About me

I am a holistic medical doctor who uses a combination approach and works online and in West and Southwest London.

Medicine

I come from a family of doctors and studied medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. I qualified as a conventional medical doctor in 1985 with a sense of questions still unanswered. I went on to work in several different areas to gain experience, including: general medicine, respiratory medicine, general surgery, urology, gynaecology, accident and emergency, and psychiatry of the elderly. A process of elimination led me to consider psychiatry as an interesting career so I started on a training scheme.

Illness

Unfortunately glandular fever from medical school became compounded and intensified to the point where I had to stop work and rethink everything. I’d become very ill with weight loss, fever, night sweats, lymphadenopathy, abscesses, digestive problems, rashes, haematological abnormalities and more. Cognitively and emotionally I was in a bad way too. No one could diagnose or help me so I put a ‘Help!’ ad in a doctors paper and all the replies pointed to the world of natural medicine, about which I knew nothing. Slowly I improved enough to work again.

More illness

...followed, including: a head tumour, miraculous outcome from high risk surgery, a paralysed lung, traumatic brain injury and more, the worst being chronic fatigue.

Summary

All this serious illness has reduced me greatly but it has also given back. It has changed a standard directed career into a worthwhile and true vocation, one I happily give myself to rather than resent. It has clarified my understanding and equipped me with more resources than typical taught-medicine would have. While acknowledging that most non-pharmaceutical medicine is unproven according to ‘the’ science, I find these resources very helpful in my practice. I find all medical systems to be incomplete and that using more than one perspective really opens up the understanding and from there, therapeutic possibilities.