Something hasn’t felt right for a while.
Your energy has changed, or your sleep, or your cycle, or the way your body responds to the things that used to work for you. And the question is usually the same: where do I start?
It’s what we’re asked more than anything else. And the answer is that there are a few different ways to work with us.
Some women come to us knowing exactly what they want. They’ve been living with gut symptoms for years and want to understand what’s driving them. They’re moving through perimenopause and want a much clearer picture of what’s happening. Their energy has disappeared, their sleep has changed, brain fog is affecting how they work, or their weight and body composition seem to be shifting despite them doing all the things that used to help.
Others just know they don’t feel like themselves.
They can’t always point to one thing that’s wrong. Their blood tests may have come back “normal”. They’ve changed their diet, taken the supplements, exercised more, exercised less, slept more, tried to manage their stress, and something still isn’t adding up.
By the time women find us, most aren’t looking for another list of things to try. They want to understand what’s actually going on, and what makes sense for them.
Which is why we meet you where you’re at, rather than using a pre-defined protocol.
What is functional medicine?
Functional medicine starts with one key question: what’s driving your symptoms, and why now?
You’ll hear the phrase “root cause” a lot. For us it usually comes down to several things interacting at once. Your hormones, gut health, blood sugar and metabolic health, nutrient status, sleep, stress and lifestyle all influence one another, and symptoms tend to surface where that web is under the most strain.
Looking at any one of those areas on its own only tells part of the story.
There’s usually a pattern connecting those imbalances. Many women have spent years learning to override what their body was telling them, praised for pushing through, reassured that what they were feeling was normal. Reconnecting with those signals, and understanding what they actually mean, is a large part of the work we do.
Because you don’t need to dismiss what your body is telling you.
What happens when you work with us?
For many women, the best place to begin is an initial consultation with one of our practitioners. You don’t need to know which service or which tests you need before you book. That’s the part we help you work out.
Before we meet. We’ll ask you to complete a detailed health questionnaire. It gives us a much fuller picture than your symptoms alone:
- Your health history
- Menstrual and hormonal health
- Digestion
- Energy, sleep and stress
- Nutrition and lifestyle
- What’s happening in your life right now
All of it matters, because all of it connects.
Your consultation. This is where we start connecting the dots. We’ll talk through what you’re experiencing, what might be contributing to it and where we think the priorities lie. Sometimes there are changes we can make straight away. Sometimes we need more information before we can say anything useful, and that’s where testing comes in.
Testing, where it’s needed. Functional testing is a big part of what we do, though not everyone needs every test. Depending on what comes up in your consultation, we might look more closely at areas such as:
- Hormone and thyroid health
- Nutrient status
- Blood sugar and metabolic health
- Gut health
- Genetics
We can also review blood tests and health data you already have, rather than starting again from scratch.
What matters is that any test has a purpose. We want to know what question we’re trying to answer, why the information would be useful, and how the result might change what we do next.
For some women that’s a straightforward blood panel. For others, we investigate several interconnected areas in much more depth. And sometimes we recommend nothing new at all.
Support that flexes as you do. Some women leave a consultation with clarity about what to change and feel confident putting it into practice themselves. Others want us alongside them.
Our Momentum Calls let us keep working together without automatically putting everyone into a long programme, so we can review progress, interpret results, adapt recommendations and work through whatever’s getting in the way.
There may be stretches where we work closely together, and others where you get on with living your life, knowing we’re here when you need another layer of support.
Looking beyond the symptom
This is probably the biggest difference in how we work.
If you come to us exhausted, we’re interested in your energy. But we’re also very interested in your sleep, your hormones, your blood sugar, your gut, your nutrient status, your stress load, your cycle, your training and your workload, because any of them could be part of the picture.
If you come with digestive symptoms, we look wider than the gut itself. If your hormones feel all over the place, we look at what’s driving them. And if you’re broadly well but want to be more proactive, we can look at where you are now and what’s worth paying attention to going forward.
The body doesn’t work as a collection of separate parts. Our job is to understand the whole picture, and work out which pieces matter most for you.
Why do your blood tests come back normal when you still feel unwell?
This is something we hear often.
A normal result can be reassuring, and it’s an important part of ruling out medical problems. But it doesn’t always explain why you still don’t feel like yourself.
If you’re living with fatigue, brain fog, digestive issues, poor sleep or changes in your cycle and you’ve been told everything looks fine, we can look more closely at the wider picture:
- Reviewing the testing you’ve already had
- Understanding those results in the context of your symptoms and health history
- Deciding whether anything further would actually help
And where something needs medical assessment or sits outside our scope, we’ll tell you that too.
Who will you be working with?
Well Nourished is an integrative health and performance clinic specialising in women’s health. Our clinical team brings together functional medicine, nutrition, women’s hormonal health and advanced testing, and we use each of those to build a fuller understanding of you.
Which means you don’t have to work out whether your problem is “hormonal”, “gut”, “metabolic” or something else before you book in. That’s what we’re here to help you with.
You can find out more about our practitioners here.
Do you need to know what’s wrong before you book in?
This is perhaps the most important part.
No. You don’t need to decide whether you need hormone testing, a gut test, genetic analysis or something else before you book. You don’t even need to know exactly what’s wrong.
You bring us the story: what’s changed, what doesn’t feel right, what you’ve already tried, and how you want to feel instead. We’ll help you work out what comes next.
A few questions we’re often asked
Do I need tests before my first consultation? No. The initial consultation is about understand your story and unique journey that brings you to this point and mapping out the next chapter. However, if you have recent tests from your GP or another practitioners we can use these to enrich our insights. If during your initial consultation your practitioner believes testing would make sense for you they will make a personalised recommendation as part of your next step.
Do I have to sign up for a long programme? No. For many women, an initial consultation is the starting point. From there, we’ll recommend the level of support that fits. If you want ongoing input, Momentum Calls let us keep working together as and when you need us.
What if I don’t know whether my symptoms are hormonal, gut-related or something else? You don’t need to. In reality, health rarely fits neatly into those boxes anyway. Your initial consultation allows us to look across the different areas of your health and decide where it makes sense to focus.
Ready to start?
If something hasn’t felt right for a while, or you’ve been making changes without getting where you want to be, or you’d just like a clearer understanding of your health, an initial consultation is a good place to begin.
You don’t need to know which tests you need, or have it all figured out first. We’ll start with the whole picture and work out what makes sense from there.
And if you’re looking for something more structured, we can talk you through the programmes that go further, once we understand where you’re starting from.
