WHY TRADITIONAL HEALTHCARE OFTEN FAILS WOMEN - AND THE THIRD WAY THAT ACTUALLY WORKS
That might be a bold title but after talking to thousands of women about their health, hormones and body worries I know this to be true. For so long women’s health has been reduced to a quick ten minute consultation which goes a little something like this:
‘when was the date of your last period?’ or
‘your BMI looks high perhaps you should lose some weight?’ or
‘do you think you might be depressed?’
None of which address the actual reason that you went to the doctor. You only have to look at the hundred of social media posts mocking these exact statements or watch the countless women on social media sharing how their symptoms were dismissed for years.
WHY WOMEN FEEL DISMISSED BY TRADITIONAL HEALTHCARE
I’ve seen it time and again. The woman who has been told she needs IVF when in fact she needs to work on rebalancing her gut health and practice receiving; or the woman who was told her IBS was something to live with but actually it was a missed food intolerance and after targeted nutritional therapy followed by some spiritual support on decluttering her emotional life her IBS disappeared forever. What’s the common denominator here? Women not being listened to.
That and we aren’t asked the right questions to find out what might actually be going on for us. I appreciate that the NHS in the UK is under immense pressure. Many brilliantly qualified GPs and consultants are being squeezed every day and the support and resources they have available to them is dwindling fast. Almost every GP I speak to went into the profession wanting to help but their hands are increasingly tied with red tape, budgets and policy restrictions. I’m not singling the UK out here (I live here so I have first hand experience of the system). It’s no better in other countries too, the American healthcare system is even more toxic. You only have to watch content on social media where America women are being denied healthcare or being charged millions of dollars for basic services that should be available to all. What this all boils down to, is the fact that our healthcare system is no longer conducive to true healing.
“WOMEN DON’T NEED TO BE FIXED.
INSTEAD, THEY NEED TO BE LISTENED TO”
I’m about to say something controversial here, I don’t think the traditional allopath medical system serves women in it’s current form. In some ways it can and does work - I’m not one to turn down life saving medicine like antibiotics, vaccines (in the right circumstances) or an operation when needed; but it’s becoming less and less useful. Especially to women who have been under-listened to or frankly ignored. When you dive into the fact that most polices and research that inform clinical policies and guidelines almost exclusively excluded women - we weren’t included in research trials until 1993. Or look at the horrific statistics of women from BAME backgrounds who are more likely to die in childbirth because they are frequently disbelieved or their pain ignored compared to their white counterparts on the same ward. Most birth control research and improving the clinical formulation of hormones isn’t a priority. Between 2017 and 2020 there were only 25 pharmaceutical industry funded clinical trials, compared to over 600 for cardiovascular drugs in 2019 alone. I could go on but all of this to say, we need a better way…
THE MISSING PIECE IN WOMEN’S HEALTH
And I think from my clinical and lived experience I have found it. Enter my Third Way Approach. This is something that has evolved in my clinic and I’m finally ready to put a name to after years of resisting coming out in the open and speaking about it. It’s not 100% science, it’s not 100% spiritual it’s the perfect blend of both. The terminology came from listening to the lovely Sas Petherick speak on her podcast about how sometimes she was craving a ‘Third Way’ approach to certain issues - I think it was diet and fitness on this occasion - and it hit me like a bolt out of the blue. My work wasn’t just the hardcore scientific Nutritional Therapy and it was not all spiritual bypassing love and light hoping for the best. It’s the best of both worlds blended together. It falls somewhere between quantum biology, quantum physics and neuroscience. Whatever we want to label it, I know it’s magic and I know it works.
MY JOURNEY INTO THIS WORLD
Let me wind it back for you a little so you understand where this came from and how I’m uniquely qualified to speak about this. Back in 2017 I began re-training as a Nutritional Therapist. I’d been feeling the career change call long before this but had suppressed it because it was so far removed from anything I’d ever done. Prior to this pull towards nutrition and working in women’s health I had been to university and studied Law. I even qualified as a barrister and was practicing in Criminal Law for a number of years. I continually felt restless and every time I felt that itchy feet sensation to blow my life apart I’d switch roles. I even moved into working at the Ministry of Justice and thought perhaps working from the ‘top down’ would be the answer to my restlessness. Of course, it wasn’t and the more I independently immersed myself into the up and coming 2010 wellness culture (when I Quit Sugar, Clean Eating and Health Blogging had just started) the more I couldn’t ignore it.
After researching the most flexible courses and attending a few open days (some great, some not so much), I landed upon The Institute for Optimum Nutrition and knew I had found my people. I still took another six - eight months to bite the bullet and enrol but once I was in I was hooked. It felt like a spiritual epiphany. Food as medicine, find the root-cause of ill health and people talking about the science behind how people transform their lives in real time. At one point I’d considered being a doctor when taking my A-Levels but my chemistry and physics grades weren’t up to snuff so I pivoted into Law because, well I love a good argument. But coming back to the blend of biology and food made me realise my career path was always going to end up back to health and science somehow.
