Hi! Welcome to my new blog: food as your new medicine. I am a naturopath based in the wee NZ city of Auckland. I have a Bachelor of Natural Medicine and I like to cook, bake, read cookbooks and most definitely like to eat.
When I was working in a pretty stressful job about 6 years ago, I was not so well. I had gone to the doctor a trillion times and still I had no diagnosis or relief. I ended up googling naturopaths in my area and ta-da that is when my life changed. Not like the sun through the clouds changed, but fundamentally changed.
My naturopath was awesome: she helped me get on top of my ill health and gave me some pretty cool advice that I still remember and do today. I went travelling and while I was eating my way around the world I made a mental list of jobs I liked the idea of. Naturopath kept coming up; so when I returned back to NZ I enrolled in the Bachelor of Natural Medicine and now I am a fully fledged naturopath and medical herbalist.
Natural health has always been in my family. My awesome mum gave us crazy stuff as kids. I was not so thankful for this as a child, I complained about the non-milk milk, the kelp instead of salt, the weird yoghurty stuff… I had a massive list of things I was not happy with. I just wanted her to give me what all the kids had – white fairy bread. But, alas, my clever mum just ignored me.
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My father was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer when I was 15. Unfortunately, by the time they had found the cancer it was in his bones, so no conventional medicine would actually help him. They didn’t give him a lot of time to live. Now, if you knew my parents (which you obviously don’t but just trust me on this one), they are stubborn. Both of them. They embarked on a pretty full-on journey into natural health and my dad changed his whole diet and lifestyle – for the better. He outlived the time-frame given to him and continued to amaze everyone. In fact, the weekend before he died, he was still sailing, which was his favourite passion. Crazy – but totally my dad. Seeing what my parents did, and the amazing effects diet and lifestyle can have on your health helped to plant that whole naturopath seed before I even knew it.
To me, it is a great honour to meet and help people with their health. We live in an awesome time. There is so much for us to learn about and do, natural health is more accepted and there is always something different to try to wrap your head around. What I hope to do here with you guys is to help demystify some of natural health and make it more accessible for you. Lifestyle changes need to be simple and sustainable because, if you are anything like me, by Wednesday the hard stuff slides.
It’s so nice to meet you all – I look forward to talking food with you! And maybe forcing you to make some pretty tasty but healthy treats. Just saying … chocolate is good for pretty much everything. Except for when you are at the gym. It’s not a good look then. Trust me on that one.
