I am a fully qualified herbalist with a Diploma in Herbal Medicine. I studied for 5 years with Heartwood Education and achieved my equivalent to BSc level diploma accredited by the National Institute of Medical Herbalists (NIMH) which is a body respected world wide.

I will merge the folklore and ancient wisdom passed on from generation to generation with the latest scientific research regarding herbs, their constituents and how they interact with your body as every prescription will be unique to each patient.

The first consultation will last up to 90 minutes, as we will go through your medical journey through life. Together we will gather the reason behind your symptoms because, to quote the father of medicine, "it is far more important to know what person has the disease than what disease the person has" (Hippocrates). Everything within our body is interconnected as we are made of a multitude of systems which interact with one another and, at times, a symptom can lead us astray from its origin. A consultation with me will be a deeper analysis of your whole person, which will go beyond the conventional diagnosis and will result in a unique, person-centred, herbal prescription.

Healing with medicinal plants is as old as mankind, and animals have been self-medicating using plants since the dawn of time. We find ourselves in a heavily nature-disconnected era where everything is designed to keep us in a controlled environment and one pill can fix everything. This has led our generation to forget about the wonders of the natural world and to stop listening to our own bodies' requests, following a rhythm that is unsustainable.

Herbal medicine not only gives you practices to re-connect with nature and yourself, but it gives you a unique medicine that will activate a physical, quantifiable, healing response in your body aimed at achieving equilibrium within our body (homeostasis).

Plants make what we call phytochemicals, which literally means "chemicals produced by plants". These are the active compounds that not only give flavour and colour to a plant, but also act as a defence system against pathogens, radiation, stress etc.

Herbalists extract these active compounds as a whole plant extract; they have patterns and shapes made of atoms and chemistry teaches us that atoms interact and form relationships with one another. So, when we use herbal medicine these chemical bonds take place, and the pattern of energy which was informed by the plant is taken into ours and activates a physical, quantifiable, healing response. Co-evolution with many edible and medicinal plants has altered our genetics allowing us to tolerate them to a greater degree than would be otherwise expected of mono-chemical drugs; furthermore, whole-plant extracts often demonstrate synergy, leading to better results than demonstrated by single active constituents often found in orthodox medicine.

Orthodox medicine can save lives, however we have become accustom to taking drugs for any complaint independently of how small it might be. We run to the pharmacy for any pain, cold or insomnia we might be experiencing and although the pills we end up buying can act extremely quickly because of a very targeted approach, they come with side effects which can lead us to take more medications which come with more side effects and so forth.

This is where herbal medicine comes into effect : depending on your specific case, herbal medicine can be taken in order to ease off a drug, come off it completely or in conjunction with it to make it synergistically more effective or with fewer side effects.

Herbal medicine will interact with your current medications and by disclosing any drug you are and have been taking in the past, herbal medicine can become the perfect complement to a better lifestyle.

There is a misconception that herbal medicine takes a long time to be effective; however this belief says more for the condition being treated than the herbs themselves. Depending on the case and the person, a good approximation to work with is :

• 1 week’s treatment can already show benefits for every month’s problem a person has suffered.

• 3 months’ treatment should be allowed for every year’s problem a person has suffered.