The Living Herb

The Living Herb Are you facing a long term health issue? I want to help you find a way through your health difficult Please see our website for more information.

Herbal Medicine offers support for health concerns through western diagnosis methods and treatment using plant-based medicines. It combines centuries old traditional use of plants for healing with modern scientific research, based in physics and biochemistry. Victoria is our medical herbalist who offers a rigorous and scientific approach to helping people understand their own health issues thanks to 10 years’ experience working as a research scientist. This is uniquely combined with compassion and mindfulness following 15 years of meditation training. After 6 years of exhaustive training to be a Medical Herbalist, Victoria was invited to join the National Institute of Medical Herbalists. She is passionate about continued learning so regularly attends further training opportunities and keep up to date with the latest scientific research. We offer help through one-to-one consultations at our private treatment rooms in Wantage and online self-help courses.

The manosphere are right.I’d been wanting a quiet weekend of binge-watching periods dramas but given all the talk about ...
17/03/2026

The manosphere are right.

I’d been wanting a quiet weekend of binge-watching periods dramas but given all the talk about Louis Theroux's new documentary, Inside the Manosphere, I thought I'd give it a go.

Now I'd been expecting to spend 58 minutes shouting at my telly but one of the reasons why surprised me.

Every single thing those men were preaching about hormones, were saying the same thing I've been saying to women for the last 10 years.

From cortisol dysregulation and endocrine disruption to circadian rhythm and testosterone decline (yes it happens in women too), it's all really good science.

The red pill isn't anything new.

The manosphere-ites have just focused the lens at men and turned it into a movement.

Meanwhile, women have been traipsing in GP surgeries for decades, with fatigue, brain fog, mood crashes, weight gain and no libido, only to be prescribed antidepressants and given a leaflet about mindfulness.

But what really pee'd me off is the manosphere is (angrily, while being quite unpleasant about women) making the exact argument functional medicine has been making for years. We need good hormone health foundations and your endocrine system is being disrupted by modern life.

I hate to say it but the manosphere aren't wrong about the science. Optimising your hormonal health really does change everything. They're just not applying it to the people who need it most. Instead women are having to tell their GPs it's affect their husbands in order to get the treatment they need (yes this is really happening here in the UK in 2026)

So here's my challenge.

To all woman reading this who've been dismissed, fobbed off, or handed a prescription without a conversation, what would it look like if your hormone health got the same serious, evidence-based attention the manosphere gives testosterone?

Answers on a postcard please…. Probably to your GP!

Let's talk about medical inequality on International Women's Day.Unfortunately there are 100s of examples but I want to ...
08/03/2026

Let's talk about medical inequality on International Women's Day.

Unfortunately there are 100s of examples but I want to talk about one close to my heart.

Endometriosis.

In the 1990's, when I was diagnosed with endo, the average wait for diagnosis at that time was just under 8 years (7.96 to be exact).

My experience was pretty average. At 13 I was put on the pill which was followed by middle-aged male gynecologists telling me it was all in my head, it was just hormones and I'd grow out of it. After diagnosis, I was told getting pregnant would resolve it and given surgery and more hormones.

Fast forward to 2026 and new stats show that number has hit 9 years and 4 months (so I made a graph of the average diagnosis time over the years) and the rhetoric is the same.

Now, I get the NHS is currently pretty crippled at the moment and also....

This is a condition that affects 1 in 10 women. This is not something rare or obscure.

The economic cost of this to the UK annually is £8.2 BILLION (yes billion) due to sick days and treatment.

The only option women are offered is still surgery and hormone treatment.

And yet, understanding it from a functional medicine opens many avenues of treatment that are not so severe and with few side effects.

So why are we still in the same, if not worse position? Why is less that 2.5% of medical research funding going in to women's health? That's all women's health including fertility, pregnancy, menopause, and female cancers.

Yes let's celebrate being a woman today but let's also remember, we still have work to do.

One of the most common and demoralising experiences I often see is this: a woman does the responsible thing, gets tests ...
05/03/2026

One of the most common and demoralising experiences I often see is this: a woman does the responsible thing, gets tests done, and is told everything is normal.

And yet she does not feel normal.

Laboratory reference ranges are designed to detect pathology (i.e. when things are REALLY wrong). They are not designed to capture early shifts in hormonal signalling, subtle luteal phase changes, stress-induced ovulatory disruption, or emerging insulin resistance.

