Hi Reader, I remember sitting outside the doctor's surgery in the car. Diagnosis in my hand. Engine off. Just staring at the windscreen. No plan. No list of what to eat. No real explanation of what was actually happening inside my body. Just me, on my own, left to work it out. So I did what most people would do. I ate "healthy." I'd been vegetarian for over 30 years by that point. Long before any of this started. It was just who I was. I thought I had the healthy eating thing sorted. I kept...
5 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, Years ago, I started reacting badly to bread. Not in an obvious, dramatic way. Just that low-level, hard-to-pin-down feeling of not quite right. The kind of thing that's easy to dismiss. The kind of thing doctors tend to wave away. But I knew my body. And I knew something in the bread was doing it. So I started reading labels. And the first thing I found was calcium propionate. A preservative. E282. Added to extend shelf life. When I looked into it, I found it had been linked to...
6 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, Subject: I fell asleep at a red light with my kids in the backPreview: I still don't know how long I was out for. Subject: I looked exactly the same. I wasn't.Preview: Nobody around me had any idea what was happening. THE LIGHT WAS RED My daughter was in her car seat behind me, chattering about something from nursery that day. I was half listening, half just trying to keep my eyes open. Somewhere between one sentence of hers and the next, they closed. I woke up to a horn behind me....
10 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, THE DAY I WAS TOLD IT WAS ALL IN MY HEAD I was lying on a hospital trolley unable to move. I'd come in by ambulance. I couldn't walk. I couldn't get up. The pain was unlike anything I had ever felt in my life. The kind that takes over everything. They gave me morphine. IV paracetamol. Something in the diazepam family, I think. The kind of medication that is supposed to knock pain flat. It wasn't touching it. I was still sweating through the sheets. Still completely unable to shift...
12 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, I want to tell you about the week I've been having. Because I suspect some of you might be having the same one. We've had a few days of intense heat here in the UK. And despite doing everything I thought was right – staying out of the sun, drinking plenty of water, resting – I have been feeling progressively, inexplicably worse. Not just a bit hot and tired. Properly unwell. The kind of unwell that feels familiar to anyone managing a thyroid condition. 😴 Bone-deep exhaustion🧠 Brain...
15 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, Somewhere between the 1970s and now, something was lost. Not misplaced. Not forgotten by accident. Quietly. Gradually. Piece by piece. And if you have ever sat in a waiting room being told your results are normal while knowing, in your bones, that something is very wrong – you are living in the gap that was left behind. People ask me all the time for book recommendations on thyroid health. There are two I come back to every time. But one of them stops me in my tracks every single...
17 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, I joined a group last week that I had no business being in. A peptide group. Free to join. I went in for a nosy, because peptides are the thing everyone's talking about right now, and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I didn't post anything. Just scrolled. And then I found a thread that made me stop. Someone had written in about a friend. The friend has Hashimoto's. And she was asking, quite innocently, what peptides might be good for her, on top of the medication she's...
22 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, I read something this week that made me genuinely happy. And then it made me a little sad. And then it made me want to write this email. NICE – the body that sets clinical guidelines for the NHS – has just announced draft guidance recommending that people with PMOS (previously known as PCOS - Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) should receive annual reviews. Not just a quick check-in on the main symptoms. A proper, structured review. Covering the knock-on effects. The wider picture. The...
25 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, I want to talk about something that's been sitting heavily with me this week. Not because it's happened yet. But because it might. And for those of us already living with a long-term health condition, the implications feel very personal. You've probably heard that GP services in England are in crisis. Waiting times are longer. Appointments are shorter. And for so many of us, the experience of actually being heard – really heard – when something is wrong has become something we...
29 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, There's a moment a lot of us know. You're sitting in the car after an appointment. You got told everything looks fine. And you sit there trying to work out if that's good news. It doesn't feel like good news. Because you still feel terrible!!!. You felt terrible before you walked in. And you'll feel terrible on the drive home. But apparently, you're fine. 😔 So you drive home. You pick the kids up. You make dinner. You smile when someone asks how you are. Because what else do you...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read