I’m Joan, and I want to share my passion for nutrition with you so that you can be the most energetic, vibrant and empowered version of yourself possible!
I am a Registered Nutritional Therapy Practitioner with additional specialist training in working with people with cancer. I have a particular specialism in supporting women who have had a breast cancer diagnosis. I carry out one-to-one consultations online, so that you can work with me wherever you are based. I love nothing better than to witness the improvements in health and vitality that can occur as a result of nutritional therapy – something I’ve seen often, but which never fails to bring me joy!
More than anything, what defines me as a practitioner is that I understand what it’s like to have chronic health issues, and the impact that nutrition and lifestyle change can have on them. I have had health challenges all my life, culminating in a cancer diagnosis. You can read more about my story below, but the bottom line is that it means that I meet my clients with compassion and empathy. My role is to help you to achieve what you want to, and is never to be judgemental.
Accreditations and Experience
- Diploma in Naturopathic Nutrition from the College of Naturopathic Medicine, 2017
- CNHC Registered Nutritional Therapy Practitioner
- BANT Registered Nutritionist ®
- NTEC approved Systems Approach to Cancer training with Dr Nina Fuller-Shavel
- Course in Cancer: Nutritional Support Before, During, After Treatment and Beyond at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition
- Member of the British Society for Integrative Oncology
- Certified dnalife® practitioner
- A minimum of 30 hours of Continuing Professional Development each year
- Fully insured to practise
Many clients have worked with me in a one-to-one capacity as well as in groups. I have enjoyed delivering talks for breast cancer charities including Flat Friends UK, Make 2nds Count and Victoria’s Promise. I have delivered corporate talks, mini workplace consultations and blogs with my colleagues at Vital Health Nutrition.
Work with me if you want a practitioner who…
- Will really listen to your unique health story and help you to make sense of it. Even if you don’t realise it, your story holds the keys to understanding your current health and how to improve it. Listening to clients’ stories in confidence and explaining key factors that have influenced health is the biggest privilege that comes with my job.
- Will be compassionate and non-judgemental. My own health issues and experiences of not eating so well myself earlier in life ensure that I won’t come across as preachy!
- Knows her stuff and can cut through the nutrition misinformation. I keep up to date with research, and combine this with a systems view of your health and my clinical experience so that we can work out what’s right for you.
- Promotes food and sensible lifestyle changes first. Supplements have their place, but good nutrition must come first. Testing can be extremely helpful, but I will always consider your pocket and what value testing would add.
- Will meet you where you are now, and tailor nutritional therapy to what you want to achieve. If you want to dig deep and use functional testing to investigate your health, then we can do that if it’s appropriate. If you want advice on simple food and lifestyle changes that can make an impact, then I am more than happy to help with that too.
- Will shift the focus from restriction to nourishment. That feels good!
- Has personal experience of what it feels like to go through (breast) cancer diagnosis and treatment. I understand how the medical oncology system works and where nutritional therapy can be integrated alongside it appropriately and safely. I have felt your fears, and I have used them to fuel my quest for knowledge.
- Wants you to feel confident that what you are eating is having a positive, even transformational, impact on your health. That’s why my practice is called Empowered Nutrition.
More of my Story
Me in a nutshell:
- Grew up in Belfast, now living in London
- Wife to my long-suffering husband of 25+ years, and mother to three grown up boys with enormous appetites
- Former engineering acoustic consultant
- Lifelong amateur musician (viola and piano)
- More recent convert to running (5km or less!) and spending time in forests
- Living well with secondary breast cancer since 2018
Growing up, I was never particularly interested in either health or food! Like many people, I took my health and my body for granted. I accepted that I seemed to acquire medical conditions as I aged (eczema, hypothyroidism) without questioning why, or what was going wrong in my body. I trusted that conventional approaches to medicine would provide all the health input I would ever need.
All that changed when I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 40. I suddenly became aware that what I was putting into my body was vitally important. When I asked my oncologist what I should eat, his answer (“Just eat a balanced diet”) intuitively seemed woefully inadequate. I had a poor prognosis and knew that my life depended on finding additional ways to support myself after my treatment had finished. After a residential course at the Penny Brohn Cancer Care Centre in Bristol, I realised that I had spent most of the time there talking to the other course participants about the power of food, and immediately decided to retrain as a nutritional therapist.
Since 2018 I have lived with secondary breast cancer, which is incurable. I find nutrition and lifestyle medicine absolutely invaluable tools for keeping myself well and thriving alongside my medical treatments, and I review my approaches to my own nutrition regularly. My diagnosis and experience of living with cancer have taught me humility above all else. Cancer is enormously complex, perhaps the most complex of all diseases, and I would advise you to beware of anyone who claims to have it all figured out! I recognise that nutrition is but one pillar of health, and that it is essential to address body, mind and spirit to heal.
I believe that everyone can use nutrition to support their health. Nutritional therapy might be able to help you in moving towards optimum health and feeling the best, most vibrant version of yourself that you have ever felt. If you are living with a very challenging condition as I am, nutrition may not be the magic bullet that resolves it, but it always has the potential to improve your quality of life. Whichever applies to you, let me be in your corner.