Dr Janice Haywood-Gray

Dr Haywood-Gray obtained her medical degree in the UK in 1992 and received exceptional training in the NHS. She has been a doctor for more than 34 years. In 2006, she moved to Australia with her husband and son, and this country has been their home ever since.

She holds a Bachelor of Medicine and postgraduate qualifications in emergency medicine, anaesthetics, general practice, rural medicine, forensic medicine and acupuncture. She is currently working towards a Master's in psychiatry and a Fellowship of the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine, a field that studies how diet, exercise, sleep and environment influence health.

Her clinical interests are hormone health, mental health, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, long COVID, chronic pain and gut health, and her particular passion is the thyroid gland. The services she offers include:

• Nutritional and environmental medicine

• Acupuncture and lifestyle-based care

• Intravenous nutrient therapy, where clinically indicated

• Menopausal hormone therapy, including body-identical hormones

Please note that Dr Haywood-Gray does not prescribe Schedule 8 medicines, such as strong opioids and alprazolam.

Approach

Dr Haywood-Gray practises integrative medicine, combining conventional medicine with nutritional and environmental medicine and looking at the whole person to find the underlying cause of ill health. Conventional medicine is superb in emergencies, but in chronic conditions such as pain, high blood pressure, diabetes and autoimmune disease, she believes it too often adds another medication without asking why the problem arose. No medicine is without potential harm, and her guiding principle is "first, do no harm". One size does not fit all, so she prioritises preventing disease and slowing its progression through lifestyle and nutrition.

Diagnosis begins with listening. Although patients may have told their story many times, she starts with a detailed history, then a thorough examination, and only then orders targeted investigations, which she interprets for each patient as an individual.

Patients will find she is a talker, yet she is really an introvert, a deep thinker who looks closely at the detail. She will not tell patients what to do. She explains their options and guides them so that they can decide. If she does not know the answer, she says so and keeps searching until they find it.

Why she practises this way

Her interest began at home. As a child, her son rarely slept and vomited many times a day, and the standard advice did not help. When a colleague asked her why he did not sleep, she realised she did not know, and that question started a search that shaped her practice. Living with her own health conditions, and watching thyroid disease develop in her family, have also taught her what it is like to be the patient.

Medicine is her passion, and she aims to learn something new every day. When she began studying medicine 39 years ago, she promised herself that the day she stops caring is the day she leaves this wonderful profession.

Outside medicine, she enjoys crafts, cycling, interior design and renovating the family home, and exploring the sea and mountains on her doorstep with her pets.