Hormonal health support

When your hormones are off, everything feels off.

Hormones govern almost every system in your body, your energy, your mood, your skin, your sleep, your weight and your menstrual cycle. When they're balanced, you barely notice them. When they're not, you feel it in everything.

Most women I work with have spent months or years being told their symptoms are normal, or that their blood tests are fine. But standard GP testing only looks at a fraction of the hormonal picture. Functional testing goes much deeper, measuring how hormones are actually being produced, metabolised and cleared by the body.

Whether you're dealing with a specific diagnosis like PCOS or endometriosis, or simply know that something feels off, nutritional therapy can help you understand what's driving your symptoms and build a clear, practical plan to address them.

Fertility & motherhood support

Your nutritional needs change dramatically at every stage.

The journey through fertility, pregnancy and new motherhood is one of the most nutritionally demanding periods of a woman's life. Yet it's also the time when many women receive the least personalised guidance on what their body actually needs.

Standard antenatal advice is generic. It doesn't account for your individual nutrient status, your hormonal history, your gut health or your unique biology. Functional testing during preconception and pregnancy can reveal deficiencies and imbalances that matter enormously for both you and your baby.

Whether you are actively trying to conceive, currently pregnant, or still feeling depleted months or years after giving birth, nutritional therapy can provide the targeted, personalised support that makes a real difference.

Functional testing explained

Standard tests often miss the point.

When a GP runs standard blood tests, they are checking for disease thresholds, values that indicate something is significantly wrong. But many women feel far from well long before their results reach those thresholds. Functional testing operates differently.

Rather than asking "is anything severely wrong?", functional testing asks "how is your body actually functioning?" It measures hormone metabolites, organic acids, gut bacteria, genetic variants and nutrient status in ways that reveal the root drivers of your symptoms, not just whether you fall within a broad normal range.

Every test I order is interpreted in the context of your full clinical picture. You receive a clear explanation of what your results mean and a personalised protocol built directly from them, not a printout of numbers you're left to decipher alone.

PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) is one of the most common hormonal conditions affecting women of reproductive age, estimated to affect around 1 in 10. Yet it remains widely misunderstood and poorly managed in conventional medicine, with most women offered only the pill or Metformin and told to lose weight.

The reality is that PCOS has multiple subtypes, each driven by different root mechanisms. For some women insulin resistance is the primary driver. For others it is inflammation, adrenal dysfunction or post-pill hormone disruption. Treating them all the same way is why so many women struggle to see results.

Nutritional therapy for PCOS starts with understanding which subtype you are dealing with and what is specifically driving your symptoms. From there, dietary and lifestyle interventions can be precisely targeted, and where appropriate, functional testing can provide the data needed to be truly specific.

Perimenopause, the transitional phase before menopause, typically begins anywhere from a woman's late thirties to mid-forties, often a decade or more before periods stop. Yet it is one of the most under-recognised and under-supported phases in women's health.

During perimenopause, oestrogen and progesterone levels fluctuate unpredictably before declining. This affects not just the reproductive system but the brain, bones, cardiovascular system, gut, skin and metabolism. The symptoms women experience are not just about hot flushes, they encompass cognitive changes, mood shifts, sleep disruption, joint pain, weight redistribution and profound fatigue.

Nutritional therapy during perimenopause works to support the body through this transition, reducing symptom severity, protecting long-term health and ensuring the hormonal decline happens as smoothly as possible.

Postpartum depletion is one of the most common and most overlooked conditions in women's health. It goes far beyond the tiredness of having a newborn, it is a deep nutritional deficit that can persist for years after birth, leaving women exhausted, foggy, emotionally fragile and disconnected from themselves.

Pregnancy draws heavily on a mother's nutritional reserves to support the baby's development. If those reserves are not adequately replenished, and for most women in conventional healthcare, they simply are not, the result is a deficit that accumulates with each subsequent pregnancy and worsens over time.

The good news is that postpartum depletion is highly responsive to targeted nutritional intervention. Many women notice meaningful improvements in energy, mood and clarity within weeks of beginning a personalised recovery plan.

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) affects up to 75% of women to some degree, but for many the symptoms go far beyond mild discomfort. Severe PMS and its more extreme form, PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder), can be genuinely debilitating, affecting relationships, work and quality of life for a week or more each month.

Despite how common it is, PMS is poorly understood in conventional medicine and is often dismissed or managed only with the pill or antidepressants. Yet the underlying drivers of PMS, oestrogen and progesterone imbalance, magnesium deficiency, blood sugar instability, poor liver detoxification and gut health, all respond well to nutritional and lifestyle intervention.

For many women, significantly reducing PMS symptoms is achievable within two to three cycles of targeted nutritional support.

Nutrition in the three months before conception has a more significant impact on pregnancy outcomes than at almost any other time. The egg that will become your baby takes around 90 days to mature, and the nutritional environment during that period directly influences egg quality, implantation, early development and the risk of miscarriage.

