As part of the Muscle Help Foundation’s #StrongerTogether series, Dr Minha joined founder and CEO Michael McGrath for a wide-ranging conversation on protecting wellbeing and physical health through Covid-19 and beyond.
The Muscle Help Foundation is a small, multi-award-winning, family-centred UK charity that since 2004 has supported children and young people living with muscular dystrophy and other muscle-wasting conditions, delivering transformational “Muscle Dream” experiences, one for each of the 657 muscles in the human body. Its founder, Michael McGrath, who has since been honoured with an MBE for services to people with muscular dystrophy, lives with muscular dystrophy himself and became the first disabled person to lead expeditions to both the magnetic North and South Poles.
Speaking as Medical Director of the NNEdPro Global Centre for Nutrition and Health, Dr Minha shares the thinking behind what she calls the Integrated Medicine Toolbox: the blend of nutrition, lifestyle medicine and holistic strategies that builds resilience, particularly for those managing complex, long-term conditions. For families navigating muscle-wasting conditions, and for anyone whose health was tested by the pandemic, the conversation offers practical, evidence-informed strategies for the long haul.
Much of the conversation was refreshingly practical. Dr Minha talked the community through a simple locus-of-control exercise, sorting what you can influence from what you cannot, and the “attitude shapes behaviour” loop that a smile, or a frown, sets off between people. She drew on the Kübler-Ross change curve to make sense of the emotional stages so many moved through during lockdown, from shock and denial to experimentation and, eventually, integration.
Two habits stood out. The first was a morning “battery check-in”: asking honestly how much charge you have that day, physically and psychologically, and setting realistic expectations from there. The second was gratitude and being fully present. She described the unexpected joy of growing a tomato from seed for the first time, and closed on the idea of living to “die empty”, having given your very best.
That same toolkit, conventional medicine strengthened by clinical nutrition, movement and mind-body strategies, is the foundation of care at Curaidh Clinic today.
Hosted by the Muscle Help Foundation. Learn more about the NNEdPro Global Centre for Nutrition & Health.
