The Whole Heart Naturopath, Speaker and Kundalini Yoga Teacher

What You Can Expect When I Talk About Heart Health

When I talk about heart health, I want to change the conversation.

Too often, we talk about the heart in terms of only cholesterol, blood pressure, medications, weight and risk factors. These things absolutely matter. However, after decades working in naturopathy, I know that there is a much bigger story behind heart health.

I know this personally, too.

I lost all four of my grandparents to heart disease and my dad to a stroke when he was just 58. With a strong family history of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, I could have easily accepted the idea that heart disease was simply part of my family story.

But I didn't.

I learned that having a family history does not mean that the same outcome has to happen to you. Your genes may influence your risk, but they don't have to determine your destiny.

That belief has become central to my work, and it's something I love sharing with audiences.

I want people to understand their heart, not fear it.

Many of the people I work with have already had a health scare. They may have experienced a stroke or TIA, angina, chest pain or a heart attack. Often, what comes afterwards is fear. and anxiety

"Will it happen again?"

"Am I going to die?"

"Will I be here to see my grandchildren grow up?"

I understand why people feel frightened. But I don't believe fear is the most powerful way to create lasting health.

I want to replace fear with understanding.

When I speak, I explore what influences cardiovascular health and why looking only at cholesterol or blood pressure can give us an incomplete picture. I talk about nutrition, inflammation, vascular health, lifestyle, stress and the many factors that can influence how our heart and cardiovascular system functions.

But I also take the conversation somewhere that is often missing.

I talk about the emotional heart.

What does your emotional life have to do with your heart?

This is one of the questions I find most fascinating.

Traditional naturopathy has long recognised the relationship between the heart and our emotional experience of love, connection, grief, heartbreak, stress and our relationship with ourselves.

In my clinical work, I have found it is surprisingly rare for someone experiencing a significant heart health issue to have no emotional story alongside the physical one.

That doesn't mean emotions "cause" heart disease, and I never want people to feel blamed for their illness. But I do believe that if we ignore the emotional dimension of health, we may be missing an important opportunity to support the whole person.

So I ask different questions.

What was happening in your life before this happened?
Were you feeling supported?
Had you experienced grief or heartbreak?
How safe did you feel in your relationships?
And perhaps most importantly, where were you in all of this?

These conversations can be incredibly powerful.

I believe medication can be our friend but it shouldn't be the whole conversation.

I'm not anti-medication.

Medications have an important place in heart health and, for many people, they are essential and potentially life-saving. I want people to understand that.

What I challenge is the idea that medication should be the only focus.

I want my audiences to understand that alongside appropriate medical care, there are many other areas of health worth exploring and supporting. We can look at the health of the blood vessels, nutrition, inflammation, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, sleep, stress and lifestyle, while also recognising the emotional and psychological experience of the person sitting in front of us.

The goal isn't to choose between conventional medicine and naturopathy. It's to look at the whole picture.

I want your audience to leave feeling empowered.

I don't want people leaving one of my talks terrified that they are next.

I want them to leave thinking:

"There is more I can do."

More they can understand. More they can influence. More they can change.

I challenge the belief that "it runs in my family, so it was always going to happen." I challenge the idea that getting older automatically means becoming unwell. And I challenge the feeling that once you've had a heart scare, your life has to become smaller.

I want people to understand that risk is not the same as destiny.

When I speak, my aim is to make complex health information understandable, challenge some of the assumptions we have come to accept about ageing and heart disease, and give people practical ways to become more active participants in their own health.

Most of all, I want to leave people with hope.

Because protecting your heart isn't just about living longer.

It's about being here for the life you love.

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