Yet most women trying to conceive receive only generic advice, take a folic acid supplement, eat a balanced diet, without any assessment of their individual nutritional status or hormonal health. For many, this is sufficient. For others, there are specific deficiencies or hormonal imbalances that, once addressed, can make a significant difference.

I work with women who are planning to conceive in the near future and want to prepare their bodies as well as possible, as well as those who have been trying for some time and want a deeper investigation of what may be affecting their fertility.

The DUTCH Complete (Dried Urine Test for Comprehensive Hormones) is the most detailed hormone test available to clinical practitioners. Unlike a standard blood test that captures hormone levels at a single moment in time, the DUTCH test measures hormone metabolites throughout the day, providing a comprehensive picture of how hormones are being produced, used and cleared by the body.

Standard hormone blood tests measure the amount of a hormone circulating in the blood at the moment of the blood draw. The DUTCH test measures what the body actually does with those hormones, how they are metabolised by the liver, which pathways they travel through, and whether those pathways are protective or potentially problematic.

For women dealing with unexplained hormonal symptoms, PCOS, perimenopause, severe PMS, low libido, adrenal fatigue or thyroid dysfunction, the DUTCH test frequently reveals patterns that standard testing completely misses.

Gut health is the foundation of almost every aspect of wellbeing, and it is the system most commonly disrupted in women dealing with hormonal imbalance, immune issues, chronic fatigue and mood problems. The gut is not just a digestive organ. It is where 70% of the immune system resides, where the majority of serotonin is produced, and where oestrogen is recycled and cleared from the body.

Standard digestive investigations (endoscopy, colonoscopy, basic stool tests) are designed to detect disease. They do not assess the functional health of the gut microbiome, inflammation levels, digestive enzyme activity or pathogen burden. Functional stool analysis does all of this and more.

The comprehensive gut health test I use provides a detailed picture of your microbiome, the diversity and balance of bacterial species, as well as markers of inflammation, intestinal permeability, digestive function and the presence of pathogens, yeasts or parasites.

The Organic Acids Test (OAT) is one of the most comprehensive metabolic assessments available. By measuring over 75 metabolic markers in a simple urine sample, it provides a detailed picture of how your cells are producing energy, how your brain chemistry is functioning, whether your nutritional status is adequate and whether there are underlying infections or imbalances driving your symptoms.

The OAT is particularly valuable for women dealing with persistent fatigue, brain fog, low mood or anxiety that does not fully respond to lifestyle changes. These symptoms often have metabolic and nutritional drivers, disrupted mitochondrial function, B-vitamin deficiencies, neurotransmitter imbalances, oxidative stress, that standard blood tests do not assess.

Like all functional tests I order, the OAT is interpreted in the full context of your clinical picture, not as a standalone printout. The results directly inform a personalised nutritional and supplement protocol.

Nutrigenomics is the science of how your genes interact with the food you eat. A nutrigenomics test analyses specific genetic variants that influence how your body processes nutrients, metabolises hormones and responds to diet and lifestyle, enabling a level of personalisation that goes beyond any generic nutrition advice.

Unlike a disease risk genetic test, nutrigenomics focuses on actionable information: which nutrients you may need more of, how efficiently your body detoxifies, which dietary approaches are most likely to support your weight and energy, and how your genes influence your hormonal health.

The results from a nutrigenomics test do not change, which makes them a one-time investment with lifelong value. Understanding your genetic blueprint removes the guesswork from nutrition, replacing trial and error with targeted, evidence-based recommendations that are genuinely specific to you.

Oestrogen dominance is a state where oestrogen is high relative to progesterone. It is behind many of the hormonal symptoms women experience but often cannot fully explain. It does not necessarily mean oestrogen is excessively high in absolute terms. It means the balance between oestrogen and progesterone has tipped in a way that causes symptoms.

This imbalance can arise from excess oestrogen production, impaired oestrogen clearance by the liver and gut, low progesterone, or exposure to environmental oestrogens (xenoestrogens) in plastics, cosmetics and food packaging. In practice, multiple factors are usually at play simultaneously.

Understanding which mechanisms are driving your specific pattern of oestrogen dominance is essential for addressing it effectively. This is where functional testing, particularly the DUTCH Complete, becomes genuinely valuable.

Postnatal anxiety and low mood affect up to 20% of new mothers, and this figure likely underestimates the true prevalence, since many women do not seek help or do not recognise their experience as a clinical condition. While the emotional and psychological dimensions of postnatal mental health are well recognised, the nutritional and hormonal drivers are far less discussed.

The hormonal crash following birth is dramatic. Oestrogen and progesterone fall sharply in the days after delivery. At the same time, the nutritional reserves drawn on throughout pregnancy and birth are deeply depleted. This combination creates a biological environment that is highly vulnerable to anxiety, low mood and emotional fragility.

Nutritional therapy cannot and does not replace psychological or medical support for postnatal mental health. But addressing the nutritional substrate, the deficiencies and imbalances that worsen anxiety and mood, can make a significant difference alongside other forms of care.