Helen West

In 1991, I returned to education and trained as a dietician at London Metropolitan.  I qualified in 1996 with an honours degree in human nutrition and dietetics and have worked for the NHS and privately for the last 23 years as a Registered Dietician.

In 1999, I qualified as an accredited Sports and Nutrition dietician allowing me to give advice to sports devotees both serious athletes and the recreational enthusiast. To optimise training the balance between exercise and diet is key for the body to run at its maximum efficiency. In 2001 I trained as an Advanced Hypnotherapist to complement the additional training around behaviour change I had acquired over the years. Hypnotherapy can be particularly effective for stopping smoking, weight related problems, stress and anxiety. During 2004-2006 to build-on and expand my professional skills I gained an MSc in the psychological approaches to health and management at the University of Bedford. My thesis was based on the hypothesis ‘Does an impaired glucose result confirm that a person will go on to have diabetes’

My particular areas of professional interest and expertise are in all aspects and branches of disordered eating and weight management. Over the years and including my MSc thesis research gained knowledge around diabetes treatment and delivered many talks on healthy eating around this topic. However, I also deliver FOD MAPs (Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Di-saccharides, Monosaccharides and Polyols) for irritable bowel syndrome.  This type of intervention I have also found useful in helping with inflammatory bowel disease such as Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s Disease.