. In the last one to two years of peri-menopause our bodies create significantly less oestrogen and it is at this point that many of us experience the symptoms of menopause – typically when we are around 48 to 50 years of age.
However, some women do experience difficult symptoms. Women may experience some of the following symptoms during peri-menopause:
- changing periods- length of cycle, duration of period
- Night sweats
- Hot flushes
- Fatigue
- Insomnia
- mood swings, anxiety irritability and depression
- Loss of confidence
- Decreased sex drive
- Breast tenderness
- vaginal dryness
- Bloating
- Increased PMS
- Urinary leakage
- Aches and pains in muscles and joints
What can Nutritional Therapy do? Symptoms can be managed through lifestyle changes such as adapting our diet and nutrition, taking exercise and learning to relax.
Menopause
The menopause – and the peri-menopause before that – is the period of time during which a woman’s oestrogen levels begin to drop. This usually starts between the ages of 45 and 50 but can be much earlier. Common symptoms including hot sweats, insomnia, mood swings and weight gain are well documented, and conventional treatment usually involves hormone replacement therapy.
What can Nutritional Therapy do? The menopause is a time of hormonal change for your body, and these changes are reflected in your nutritional needs. Many women seek natural menopause treatment. This approach combines nutrition and lifestyle changes and is highly effective at preventing or reducing the severity of nearly all of your symptoms, rather than just relieving them temporarily. If you’re approaching menopause, it’s the perfect time to begin to think about dietary changes to improve your overall health. I may also suggest commonly used herbal supplements to reduce some of your symptoms.
Thyroid health
The thyroid gland is a regulator that controls the rate of our metabolism. It works a bit like the accelerator in a car. Depending on the pressure we put upon it, the car’s speed increases or decreases. Imagine the body ‘steps on’ the thyroid gland in order to give appropriate commands for all the functional mechanisms of our bodies.
If your thyroid is out of sorts it can cause big issues:
- Hyperthyroidism causes everything to speed up, leading to feelings of agitation, weight loss and difficulty sleeping.
- Hypothyroidism causes the body to slow down, leading to weight gain, constipation, fatigue, high cholesterol and heavy periods in women.
- In serious cases the body can produce antibodies against the thyroid. This, combined with food intolerance’s, can lead to autoimmune thyroid diseases.
What can Nutritional Therapy do? Our thyroid does not lose its rhythm for no reason; there are many lifestyle and dietary factors that can cause this deregulation. I will usually perform a full clinical analysis to check whether there is anything else going on as well as the thyroid issue. I never look at symptoms in isolation – it’s important that we work to heal your body as a whole, not just the condition you are presenting with. I may also perform specific tests to examine intestinal flora health, immune system reactions, toxic load and the anti-oxidating ability of your body, as well as checking for intolerance’s to foods such as gluten. With the results of the tests I will design an individual nutritional therapy programme for you including recipes and a supplement plan. You will learn the types of foods you should be eating and those you should be avoiding, to better support your body in resolving this condition.
Adrenal health and stress
Do you feel like you’re constantly rushing from one thing to another? Do you crave sugar and junk food all the time, just to keep you going? Are you exhausted when you fall into bed, but still not able to sleep well? The adrenal glands are two little organs that sit on the top of your kidneys. They’re only the size of walnuts, but they produce over 50% of the hormones in your body that manage vital bodily functions like immune response, blood pressure, and energy levels.If the adrenal glands are forced to respond constantly to stress they get drained and can no longer control all of the other hormones as they should. Cortisol levels in particular will become high. If left unchecked this can lead to adrenal fatigue and to conditions like ME.
What can Nutritional Therapy do? Alongside lifestyle changes and improvements to self-care, a nutritional programme can be designed to help you balance your blood sugar levels and keep cortisol in check.
Gut health – IBS
What can Nutritional Therapy do? By improving your digestive health, nutritional therapy can have a huge impact on reducing abdominal pain and bloating. Together we’ll work to get the answers you’re looking for and help you make positive changes to restore optimal gut health.
Breast Health
Benign breast disease (BBD) and breast cancer (BC) are chronic health conditions that affect the health, quality of life and longevity of millions of women worldwide. The search to firstly understand the etiology of those conditions and then ultimately to find a ‘cure’ have been ongoing for many years. There is acceptance in the literature that both BBD and BC have a complex and multi-faceted etiology with numerous contributing causes and that ultimately there is no ‘magic bullet’ that will resolve those conditions.
There are many different ways that your diet and lifestyle choices can influence the pathways that we know are associated with cancer, for example, correcting insulin resistance,reducing environmental exposures, supporting detoxification, supporting healthy gene expression, and reducing baseline inflammation which is strongly linked to cancer development.
What can Nutritional Therapy do? The most important thing to do for the prevention of cancer is to create a healthy environment in the body so that cancer is less likely to develop and grow. Think of this healthful environment as the terrain or soil. If that soil is fed correctly, it won’t support the development or growth of cancer. To achieve this healthful environment, we work to balance many different systems in the body.
We work to balance the hormones, starting with insulin. Insulin helps keep blood sugar in balance, and when insulin doesn’t work properly, the risk for many diseases, including breast cancer increases.
Estrogen is another hormone that needs balancing for both BDD and BC. Breast cancer often grows in times of high estrogen. Because of this, we need to support the body in detoxifying and eliminating estrogen after it does its job. Certain foods are very helpful for estrogen metabolism: cruciferous vegetables should be the focus. Additionally, ground flax seed, fish oil, and a diet rich in fiber all help keep your estrogen find a better balance.
You may also need to avoid toxins and support the body’s detoxification system. Some toxins in the environment act as hormones and increase the risk of breast cancer. These include BPA (found in plastics, cans, and shiny receptacles) as well as pesticides and parabens.
If you are trying to prevent a breast cancer re-occurrence then Nutritional therapy can help you feel better at every stage of the journey, both on a physical and psychological level. It can help to support your return to health and reduce your personal risk factors for recurrence. I help you to identify your risk factors and discover what to focus on for the future. Working together allows us to create a more tailored diet for you which takes into account your health history and lifestyle. We can also look more closely at your individual susceptibility with functional and genetic testing.
Osteoarthritis
This is the most common arthritic disease, where there is a gradual decline of cartilage and subchondral bone. It is not life threatening, but can be disabling if left untreated, and joint replacements are a common allopathic treatment option. Both physical therapies and nutritional interventions play a huge role in the management of this condition.
What can nutritional therapy do? Personalised nutrition operates by understanding, and reducing, aspects of your lifestyle, nutrition and environment that can further affect the symptoms of arthritis; mainly inflammation. This can be used to reduce requirements of pharmaceutical drugs or to be used in conjuncture with to enhance managing the disease further. Personalised nutrition gives the best disposition to the body to reduce both progression and symptoms of arthritis by allowing the body to reduce inflammation naturally.