You can have shortened luteal phases (the time between ovulation and your period), rising night-time cortisol, fluctuating oestrogen, and blood sugar instability long before a value crosses a diagnostic threshold.

When reassurance is offered without explanation, we often start doubting our own experience. We stop pushing for understanding and instead lower our expectations of how well we can feel.

My new programme, the REVIVE Experiment, was built for women in that in-between space. Not acutely unwell, but not thriving. Women who want to understand their own patterns and who are prepared to address stress, sleep, nutrition, and metabolic stability in a structured way.

If that sounds familiar, message me and we can talk through whether it is a good fit.

Last night in my hormones workshop, we talked about something that many women have never had explained properly.Hormones...
04/03/2026

Last night in my hormones workshop, we talked about something that many women have never had explained properly.

Hormones do not operate in isolation. They are part of a conversation between your brain, your ovaries, your adrenal system, your metabolism, and your nervous system.

The hypothalamus (a bit in the brain) acts as the control centre, constantly interpreting signals about stress, safety, energy availability, inflammation, and sleep. When those signals suggest strain ovulation can become less consistent, weaking progesterone output and oestrogen patterns can become more volatile.

From the outside, that can look like heavier periods, shorter cycles, anxiety before your period, middle-of-the-night waking, or sudden shifts in mood and weight.

It is very easy to interpret those symptoms as your body “going wrong” when in reality, your body is adapting to cumulative input.

We also talked about blood sugar; not in a dieting sense, but in a regulatory sense. Excessively long gaps without eating, caffeine replacing meals, comfort snacking, high sugar/carbs diets, all feeds into cortisol rhythms, which in turn feed back into reproductive signalling.

When you see the system as a whole, the symptoms make sense.

That is precisely why I created my new programme, the REVIVE Experiment.

It is a small, by-invitation group where we take what we discussed, stress physiology, blood sugar stability, oestrogen volatility, and we apply it methodically over three months. Not perfectly but consistently.

If found yourself thinking, “I need help actually doing this,” then message me. We can talk about whether REVIVE is the right next step for you.

04/03/2026

I'm a bit concerned.... are we at risk of going backwards?

The phrase “oestrogen dominance” has become shorthand for almost everything in women’s health.Heavy periods? Oestrogen d...
03/03/2026

The phrase “oestrogen dominance” has become shorthand for almost everything in women’s health.

Heavy periods? Oestrogen dominance.
Anxiety? Oestrogen dominance.
Weight gain? Oestrogen dominance.

The difficulty is that the term is often used without context.

In early perimenopause especially, oestrogen does not simply decline. It becomes erratic. As ovarian follicles age and become less responsive, the brain increases FSH output in an attempt to stimulate them. That can lead to higher oestrogen peaks in some cycles, followed by sharper drops in others.

At the same time, progesterone is frequently the first hormone to weaken because ovulation becomes less consistent. Even with regular cycles, progesterone output may be lower than it once was.

That combination, fluctuating oestrogen alongside insufficient progesterone, is what drives many symptoms. Heavy bleeding. Migraines. Mood volatility. Breast tenderness. Restless sleep.
Add chronic stress and unstable blood sugar, both of which alter ovulatory signalling, and the picture becomes more layered again.

This is the physiology I will be talking about tonight in Hormones: What They Should Have Taught You at School. If you want to understand what may actually be happening in your body, rather than relying on simplified labels, comment HORMONES and I will send you the details.

I’ve been paying attention to what women are searching for about their health recently. Things likeWhy am I bleeding twi...
02/03/2026

I’ve been paying attention to what women are searching for about their health recently. Things like

Why am I bleeding twice a month?
Is nausea before my period normal?
Why has my anxiety suddenly escalated at 38?
Am I in perimenopause or just stressed?
Why are my periods suddenly heavier than they used to be?

These are not trivial curiosities. Women are typing questions into Google late at night because something feels off, they are suffering and they want to know what on earth is going wrong their body.

What strikes me is not the individual symptoms, it is the confusion around them. Most of us were never properly taught how the hormonal system functions beyond reproduction. We were taught how to not get pregnant. We were not taught how stress alters ovulation, how blood sugar affects mood and sleep, or why oestrogen can fluctuate dramatically for years before menopause.