Fast forward to 2019 when I fell pregnant first time with my son during my studies and despite having a quick and easy conception, an easy pregnancy and a wonderful uncomplicated home birth the whole process highlighted how little support and information women receive about their bodies and hormonal health. The standard ‘take some folic acid and have some sex’ was about it for fertility; pregnancy was all about preventing gestational diabetes and ‘don’t eat for two anymore mum’; and then by postpartum you’re pretty much ignored and left to get on with new mum life. You’re six week GP appointment was to check if you wanted to unlike yourself and offer you contraception incase you were ready to jump back on the horse again. I’m being glib here not to trivialise matters but to highlight how ridiculously this shallow level of support is. No wonder so many women can’t find their way out of the postpartum trenches for years. Birthing my baby just before COVID lockdown and having to navigate new-born life in isolation was not fun. On reflection it took a huge toll on my physical and mental health - and most of the women I speak to now are still carrying trauma from it. Some of them have settled on having one child only because of the experience. I don’t think we are anywhere near exposing how big an impact this really had on this wave of new mums.
HOW THE THIRD WAY APPROACH WAS BORN
This is where things began shifting for me. I knew we needed to do more and that there had to be a better way. In my personal life I had been practicing witchcraft for a few years already (but wasn’t quite ready to own that label yet) and I saw how it was the unification and application of both scientifically supported actions (targeted supplements for hormonal health or specific meal plans) and my working with the moon each month, or selecting crystals for different needs kept me from going off the mental and physical deep end. Working with the magic of each season by changing our diet, going outside for more sunlight or hibernating instead of pushing in the winter months transformed my physical and mental health. I went from surviving to thriving. It took about eight months for me to enjoy motherhood and for everything to click together but when I did life became a lot easier. My postpartum body became stronger and it stopped feeling like I was fighting my hormones and health.
It’s taken much longer than eight months for me to own this in the business but I’ve been practising The Third Way approach with clients for years now and it’s been a game changer. Faster pregnancies, quicker results and more sustainable ones too. Helping women connect the dots and showing them in real time how we need to work on supporting our mind, body and spirit is the missing step for women’s health. My practice has been evolving so we truly look at what it means to work within holistic health - not simply using ‘holistic health’ as a cute platitude or catchy alternative to ‘complementary medicine’. It’s about going back to our biology as women.
“WOMEN AREN’T SIMPLY LITTLE MEN”
WOMEN’S BIOLOGY NEEDS A DIFFERENT APPROACH
By design we are cyclical beings and we can’t operate like little men, this doesn’t work. This is the trouble with the allopathic approach to women’s hormones and nutrition. We shouldn’t be fasting the same, eating the same or exercising the same. Week to week out physiology and needs are different because we operate on not just a 24 hour circadian (sleep/wake) rhythm but also a 28 day infradian rhythm linked to the moon and the seasons. How many of us have been told this? Did you know this? Most of us have been taught to ignore our bodies and are told to work, eat and live the same every single day. Do these sound familiar to you:
Set New Year’s Resolutions in the middle of winter
Keep up your HIIT workouts even when you’re bleeding
Not adjusting your diet week to week, or season to season
This might work for a while but eventually it catches up with you. You can’t hustle your way out of PCOS, or take a holiday to resolve chronic burnout. Trust me, I’ve tried.
ANCIENT WISDOM AND MODERN SCIENCE BELONG TOGETHER
Doing this work I’ve come to realise that traditional medicine, herbal knowledge and healing was meant to be passed down through elders and ancestors. Today we no longer have villages where matriarchs and mothers come together to impart wisdom, remedies and care. We are isolated and told that we can take a pill for the symptoms and not to worry about the root cause of something. We never ask ‘why’ is this happening anymore? Why is the missing question here. We no longer looking for the root-cause to understand why women are living through these things. It’s unrealistic to think we’re going to suddenly overthrow the patriarchy and dismantle the current healthcare system but I believe we should be asking more questions and be willing to try a new approach: The Third Way approach. Instead of dismissing alternative practices as woo-woo, or ignoring modern medicine that has saved and extended millions of lives, we need a system that does both. Harnessing ancient wisdom AND modern technology - IVF is a miracle and absolutely what some women need but we’re took quick to rush to a pill before asking why and what might the body need first?
THE THREE PILLARS OF THE THIRD WAY
The basic principles of The Third Way Approach is unification of science and spirituality. It’s about not separating ourselves from our symptoms, it’s about exploring women as whole beings that need a truly holistic root-cause approach t women’s health and wellbeing. I like to give the example of a three legged stool, each leg representing one pillar for ‘mind, ‘body’ and ‘spirit’. If you took one leg away the stool would become unbalanced and wobbly. By equally addressing all three legs we achieve harmony. This is how I’ve come to practice. Many people dismiss it as pseudo-science but I believe what we call magic is just science we don’t understand (or can’t prove) yet. The world of research is catching up though and the fields of quantum biology, quantum physics and neuroscience are proving more and more of our magical practices have sound reasoning in them - manifesting is now more mainstream than ever and we can explain how it works in real time. The spiritual laws of assumption and attraction have never been more popular because the world is waking up to how powerful we are as human beings.
HOW YOU CAN START EXPLORING THE THIRD WAY APPROACH FOR YOURSELF
It still feels a little scary to put this out into the world and try to articulate how life-changing this work can be. I’ll be honest, I’m scared of cancel culture and my nervous system absolutely can not handle a lot of the trolling that comes with being online… but I’m seeing more and more women becoming angry and disillusioned with the state our healthcare system and I don’t think I can stay hidden in the shadows anymore. So if you’ve reached this far thank you for reading and sticking with me.
If this way of thinking about women’s health resonates with you, the Third Way Approach might be exactly what you’ve been missing. You can start exploring it with my free starter kit, join the conversation on social media, or experience it in real life at one of my women’s retreats in Cambridgeshire. Tickets are on sale for the Spring event happening on 28th March 2026.
