Speaking at the NIMH Herbal Medicine Conference: Healthcare for the Future
Dr Minha spoke at the National Institute of Medical Herbalists’ conference near Bristol, on managing pain and fatigue through integrative care.
“Meet the future of medicine.” Dr Minha spoke at the National Institute of Medical Herbalists (NIMH) Herbal Medicine Conference, under the theme “Integrative herbal practice, healthcare for the future.” First conceived in 1864, NIMH is the oldest and largest professional body of herbal practitioners in the UK, maintaining a register of medical herbalists who train to degree level, a far cry from the popular image of herbalism, and much closer to a regulated clinical profession.
The conference was held at the Penny Brohn Centre at Ham Green House near Bristol, home of the cancer wellbeing charity, a fitting setting for a meeting devoted to how herbal and conventional medicine can work alongside one another rather than in opposition. The opening keynote came from the herbalist and author Simon Mills, with a programme exploring the place of evidence-informed herbal practice in the healthcare of the future.
Speaking to an audience of degree-trained medical herbalists, Dr Minha shared the Curaidh Clinic model, integrative, personalised, lifestyle and regenerative medicine, and how pain and fatigue can be managed by bringing conventional medicine and evidence-informed botanical practice to the same table. It is a message she is well placed to carry, holding registration as both a conventional doctor and, for more than two decades, a naturopathic and osteopathic physician.
The meeting produced something lasting: a collaborative working group on publishing integrative medicine case studies, which Dr Minha now leads, meeting monthly to build the kind of rigorous, publishable evidence the field needs to earn its place in mainstream care. That instinct, curiosity anchored by evidence, is exactly how botanicals and clinical nutrition are used at Curaidh Clinic: never as an alternative to conventional medicine, but as a considered part of the same toolkit.
