A. If you are trying to look after or manage your own health, or those of your family members, then you will learn how to do this from my courses. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to understand how the program works, nor do you have to understand complex medical science to be able to interpret case studies. The Traditional Chinese Medicine model of interpretation is easily grasped by members of the public, particularly when demonstrated within the context of real case studies, or even that of your own. Most students are filled with excitement when the whole arena of healing is opened up to them; they can start to make sense of their own case, and feel more equipped to work hand in hand with their practitioners. Some students have even said to me that they feel that they now understand their own health and their way forward better than their practitioner. Similarly practitioner students have indicated that finally, after years of study, they now have a framework where they can feel confident to take on even the most complex case. The beauty of the courses is that they bring together whatever your existing knowledge is and provide a framework for you to use and apply that knowledge, to make better decisions on appropriate treatment so that your program can work for you.

A. You will gain the expertise to manage your patients’ health and get them to their desired end-point. When patients are looking for the most optimal health outcome, it is invariably a long journey and unless a practitioner can accurately interpret the entire case, inform the patient and draw up a strategy (and time frames) that will take the patient to where they wish to get to, practitioners may lose their patients before they have even started the process. Any healing journey requires the active participation of both the practitioner and patient.

Most practitioners training, whether conventional or alternative, concentrates primarily on the science of medicine where the core focus of treatment is “What products should I prescribe for which symptoms?” this may lead to product-dependency in patients who follow this pathway. Although the science of medicine has a valid place, the focus for a healer should be “How do I bring this person to a point where they can heal themselves?” This is the art of medicine – and this is what I teach. You need to make sense of the case before you can treat the case.

When you can bring the two together, the art and the science, then you have a mechanism where you can truly help your patients achieve their aspirations. As medical philosopher Henri Poincare said, ”Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts in no more science than a heap of stones is a house.”

A. This depends on you current level of understanding and the complexity of the condition that you are managing and how competent you want to become in managing your own or even other family members’ health. The blog and free papers are intended to provide insight into a wide range of issues that would support you on your journey. The book is a very good reference hand book to support decision making and help put things into context. But to really understand how to put all this information into a personal context you may need some basic training. If you wish to skill up on interpretation and applied healing you can move toward on-going learning courses which I see as a life long experience.

A. Because my main interest is in restoring the body sufficiently for it to resolve its own imbalances and reduce any dependency on drugs or products. With treatments that rely on products to “fix” the symptoms, these symptoms will invariably return when you stop the products. However, specific diet and detoxification protocols can change the conditions within the body leading to a natural resolution of imbalances. Although it takes longer to see results, these results tend to be long-term because you are correcting the cause and not merely suppressing the symptoms.

A. My approach means that I primarily work with you by providing the support and tools you need to develop a clear strategy that gets you to where you want to go. This also involves better management of your condition as a way of getting there faster. My approach encourages you to learn how to better collaborate with any practitioners that you work with and develops your capacity to get them to understand your own criteria for smart decision making.

A. No, this approach empowers you to move towards better decision-making based upon available clinical evidence of what has been proven to work for people with similar conditions. You may find that the best outcome for your individual case may depend upon implementing a range of treatments where you have been able to use your own criteria to judge the claims made by those who are offering specific remedies.

If a treatment is offered by advocates, specialists or practitioners that is unsupported in its claims or if there is insufficient supporting clinical evidence of its efficacy specific to your condition, then my approach provides you with the method to identify the risks and monitor your progress against your own desired outcome.

A. If you do not have a chronic condition and you are willing to learn and take responsibility for managing your health, then the information here will support you in your endeavours.

However, if you do have a chronic condition, such as cancer or other degenerative condition that requires monitoring, then you will need the support of a qualified practitioner who is willing to form a partner relationship in order to share the responsibility, decision-making and management of your case, in order to really benefit from what is available here.

I do take on patients, but those who have chronic conditions are requested to maintain their relationship with their primary health care worker (specialist or GP/MD), and be willing to supply me with copies of any medical reports, including current blood results, relating to their condition to enable me to document the case thoroughly, before proposing a strategy and dietary program.

A. I can train you up to be a Smart Patient empowering you to make smart decisions that will get you to where you want to go, faster. It’s not important to understand the medical technicalities when you are clear about what you want to achieve, because what you are talking about is outcome. From here you work backwards and determine which treatments, products and services are most aligned to helping you get your desired outcome.

Like any journey you have to know where you’re starting from, the direction you’re currently heading, where you would like to be heading and whether you are likely to get there. You will need to choose how you will travel and who will guide you. And, most importantly, you will need to monitor your progress to make sure that you’re on track. The Smart Patient Road Map ensures that you have everything covered, shows you how to ask the right questions that will give you meaningful answers, how to filter through your options to improve your chance of success and get to your destination faster and more effectively.

A. What is not available is the knowledge of what is going to work for you because there is no collected evidence from either the medical or alternative health sectors of what works for your specific combinations of conditions. As there is no requirement for any practitioner to share information amongst their fraternity of what does or doesn’t work – the practitioner ends up relying upon either informal feed back from other practitioners or patients, or more often advertising material from pharmaceutical and product manufacturers, and the published results of very carefully controlled medical trials usually conducted on a select group of healthy individuals, which may not reflect the population that the drug will be used on. As we know that medical drugs may only “work” in 33% of cases, it can become hit and miss whether a treatment will actually work for the individual. So the patient needs to lead the way by monitoring themselves and by being aware of any risks of treatment, and what any new symptoms they may experience may mean for them.

A. A. This means that it will be the responsibility of the patient to make sure that they are getting to where they want to be. In many cases clinicians may no longer know exactly what’s wrong with a patient or the cause of the condition, or what is likely to work best for that patient. The more a patient can understand of their own condition, the more likely they are to seek treatments which benefit them and be able to monitor their condition, with the help of their clinician, to make sure that they are going in the right direction. Simply speaking, if you have no comprehension of your own condition, then simply trusting that the medical system will get you to your desired outcome is no longer enough.