On Tuesday I’m running a free live session called Hormones – What They Should Have Taught You at School. I’ll be walking through how stress physiology, oestrogen dominance, and blood sugar regulation intersect, and why those three areas explain far more than most people realise.
If you would like to join live, comment HORMONES and I’ll send you the link. It is a live session only, and I will be teaching it properly.

Nipped down to the amazing yesterday to pick up some of their olive oil (there's a new batch in).If you haven't tried i...
27/02/2026

Nipped down to the amazing yesterday to pick up some of their olive oil (there's a new batch in).

If you haven't tried it yet, it tastes amazing but it's also rich in polyphenols.

These are great at supporting hormone health by acting as antioxidants and reducing inflammation, which helps balance hormones during menopause, supports fertility, and aids in regulating insulin. They can also mimic weak estrogen, easing symptoms like hot flushes and mood swings.

And the olive oil in Going Green has more of these than any supermarket olive oil and it's cheaper too!

I also dropped off some signed copies of my book too so if you don't have one yet, you can pick one up there!

#

Do you ever nights when your mind is racing and you just can't get to sleep?I rarely do but I did last night.This mornin...
25/02/2026

Do you ever nights when your mind is racing and you just can't get to sleep?

I rarely do but I did last night.

This morning I woke up knackered and just wanted to stay in bed and snooze the morning away.

But I decided to actually listen to what my body really needed and instead this ⏬️ was me! Up and punching the air in a body combat workout.

It felt so good.

And.... I know it's really good from a physiological perspective too.

Y'see when we're kept awake mind racing it's like because our cortisol is too high in the evening. Bit like a cat who gets all puffed up and starts to shake when they're post cat fight, doing something physical will help to lower cortisol.

You don’t have to punch the air like I did, anything physical will do from dancing round the kitchen to your favourite song to going for a run. Even simply getting up and doing a bit of a wiggle.

If you want to know more about how cortisol affects us (including other hormones) and what you can do about it, come along next Tuesday to my free online workshop. Just comment below for more details.

24/02/2026

Herbal medicine is very subtle and a lot of my patients say this...

21/02/2026

I haven't done many live events but after recently running my "Hormones - what they should have taught youbat school" workshop for and , I thought I'd do another one!

This is going to be a bit different. I'm collaborating with the amazing to bring you a practical evening that will set you up for those transition points in life.... including menopause.

Checkout the link for more info and booking.

Romantic love is not built on roses and chocolates once a year.So why has your self-love been reduced to a candle, a bub...
13/02/2026

Romantic love is not built on roses and chocolates once a year.

So why has your self-love been reduced to a candle, a bubble bath, and a facial you book when you are already running on empty?

We have turned self-care into something decorative. A candle here, a bubble bath there and a spa voucher once a year.

Lovely? Absolutely.

Transformational? Not even close.

Now I'm no relationship expert but I do know thta real love, the kind that lasts, is built on the small, consistent things.

And your hormones? They are not impressed by bath bombs either. They need that same kind of consistent care and attention.

Real self-love, from a hormone perspective, looks like this:

🛌 Going to bed when you said you would, even though you have one more email to send, because cortisol and melatonin do not care that you are “just finishing something quickly.” Your nervous system needs rhythm more than it needs productivity.

🐣 Eating protein at breakfast instead of riding the caffeine wave, because blood sugar chaos becomes hormone chaos, and hormone chaos feels like irritability, anxiety, cravings and that wired-but-tired feeling you cannot explain.

🌬 Setting a boundary instead of swallowing resentment, because chronic stress is not just emotional and your endocrine system listens to every “yes” you should have said no to.

🔥 Supporting your liver and gut, because if you cannot metabolise and clear hormones efficiently, they simply recirculate, amplifying symptoms and leaving you wondering why you not longer feel like yourself.

☕ Saying no to caffeine when your body is clearly exhausted, because real energy is built slowly and intentionally, not borrowed in sharp spikes that leave you depleted later.

Now I get that this is not particularly glamorous and it probably won't get me very many likes (I mean who wants to go to be early on Valentine's day) but it will change your life.

If you are wanting more self-care, the kind that actually shifts your mood, energy and confidence from the inside out, comment below.

I have something very exciting brewing.

Address

Wantage
OX12

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Living Herb posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Practice

Send a message to The Living Herb:

Shortcuts

Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn
Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share via Email
Share on WhatsApp Share on Instagram Share on Telegram

Category