Interesting stuff I think might help us get even more people well. Enjoy x
Hi peeps, here’s your monthly Clinic Notes for practitioners. Emails go out to all subscribers, but if you don’t want to receive this publication, all you need to do is go to www.substack.com/settings, click on your Purehealth by Micki Rose subscription and toggle sections on and off, depending on what you want to receive or not.
Someone on Facebook asked for help on how to get more clients for their year-old business the other day. Here’s my answer in case it helps:
You will get there, but there will always be slow times. My advice would be to talk to everyone, be really enthusiastic, show how much you love it, give talks, go old school, be visible and only choose one social media outlet, build groups who love you, be yourself.
Most people say find a niche and it’s easier to market. I can see that but I have never needed to. It would certainly cut my admin down if I did! I would also think about setting up other forms of income that complement what you do. I set out to do this from the start and if I have a quiet time – which is really not often – I actually have to turn my patient list off for a few months to get stuff done. In the background, though, I am still bringing enough income in to keep me afloat.
That said: I’m not money oriented at all. I just want to cover my costs and have a nice balanced, simple life. You may want more than that, and that’s good too. I could have made a ton of money, but I chose not to.
I do think, since I started 30 years ago, the market is much more flooded with practitioners, but there’s also a lot more awareness of natural medicine approaches (people no longer think I’m a witch!) and a lot more ill people needing help, sadly. Do not give up. We need you!
From Kharrazian Institute, I thought these clues to toxic exposure were useful:
Standard lab tests have clues about toxic exposure—even within the normal ranges.
Alkaline phosphatase elevated but still “normal”? Check for pesticide exposure.
Bilirubin creeping up? Look for PCBs or perfluorinates.
Homocysteine high despite B-vitamin supplementation? Could be lead or arsenic poisoning the detox pathways.
LDL cholesterol that won’t budge? A five-year study showed PCB levels directly predicted cholesterol increases in older adults.
Are you signed up to receive press releases from Orthomolecular News? You really should – I find them so useful and I like the way they look at things. For example, their last news release was all about the dangers of medical AI in that, if we feed the AI crap info, we will get crap info out. What did they call it? Oh yes: GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out. They are working on developing a better, open access, not-for-profit medical AI – that actually includes orthomolecular medicine and CAM research – and are discouraging reliance on it as we need good – human – judgement.
GIGO remains the law of computing – and now, of healthcare AI. If we feed AI systems flawed, biased, or commercially skewed data, we will get flawed, biased, and potentially dangerous outputs. The antidote isn’t abandoning AI. It’s building better AI – one grounded in the truth, not the market. One that respects science over spin, and patients over protocols.
Yep. Agree with that. Support it if you can.
Still on the subject of AI – are you using it yet for anything? I have wondered about the Consensus app. The blurb says:
Consensus is an AI-powered academic search engine built on a database of over 220 million peer-reviewed research papers. Unlike general AI tools, every response is tied back to a real research paper and is grounded in scientific research. It helps you quickly review the literature and understand complex topics faster.
I suppose it depends very much on where they get their research papers from, doesn’t it? So, I looked it up. They say:
Consensus searches through a database of over 220 million peer-reviewed research papers from top-quality journals worldwide. The dataset is updated weekly to ensure access to the latest research. The paper data in our product comes from:
There is a list of the publications covered if you ask the help the question where does Consensus search? I tried to ask if it searches CAM medicine publications but it didn’t know what I meant – which says it all! I did like it, though. Do one of the suggested searches eg. Does fish oil improve mood? or Does magnesium help sleep? etc and you can see it does a summary of the literature at the top and a sort of meter showing yes/no/maybe percentage, with each publication listed. I think it’s pretty clever. A place to start a literature search anyway, maybe not the only source to be safe.
Anyway, I’m starting to see the potential of AI – I am always a deliberate late-adopter of these things so I can see how they pan out. Let us know any tips or tricks you’ve discovered that could make clinic and research life easier.
A great place to find all the conversion calculators you might need in practice. A patient directed me to this. I don’t think we can use Optimal Dx in the UK, can we? Certainly only links to US partners for supplements and tests anyway, which is a shame. Not being able to use Rupa is a pain too, isn’t it?
Useful podcast on hard cases – difficult patients, not gangsters!
I see NatMedPro has had an update. I’ve not had chance to check it out yet – have you – any better? I use this daily when checking contraindications etc. Very useful.
I completely missed that Invivo is delisting a lot of their infection tests – vaginal, oral and urinary, as well as the GI Ecologix, which actually I never used as I favour the GI360 myself. I’ve no idea why they’re doing this, have you? Anyway, I have listed the ones from Omnos/Regenerus instead (which are we meant to call them now??). I have been using their new platform, works well, but still quite a few glitches – I am driving them mad no doubt by pointing them all out in the name of feedback and please sort them out, lol!
Finally, a case pearl for you:
CASE PEARL: PERIMENOPAUSE
What would you think if a woman, aged 39, came to see you reporting diffuse muscle and joint pain, panic attacks, social withdrawal and increased food sensitivity?
You could go many ways with that couldn’t you?
But would you necessarily think of perimenopause? At 39? I’m not sure I would.
But, this is a picture of changing hormones. We don’t always associate these kind of symptoms with ‘the change’ but we should do. Some women have a perimenopausal ‘stage’ that lasts well over a decade. We might think of it starting around late 40s, early 50s maybe, but it can be a LOT earlier. And they don’t always have the classic hot flush, erratic periods picture for easy diagnosis.
I think many women wouldn’t think to ask their GP about their hormones with these symptoms, but anxiety, joint pains, wanting to go full-on-hermit and becoming more sensitive to stuff, physically, mentally and emotionally, can all be influenced by changing hormone levels.
I was reading a fantastic book called Quilt on Fire (great name!) recently. It is an hilarious, shocking, eye-opening memoir of a nurse in perimenopause. It’s at times deep and philosophical, discussing the existential crisis of mid-life, veers on the spicy side in places, but is snort-out-loud funny in others. I think it should be on our shelves and recommended to every woman ‘of a certain age’, over 35s probably. Fore-warned is fore-armed as they say. I think more of us should be looking for the non-classic signs of menopausal change – in both women and men.
MORAL OF THE STORY: remember to check hormone status, even if you think it’s too early for menopause and the px doesn’t have the classic symptoms.
That’s it for this issue, folks!
Don’t forget to check out the Purehealth News I do weekly-ish too for lots of other stuff I witter on about. You’ll find the archive here, but sign up to get them as I write them. And you can see my regular titbit type of Notes here.
I’m trialling different formats to see what people enjoy the most. Here’s the latest linky one for you to browse:
July 2025