Herbal Practice
Herbal medicine at Elder Roots begins with a simple principle: the person is more than the diagnosis.
I work with adults, children and families across a wide range of health concerns, from relatively straightforward problems through to long-term illness and medically complex situations. My role is not simply to match a herb to a symptom. It is to understand the wider pattern in which that symptom exists and to decide, with you, whether herbal treatment has a useful and safe place within it.
That means considering conventional diagnoses, prescribed medicines and investigations alongside nutrition, sleep, movement, constitution, nervous-system regulation, stress, important life events, relationships, work, caring responsibilities, personal history, goals and the realities of the life you are actually living.
The aim is a treatment strategy that is coherent for the individual rather than a generic protocol for the label.
How I Can Help
People come to herbal practice for many different reasons. Some are looking for support with a relatively straightforward health problem; others have lived with symptoms for years, have several diagnoses or medicines to consider, or are trying to make sense of a much more complicated health picture.
My practice helps people with many concerns such as:
- Digestive health
- Sleep
- Emotional issues
- Skin
- Allergies
- Neurological health
- Women’s and children’s health
- Persistent pain
- Fibromyalgia
- ME/CFS
- Thyroid and metabolic health
- Autoimmune and inflammatory conditions
- Long COVID
- Mysterious multisystem dysfunction
- Support for people living with or recovering from cancer and its treatment
- And so much more
In more medically complex cases, the first question is not simply what herbs might be useful. It is whether herbal treatment is appropriate, what needs to be taken into account for safety, how it may sit alongside existing care, and what realistic priorities make sense for that particular person.
If I believe something needs medical investigation, conventional treatment or referral before herbal treatment is considered, I will say so.
What is Medical Herbalism?
Medical herbalism is the use of plant medicines within a clinically informed approach to health and illness. It combines traditional herbal knowledge with an understanding of anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, clinical investigation and the safe use of herbs alongside conventional medicines.
Herbal medicines may be used as individual preparations or combined into prescriptions designed around the particular person and their circumstances. The choice of herbs is based not simply on a diagnosis, but on the wider clinical picture, constitution, patterns of function, priorities for treatment and any medicines or other factors that need to be considered for safety.
Herbal medicine can sometimes be used as the main therapeutic approach and sometimes alongside conventional treatment.
It is not a substitute for appropriate medical investigation, emergency care or necessary conventional treatment. Part of responsible herbal practice is recognising those boundaries.
The physiomedical influence
Physiomedical thinking is an important part of my herbal practice. It asks us to look at function, adaptation, constitution, patterns and the condition of the whole person rather than allowing a disease label alone to dictate the prescription. I use that alongside traditional herbal knowledge, modern evidence, clinical observation and biomedical investigation.
For me, the most useful question is rarely simply, ‘Which herb is used for this diagnosis?’
It is closer to: ‘What is happening in this particular person, what brought them here, what is keeping the pattern going, what resources do they still have, and where might we most usefully support change?’
Why the first consultation is around two and a half hours
A biomedical symptom-and-medication review can be completed relatively quickly. It matters, and I do it carefully, but it is not the reason an Elder Roots initial consultation commonly lasts around two and a half hours, and sometimes longer.
The extra time allows us to build a much deeper map. We can explore when things changed, what was happening around that time, how different parts of the picture may connect, what has already been tried, what repeatedly helps or worsens things, what the person's present life is asking of them, and what they are actually hoping to regain.
The consultation fee is therefore not simply payment for a bottle of herbs or for two and a half hours on a video call. It pays for the work of listening, questioning, reviewing, connecting information, weighing medical and herbal considerations, identifying priorities and turning a complicated health story into a coherent and genuinely individual treatment strategy.
That depth cannot guarantee an outcome, and I will never pretend that it can. What it can do is give treatment and advice a better chance of being properly matched to the person rather than merely attached to a diagnosis.
Herbs are part of the treatment, not the whole treatment
Herbal medicines are individually chosen and formulated, but treatment may also involve practical work around nutrition, sleep, movement, pacing, nervous-system regulation, daily routines, stress, environment and the parts of life that are realistically open to change.
Sometimes the most important piece of advice is not another supplement. Sometimes it is recognising that the body has been asked to adapt to something for too long. At other times the biomedical picture is the most urgent part and further investigation or conventional treatment needs to come first. A genuinely holistic approach has to be broad enough to recognise both.