Parakletus Living Wellness

Parakletus Living Wellness 🧑🏾‍⚕️Lifestyle and functional medicine GP
💕Wife and mum to two lovely boys
😋Unapologetic foodie

I qualified from Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University, New York in 2005 and achieved membership into the Royal College of General Practitioners in 2015. I hold a Diploma in Lifestyle Medicine from the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine (2020) and am a member of the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine. I also have some additional training in Functional Medicine principles fr

om the Institute of Functional Medicine. I work as an NHS GP in Ipswich and also served for four years on our local Clinical Commissioning Group, with particular emphasis on self-care and prevention; children, young people, and families; and mental health and wellbeing. I am interested in helping people understand their health, to look closely at the root causes of illness that must be addressed in order to improve present health and prevent/reduce the risk of future ill-health. It is important that we realise that we are not powerless in the battle against chronic illness - the choices we make now with regards to our food, physical activity, sleep, relaxation are the building blocks in the house of health we will inhabit in the future. As an NHS GP partner, I fully recognise the pressures NHS primary care is under, especially with regards to the scarcity of human and financial resources; there's particular challenge in achieving continuity of care with a GP for getting to the bottom of chronic symptoms. This is why I started Parakletus Living Wellness where our commitment is to give you: plenty of TIME to discuss the things that matter to you; CONTINUITY with an experienced GP qualified to assess and make detailed recommendations, resulting in an INDIVIDUALISED plan for improving your health and quality of life.

September always makes us want to start again.A few years ago, I bought the planner, the new trainers and the meal plan....
01/09/2026

September always makes us want to start again.

A few years ago, I bought the planner, the new trainers and the meal plan. By the nineteenth, it had all gone. ;)

I assumed it meant I was someone who couldn't follow through.

It took me a few more Septembers to realise the problem wasn't me.

The plan had six moving parts and nothing underneath them.

So this September, don't start again.

Resume.

Pick up the smallest version of what you were already doing. Let it become boring. Let it become easy.

Because boring is often the point at which a habit becomes sustainable.

You are not starting from zero. You're starting with everything you learned last time.

That still counts. 🤍

Five days at youth camp became two months of waiting for life to calm down before I reset.The lapse wasn't the problem. ...
28/08/2026

Five days at youth camp became two months of waiting for life to calm down before I reset.

The lapse wasn't the problem. The delay was.

Swipe through for what I do differently now, and why the return matters more than the lapse ever did.

Full newsletter at the link in bio.

A quick update on our Cookalong 💚Our Salads That Mean Business Live Cookalong, originally planned for 21 August, is bein...
19/08/2026

A quick update on our Cookalong 💚

Our Salads That Mean Business Live Cookalong, originally planned for 21 August, is being postponed.

Sometimes plans need to change, and we want to make sure we can bring you this experience at the right time and in the way we intended.

If you’ve already signed up, thank you for your interest and patience. We’ll share a new date and further details as soon as they’re confirmed.

In the meantime, you can still enjoy the Salads That Mean Business guide and keep exploring simple, colourful ways to nourish your body in midlife.

Thank you for understanding. 💚

Health in your body, peace in your soul, purpose in your step.

Lolu x

17/08/2026

Friends, I'm doing something on Friday evening and you are all invited, whether or not you have ever paid the slightest attention to anything I've said about vegetables. 😄

Friday 21 August, 6:30pm, live on Zoom, one hour. I'm making Cowboy Caviar from my own kitchen. There is no cooking involved at all, so there is nothing to burn and nothing to time. Chop, shake the dressing in a jar, eat.

Dinner is done by 7:30 and your Friday evening is still yours.

Come and cook along, come and watch with a glass of something, or send your teenager in to do the chopping while you put your feet up. Come on your own and you'll be in the majority. It's free and everybody is welcome.

Sign up here and the recipe book plus your joining link come in the same
email 👉 https://go.flourishwithDrLolu.com/salad

The brain you'll live in at 80 is being built at this week's dinner table.A pot of efo riro with mackerel through it doe...
11/08/2026

The brain you'll live in at 80 is being built at this week's dinner table.

A pot of efo riro with mackerel through it does more for it than most things sold in a wellness aisle.

The MIND diet, the eating pattern most strongly linked to slower cognitive decline, calls for daily leafy greens, beans, nuts, oily fish and whole grains. Look at that list and then look at a Nigerian kitchen. The greens, the beans, the groundnuts, the fish: already there. In dishes nobody thought to call a protocol.

