THE CURIOUS MINDS CLUB 
It's 2004 & I'm practicing from South Melbourne when one of my patients comes in with a few pages of test results she wonders if I want to take a look at. I'd love to of course but the 'language of labs' was not taught in naturopathy back then, so it all just...
Anyone else? Or should that be...'Everyone else?' 🙄 Because if I had a dollar for every cracking encounter I've had with people that included this line, I wouldn't be writing this line - so too, if I'd been persuaded by the push-back against this lovely little legume....
I'm intrigued by the silence. Hair loss in women is frighteningly common, following pregnancy, menopause & with extreme stress (wait is that a tautology? 🙄) In fact it can strike at any age and for a multitude of reasons. When it happened to me a few years back...
I confess I was a chemistry nerd 'way back when', but my skill for stoichiometric calculations had sadly slipped by the time my kids needed help with high-school science & now my son, who's about to graduate from chemical engineering, is my 'chem-friend'...
Ok, so maybe I don't quite look like this after 100 episodes & almost a decade of our Update in Under 30 series but sometimes, in the depths of researching & developing each episode I can feel like this! The idea for this subscription series came out of a...
You may have noticed I don't often have recipe raves, swap serving suggestions or generally dialogue about diet. That's because about a decade into my career as a naturopath I hit food fatigue - my enthusiasm for explaining basic food swaps and increasing kitchen...
But sadly, still not cloned! While it may sound like Big-Brother was responsible, it was the efforts of my tremendous team responding to feedback from fans - who said things like: I just LOVED EVERY SINGLE MINUTE of the MasterCourse in Diagnostics but would love to...
You know when you learn about a 'new' dis-ease driver and then you actually have to stop yourself from diagnosing every patient with it? I've done this dance with Gilbert's Syndrome for over a decade, so too maybe have some of you? And while there have been many,...
Are we all just a bit prone to panic at the moment? I received a 9pm call from my 21year old son. Trying desperately to disguise my reflexive s'mothering, I ask in a voice feigning carefree, 'Everything ok?' to which he replies, 'Well, [long pause] not really..."...
"After our group session I suggested the low fat trial but she was 'no, no, no....I can't take anything more out of my diet'. It was at the beginning of lockdown & she had other stressors as well. So I asked her to be mindful of her fat intake & if one meal...
No, this is not a trick question & it's certainly not a silly one. IBS, as many of us know, has a very loose diagnostic criteria: visceral hypersensitivity coupled with altered motility in the absence of organic disease. Hence it tends to 'loosely' fit a vast...
I'm 100% confident that, as a professional group, among our highest values about healthy, preferable, food choices, would be characteristics like: 'as close to nature as possible', 'unrefined', 'unprocessed', 'unadulterated'. Tell me I'm wrong. So, when I keep...
Maybe it's tax-time, just my wintery whinge or a tirade triggered by missing my twins' 21st birthday due to border restrictions 😶 but I'm sorry for all the shouting of late...about interpreting iron studies, about the copper misinformed etc etc. and my...
I haven't personally seen every medical condition known to occur, nor every micronutrient deficiency & toxicity picture in the flesh but that doesn't mean I doubt their very existence. Sadly, it would seem some practitioners due to a) not knowing 'where' to look...
Name a B vitamin. Hey, Bingo! It's on the list! What list? The complete one from all the review papers & references to possible links between individual nutrient deficiencies & Angular Cheilitis - inflammation & cracking at the corners of the mouth. So...
I'm a fluoro gal myself. I take copious notes the old school way, on paper with pen and vast...
While many of us have made it our business to ensure we are competent IN the business of understanding patients' iron studies, it sadly seems, many even in teaching and training positions, still have not 🙁 I was sent 2 messages this week that had me lost for words...
Last week I had my say about acknowledging our elders & mentors, this week I want to speak to the power of the young peeps. Just like a younger sibling, nipping at your heels can act as a great motivator to move faster, or having children can inspire us to do...
I stand on the shoulders of my elders. [I hope it's not too painful for them, it's been going on a long time now!!] And I regularly lean on my mentors - who are often my peers, practitioners specialising in areas different from mine. I recite their names often like...
[Ahem] Ok let me explain...Several catch-cries from Australian ads have earnt themselves a lifelong place in my head and heart,...
I'm experiencing some serious POTTS exhaustion - how about you? No, not POTS, POTTS: Preposterous Over The Top Selling of supplements, which seems to be at an all time high even amongst our practitioner brands. I saw a product name recently that included the word,...
What's your knee-jerk response to 52Y Lipids Lucy & Liver, whose ALT & AST suddenly jumped above range when she was put on statins? They're damaging her liver? You'd be wrong. One of the practitioners who undertook the MasterCourse in Comprehensive...
"How much can you misbehave & get away with it?" I listened with fresh ears, as a practitioner asked my son this question recently. I use similar ones with my own patients but hearing it from someone else, I could sit back and appreciate its true purpose and how...