The Nutritional Supplement

What Course(s) did you graduate from at CNELM and when did you graduate?

The Nutritional Therapy BSc and I graduated in 2014 – I think!

What made you decide to embark on this course of study?

I had a very difficult conception and birth; it was a triplet birth. Things went very wrong very quickly and my daughter had a lot of health issues and was also very premature – by 14 weeks. My son was doing really well but my daughter wasn’t. I just couldn’t accept that there was nothing that could be done with all the subsequent difficulties like delayed speech, amongst so many other things. So at that time I left my previous job and decided to educate myself. I had always been interested in nutrition and thought I would just go back to learning, so I did. It was never really with the intention of practising, but purely to help my daughter. It did help her a lot, the change has been really amazing. It’s been very hard and also multi faceted – nutrition is only a part of it, but it’s a big part and has made a world of difference.

What did you do before starting this course?

I was in investment banking since I left university, where I did a degree in International Business and Finance - I worked on the trading floor for four years and then eventually ran my own team and became director of Dresdner bank, so completely different to nutrition!

Which was the first training you did in this field?

The CNELM course was the first training I did. I was exhausted after the degree as it was so gruelling alongside all the family issues I had, but I did a genomic training straight afterwards as I was so interested in that and had already educated myself on it a bit online, through the university of Google! Now that is quite a big part of my practice, enabling me to piece things together in clinic.

Did you also do the IFM training from the states?

No, that’s something I’m planning but I haven’t done it yet.

Which course during your training have you found the most useful or is there anything you would do differently?

Everything I’ve done I’ve thought through carefully – I don’t make rash decisions, so I’m very happy with every educational choice I’ve made. Because of the type of children and young adults I work with you have to work outside the box a bit and there are a lot of people offering education through things like webinars. Even though the content may not be about nutrition, they’ve still been helpful in understanding people’s biochemistry.

The CNELM degree itself was so substantial and ahead of its time – there was a lot of content there and even to this day there is so much that I use in practice that I learned from CNELM. It was such an incredible foundation and helped me to understand so much complex stuff and made future learning so much easier.  I couldn’t have chosen a better degree. CNELM grads are ahead of the curve all the time. We’ve all spent so much time and effort doing the degree and we want to do so well and get a first class, yet I still feel we’re not given the recognition we deserve in the wider context.

Do you think the field of nutritional genomics is advanced/refined enough at this stage to gain truly beneficial insights for clients from its results, or do you see it more as a useful additional tool?

I definitely feel like we only know a tiny bit of it all but I tend to try and focus on the things that have the most research, which is coming out almost on a daily basis. There are things that I’ve done additional training in and so much more has happened in this field each time I train. It’s important though to use it intelligently and to look at the whole picture, rather than supporting single SNP’s. Sometimes the more common SNP’s can be really helpful and consistent in putting together a clinical picture. I think genomics helps tailor the protocol more – sometimes you have to change your mind if it’s not exactly as you expect it to be, for example if the clinical picture doesn’t match the genetic picture. But my work is specific, so within my field there are consistent things that come up.

What work did you do after graduating?

In the last year of the degree I had decided categorically that I wanted to help children and young adults with learning difficulties and I felt so confident and ready to do that. Even before graduating I was setting everything up – the website, my company etc. and I knew exactly what I wanted to do and where my focus would be, which is autism and learning difficulties. Because I had already been investigating that because of my daughter, I had made a lot of contacts and so was comfortable in that world.

I was already known as a parent rather than a professional so the transition was quite simple. I set it all up and joined a local group for business ladies called Athena. They were amazing in my area and I started promoting myself locally; left cards in a health shop and contacted lots of professionals in my area and made an agreement with them to promote them if they would do the same for me. The actual transition from doing little things to being established was very fast and I got busy very quickly, which was a bit overwhelming. It’s just grown through word of mouth, apart from some marketing effort in the first few months. I’ve been invited to do talks, to write for autism magazines and conferences and every day something new happens.

I think it helped that I have been in a business world before this and so I knew what I could do well and what I couldn’t. So I hired someone to do my admin, as I felt that gave me the space to just be a Nutritional Therapist and do the necessary work for clients. I think that was a really good move because it allowed me to take on a lot more people than I could normally have done.

Why did you settle on brain health and autism as your specialist area?

Because of my daughter and also because when you get into that world you see how devastating this condition is for parents and how such small things can make such a difference – things like sleeping, eating and going to the toilet without pain. These things are achievable but to parents who don’t know that, it seems impossible. I always find that parents with children with difficulties are naturally, or become, amazing parents and I have met the most awesome people I could ever work with; it’s such a pleasure to do my job. It’s so incredibly satisfying.

Is there anything you wish you’d known before finishing your studies that you might have prepared for differently?

Not really – I was so lucky and everything fell into place. If I could give any advice it would be to specialise in an area that really rocks your boat. Try not to be everything for all people, really respect your qualifications and get the compensation you deserve and don’t sell yourself short. Don’t be afraid to charge money for your services.

What or who has most inspired you in your work?

Aside from my daughter, I found Kate Neil to be one of the most inspiring people ever – so knowledgable and consistent and she makes you feel like you’re in a real profession. I’ve also had some amazing lecturers who’ve inspired me, as well as some of my colleagues I’ve worked alongside on the CNELM course.

Do you have any tips, hints, regrets...?

The only thing I would maybe do differently is I wouldn’t do lots of free demos and things like that when starting out. I think it’s really important that we respect who we are and our time and the value of that. It’s easy to be keen to get work and offer things for free, but I always find that whenever I give something away, it just doesn’t carry the same weight and doesn’t get the same response. In the beginning I would do consultations for free if people couldn’t afford it, but in almost every instant these were the people who did nothing with the information I gave them. I think that people respect something that they pay for far more than something for free.

Tell us a little about your invitation to the houses of parliament in March.

It’s an initiative which has been set up as a way to offering early intervention to parents with children with autism. When you have a diagnosis you are not given anything concrete to do with your child. A mum I know with a child with autism set it up with personal funding from John Caudwell (billionaire philanthropist) to fund families in the Sussex area and now the plan is to roll it out nationally.

It’s a 12 week programme where parents are given three things: 1. empowerment skills, 2. applied behavioural analysis and 3. nutrition. It’s not about me telling people all about nutrition but rather we get into a kitchen, provided by Sussex college and we go in and help parents understand why specific diets are so good. We make lots and lots of dishes and we all make them together, with the parents.

The idea is to learn and do theory as well as practise as we go. We talk about why is diet important, then build on that and go deeper and deeper over the three days. We hope that after this time they can go home and implement these things for themselves. It’s for parents who would not usually be able to afford to see a Nutritional Therapist and do all the testing etc. The programme has started, but I do my bit in April. We have a way of measuring its success and we report back, in order to get proper credibility and then get it rolled out nationally.

We were interviewed by the Chrissy B show and that covered the parliamentary launch and gave us time to talk about what we were doing which was really interesting. It’s really exciting.

Do you have any other exciting plans in the pipeline?

I’m speaking at the International Treating Autism Conference in Brunel university in June which is exciting. I’ll be talking about Lyme’s disease, pyroluria and how to use genetic tests like 23andMe correctly.