The Living Herb

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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.

19/05/2026

Three things your PCOS investigation probably never ordered.

Most first-line assessments looked for cysts and cycle irregularity and stopped there. Fasting insulin and a full androgen panel are the measurements that illuminate the metabolic drivers. Thyroid antibodies are rarely included either. The Lancet formally renamed the condition PMOS on 12 May 2026 specifically to redirect the investigation toward this picture.

Swipe for the three tests worth requesting before your next appointment.

07/05/2026

I have a cold. I'm blaming . Here's why

28/04/2026

Louise was told her hormones were fine.

She had been waking at 3am for fourteen months and she’d had enough.

So she took herself off to her GP, they did some blood tests and when they came back her FSH was normal so her GP said it was probably stress. She suggested she cut back on caffeine and try to get to bed earlier.

Clearly her GP had good intentions but the problem was that FSH, the standard marker for perimenopause, was not the right test for Louise. FSH is a measure of follicle-stimulating hormone output and it rises when the ovaries are no longer responding as expected i.e. in perimenopause. However, this was not a test for how much progesterone Louise had and progesterone is what determines whether the brain's calming system is functioning at night.

Progesterone converts to something called allopregnanolone in the brain. Allopregnanolone amplifies GABA, the neurotransmitter promotes deep relaxation and initiates sleep. So when progesterone starts to fall early on in perimenopause, sleep becomes lighter and the brain does not settle.

A normal FSH does not tell you what progesterone is doing. It certainly does not tell you what progesterone is doing on day 21 of your cycle, which is where early luteal phase loss first shows up. That requires cycle-day-specific testing. Unfortunately most women never get this sort of testing because their FSH is normal and nothing flags the investigation.

Researchers studying perimenopausal hormonal transitions have consistently found that progesterone decline begins years before FSH rises reliably and progesterone loss can be a key driver.

If you have been told your hormones are fine and you still cannot sleep, then it may be that you just haven’t had the right hormones tested.

What would you do differently if you knew your standard blood test was not actually looking at the right thing? Let me know in the comments.

25/04/2026

Making a medicine up for my bestie and thought I'd leave her a love note on the bottle

18/04/2026

10 years ago today, I finished painting my new dispensary/treatment room ready to welcome clients.

I can't believe how far I've come... for one thing I have significantly more herbs on my shelves!!

From tiny acorns and all that

11/04/2026

If you're in come down to Langdale Hall and say hi! I'm here with loads of lovely herbal products and my book on sale.

There are some amazing other practitioners and stalls here too, including

07/04/2026

Yesterday's office was garden, sunshine and a very convincing fake G&T.

And before you feel an ounce of guilt about it... this is medicine.

Time in natural light and green space directly boosts serotonin production (your mood stabiliser), supports dopamine pathways (your motivation and reward system), and gives your cortisol levels a proper rest day.

A study from the University of Michigan found that just 20 minutes outside was enough to significantly lower cortisol (no spa day required, no wellness retreat, just twenty minutes of actual fresh air).

Women in perimenopause are particularly susceptible to serotonin drops (oestrogen plays a direct role in serotonin synthesis, so as it fluctuates, so does your mood). Which means that an afternoon in the garden with a glass of something that looks like gin isn't laziness, it's straight up neurochemistry.

So yesterday I did exactly that, unashamedly and without a single apology.

When did you last give yourself permission to just... stop?

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!

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.

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.

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Wantage
OX12

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http://www.thelivingherb.com/

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