About Synthesis Clinic - an award-winning UK Integrative medicine practice
What is Integrative Medicine?
Integrative Medicine is a model that synthesises the best of multiple therapeutic approaches, including conventional, psychological, lifestyle medicine and complementary medicine, within a multidisciplinary whole person-centred approach. This means we bring a whole therapeutic toolkit to bear on the health issues you are facing with your goals and needs front and centre.
For example, if someone is struggling with PCOS, we could use nutrition, herbal medicine and physical activity to help with the metabolic and hormone disturbances underlying this issues.
What is precision health?
Precision health takes into account differences in people’s genes, environments and lifestyles and formulates wellbeing support, health promotion and disease treatment strategies based on the individual’s unique backgrounds and conditions. We aim to marry both high-tech and high-touch approaches to tailor healthcare recommendations to the unique biology and life circumstances of each individual. Precision Health represents a fundamental shift to more proactive and personalised care that empowers people to lead healthy lives. It is a transformation from a ‘sick-care’ based model of medicine to personalised healthcare.
We believe in supporting people, not generic protocols.
What is Functional Medicine?
Functional Medicine is a unique personalised biological systems-based model that enables practitioners to work with clients to address the underlying causes of symptoms and health issues in order to promote optimal wellbeing. It is the medicine of ‘why’, focusing on the roots of disease rather than purely symptom management. For example, we dig into causes and triggers of IBS (a stomach upset on holiday, heavy antibiotic exposure etc) or what is really underlying fatigue in an individual.
The Functional Medicine model starts with a thorough exploration of each client’s genetic, biochemical and lifestyle factors and utilises this information intelligently to direct personalised treatment plans. Functional Medicine combines science, evidence and clinical insight and brings the art of medicine and the whole-person approach back into the therapeutic relationship between practitioner and client.
what is lifestyle medicine?
Lifestyle medicine is a branch of evidence-based medicine in which comprehensive lifestyle changes (including nutrition, physical activity, stress management, social support and environmental exposures) are used to prevent, treat and reverse the progression of chronic diseases by addressing their underlying causes.
What is integrative oncology?
Integrative oncology (IO) as a patient-centred, evidence-informed field of cancer care that utilises psychological, nutritional, lifestyle and complementary interventions alongside conventional cancer treatments. Integrative oncology aims to support better quality of life, improve resilience, minimise the side effects of treatment and improve outcomes.
At Synthesis Clinic we do not offer conventional oncology input but our approach is to always work alongside your medical team to provide additional expert care.
To find out more about our integrative cancer support philosophy, please read our Director’s blog for the British Society for Integrative Oncology here.
What services does SYNTHESIS CLINIC OFFER?
We offer services in our specialist areas of women’s health and hormones (including gut health, mental wellbeing and complex multisystem cases) and integrative cancer support alongside your oncology team. Our services are available to UK-based adults, we are not able to offer appointments to those under 18 or living outside the UK.
Please click on the links below to find out more.
Integrative cancer care (integrative oncology)
Please note that Synthesis Clinic is not a specialist eating disorder clinic, and we are not able to take on patients with an active eating disorder. We are only able to support patients who have been in stable long-term remission from a past eating disorder. Please note that some general nutrition education handouts provided may include foods to include and foods to limit, so if this may be triggering in any way, finding specialist support outside our practice would be best.
What happens when I book a consultation?
Prior to your first consultation, you will be sent a confirmation email with the details of the appointment, any paperwork that needs to be completed and, in most cases, a link to complete your health and lifestyle history forms. Please note that this is an extensive form and you will need to allow around 30 minutes to complete it. Please have any supplements or medications you take to hand when you fill in the form.
You will need to complete and return the forms and any other associated paperwork, such as the 3-day nutrition and lifestyle diary, at least 2 working days prior to the appointment. It is crucial for our professionals to have the right information prior to seeing you in person, so that we can use our time together in the most effective way possible.
