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Hello there, I'm Jen

...an NHS GP who is passionate about Lifestyle Medicine.

lifestyle medicine
I graduated in Medicine at Dundee University and completed my GP training in Cambridge.

Come with me on a journey. One that celebrates first the power we have in our own hands to take control of our health - then educates and informs, so that we have the right information to pass to our teams, patients and people with whom we work. 

I grew up in Scotland. Not in a part that was renowned for its beauty, but in the cold, dreich central belt. I graduated in Medicine from Dundee University and completed my GP training in Cambridge. 

 

It has been my privilege to have spent much of my career working as a GP, mostly in West Essex. 

lifestyle medicine

During that time, there has been increasing government spend on health, major improvements in surgery, management of heart attack and stroke, cancer treatment. And yet the people I have met have become sicker - more diabetes, more heart disease. More cancers. 

 

Obesity has become an increasing challenge to us all - so what’s gone wrong with all the ‘low fat diet’ advice that we’ve been given, and the traffic light labelling of food to help us make good choices? 

 

‘Prevention is better than cure’ is an old adage that has been with me from childhood days. It is often a comment glibly made - as GPs we are encouraged to ‘educate’ our patients - about smoking, immunisation, alcohol. And we give this as ‘advice’ in the last 30 seconds of a consultation.  

lifestyle medicine

Yet there is so much more that we can do for ourselves - and these are lessons that I only really started learning for myself when I decided, at 60, that it was time to look after my own health. To sort out my steadily increasing weight. To find out about exercise - how much, and what type would be of benefit to me. 

Over the past 4 years I have learned to practice lifestyle medicine - for myself, with the many people I have met while supporting a Long Covid clinic and as a GP. Learning about the very real benefits of a healthy lifestyle - and what a healthy lifestyle really is - has changed the way that I approach health challenges. 

My biggest regret is that I did not have enough of the right information to pass on to my patients in the past. 

 

Training and working as a GP in the NHS is largely about prescribing drugs, referring for hospital care. It’s hard to help someone dig into lifestyle issues that are affecting their health in a 10 minute consultation. 

lifestyle medicine

However, I am learning that with the right information about lifestyle, many people can improve their medical condition. Improve it by as much, and more, as many of the medications that are offered - but without any of the side effects. And that some conditions are better treated by lifestyle - depression, Type 2 diabetes, mild-to-moderate hypertension.

Life is about more than work! So a little bit about who I am outside of medicine. 

 

I am married to Mike, and have 4 grown-up children, 5 grandchildren and a very naughty standard poodle. I have been vegetarian since I as a teenager, and now eat a mainly plant-based diet. I enjoy walking, gardening, playing with the grandchildren and going out for coffee. 

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