In one study of nearly a thousand older adults, those eating a serving of leafy greens daily declined at a rate equivalent to being eleven years younger than those who rarely ate any.

Eleven years. From one daily habit.

So the change I'd make first isn't a supplement or an overhaul. It's greens on the plate every single day. Fresh, frozen, wilted into stew: it counts.

Keep cooking what you know. Just make sure the greens are in it.

Full newsletter in the link in bio.

Salad has a reputation problem. Too often it turns up as a sad side dish, and then we wonder why it doesn't keep us full...
08/08/2026

Salad has a reputation problem. Too often it turns up as a sad side dish, and then we wonder why it doesn't keep us full past 3pm.

Salads That Mean Business is my free ebook of colourful, practical salads built for gut health, steady energy and hormone health in midlife. Everyday ingredients. Real portions. Recipes that actually hold you.

And if you want to cook one with me: make Friday dinner with me, done by 7:30, evening still yours.

📅 Friday 21 August 🕡 6:30pm London time 💻 Live on Zoom, free to attend

We'll make Cowboy Caviar together, I'll explain why legumes matter so much in midlife, and you can bring your questions.

Download the ebook whether or not you can make the live session. Link in bio, or head to https://bit.ly/4gf2tnx

05/08/2026

The most protective food in my kitchen costs about £1.20 a kilo.

When people ask me about cancer prevention, they expect a list of things to give up. What the evidence actually supports is what you add: fibre and colourful plants, eaten regularly, over years.

Beans deliver both in one pot. Fibre that feeds the gut bacteria protecting your gut lining, plant protein, folate, steady blood sugar. Chickpeas in a salad, lentils in soup, butter beans in a sauce, ewa oloyin with stew. The longest-lived communities on earth all eat them daily.

I've also put together a free guide called Salads That Mean Business, full of recipes that are colourful, filling, and packed with the plant diversity your body is asking for. And on 20 August I'm hosting a live cookalong so we can make some of them together. Because trying something new is easier in company.

Today's newsletter has the detail. Link in comments.

Your jeans haven't shrunk. Your body changed the rules.From our forties, three things shift at once: muscle declines unl...
28/07/2026

Your jeans haven't shrunk. Your body changed the rules.

From our forties, three things shift at once: muscle declines unless we actively keep it, oestrogen reroutes fat storage to the middle, and our cells respond more slowly to insulin. The result is a body that seems to have stopped cooperating, even though nothing about your habits has changed.

The instinct is to eat less of everything. But hard restriction burns the muscle that was keeping your metabolism going. It makes the problem worse.

The better approach is repair, not restriction. Protein on every plate. Plants filling half of it. Muscles asked to work a couple of times a week. Less dramatic than a crash diet, and far more effective in this season.

More on this in today's newsletter.

Link in comments.

That Thursday evening catch-up with your neighbour might be doing more for your health than your morning run.Dan Buettne...
23/07/2026

That Thursday evening catch-up with your neighbour might be doing more for your health than your morning run.

Dan Buettner spent twenty years studying the world's longest-lived populations. One of the nine habits they all share is strong social connection. Not networking or a busy calendar, but real, sustained relationships where people are known and supported.

As a doctor trained in lifestyle and integrative medicine, I talk a lot about nutrition, movement, sleep, and stress. But connection is a pillar of health too. A meta-analysis of 148 studies found that people with stronger social relationships had a 50% greater likelihood of survival. Your body registers the difference between being around people and being known by them: lower inflammation, lower cortisol, better immune function.

And yet so many midlife women I work with have let this pillar quietly erode. Not because they don't value friendship, but because decades of holding everything together trained them out of letting anyone in.

Today's newsletter is a short reflection on the courage it takes to need people again, and why ancient wisdom and modern research agree that we were designed for it.

Link in the bio.

I don't think my story is unusual.So many midlife women have people. They have a husband, a church family, a WhatsApp gr...
16/07/2026

I don't think my story is unusual.

So many midlife women have people. They have a husband, a church family, a WhatsApp group that never stops. But the conversations have become functional. Fine, fine, busy, busy. Nobody asking how you're really doing. Nobody you'd actually tell.

That gap between being surrounded and being seen is something many of us carry without naming it.

And it matters for your health, not just your mood. Chronic social disconnection raises cortisol, increases inflammation, and disrupts sleep over time. Your body registers the difference between being around people and being known by them.

This week's newsletter is about what it looks like to rebuild. Link in bio.

Have you felt this? I'd love to hear in the comments.

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Ipswich

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Saturday 10am - 4pm

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