Please note that all appointments are invoiced for in advance and are payable before the consultations. There is a 48 hour cancellation policy for all appointments.
What happens at the initial appointment?
During the initial 75-90 min consultation, one of our practitioners will review your health goals, take a full history of your symptoms, family history, current and past medical problems and treatment and any recent test results. We would also have a detailed discussion of lifestyle including nutrition, sleep, physical activity, stress management and environmental factors. We would also discuss what may be underlying the issues you are experiencing and recommend any further testing needed and any associated costs.
Following the initial appointment, you will receive a full management plan, including any recommendations on further testing, lifestyle measures (including supplementation where necessary) and other advice as needed within 3 working days. If you are on a package, you will be provided with contact details for your clinic coordinator who will help you make further appointments, order tests and answer queries about how the clinic works.
Please note that we are happy to answer 1-2 emails after the consultation to clarify any points in the plan but beyond that all non-urgent queries will be answered at your next consultation. Any email advice from our professionals beyond the 1-2 email limit would be chargeable due the time involved in answering further queries.
Functional and Integrative Medicine is not a quick fix, and commitment to a 3-6 month programme is required (although complex cases may need a longer treatment period).
What happens if i want to get some diagnostic tests done?
Please contact your clinic coordinator to book in your blood tests and to arrange test kits. Some tests will need to be ordered directly by you and you will be advised if that is the case.
An overview of our diagnostic test offering is available here.
What about follow-up appointments?
If you booked a package with one of our doctors or a 3-month package with our nutrition team, you will be contacted by the clinic coordinator to offer you an appointment. Three contact attempts will be made but following that, it will be up to the individual to contact the clinic to request a follow-up appointment within the package timeframe. It is important to note that all nutrition packages are designed to be completed within 3 months and a maximum of 6 months, and no further package appointments can be made beyond this time. Unfortunately we cannot hold time in practitioner diaries indefinitely for package appointments.
How often do I need to come to the clinic?
That depends on the professional you are seeing but follow-ups with our doctors are usually every 4-6 weeks. Health coaches and nutritional professionals usually see their clients every 2-4 weeks, depending on the stage of the process, and psychology starts off weekly, although this can be tailored to your own individual circumstances.
Are there any practical issues that might come up when I book?
We do require a significant amount of paperwork to help us with pre-consultation assessment, monitoring of outcomes and clinical audit, so we suggest setting aside at least 30-45 minutes to complete the paperwork and having your medical letters and any recent test results to upload. It is also not possible to be precise about lifestyle recommendations without having a regular nutrition and lifestyle diary completed, so we usually ask for it at every medical and nutrition consultation unless it is a very brief review. This is according to clinic procedures to help us provide effective personalised support.
In our integrative cancer care division, it is essential that we know about everyone involved in your care (NHS, charity, private practitioners) to help support you in the most effective way possible. Where there are clashes between our integrative and collaborative approach vs alternative or possibly unsafe methods available on the Internet, we may need to ask you to consider which approach you would like to go forward with. Unfortunately there are certain practices out there that we would not support or recommend. You are advised to check with the clinic coordinator in the first instance and discuss further during the discovery call (where available) to ensure you are happy with the approach and everyone on the team is aligned. If anything is unresolved or requires further attention, please contact the Practice Manager, Marianne Potgieter, on marianne@synthesisclinic.co.uk.
Additionally, please note that we are a UK-based adult only clinic, and we will only offer appointments to those over 18. Unfortunately, we are not able to offer an opportunity for other people to pay for the patient’s treatment without their knowledge of the costs as per clinic policy. While we appreciate the wonderful offer of support, payments are processed via the person’s portal, and we strongly believe that clients and patients should have full knowledge about and engagement with their care.
Please note that coming to see our team is not a substitute for standard NHS care, including acute care and out-of-hours services. For integrative cancer support we always aim to work with your oncology team to support best practice and clinical outcomes.