Oct 19, 2026 · 1 hr 26 min · 14 segments
You’ve had the tests. Everything came back “normal.” So why do you still feel unwell? In this episode of *What Is Health*, Oliver Barnett is joined by Caroline, clinic manager at the London Clinic of…
I think people are very much stuck on, predicated on this sort of model of, which is very allopathic in nature, which is Everyone wants a diagnosis and I want a diagnosis of my condition.
And the way I get to that conventionally is we do some testing that might test for something that I might have.
By that test being positive, we then form a hypothesis that says, well, if that test is positive, I must have condition B.
Or if I don't have condition B, I have a condition that the doctor or clinician hasn't got a clue what I have, and it's going to be called some type of syndrome.
Or it's going to be called, you know, something like fibromyalgia, which is basically fibromyalgia, which is like another syndrome, which basically comes from the Greek meaning pain in multiple places, which then doesn't tell you anything, especially if you get a syndrome diagnosis.
The problem with that model, though, it's very hard to get people out of that mindset.
So the way we work tends to be a lot more from, you could say a systems, many different ways you work from, but one way is perhaps a systems biology perspective.
So we're often as naturopaths or functional medicine practitioners, not really concerned too much.
And this is where there can be a bit of a disconnect with the person on the phone is we're not that concerned too much with the diagnosis because the diagnosis for us fits into maybe four or five different buckets.
when people ring you up, they want to know, hello, Caroline, or at London Clinic of Nutrition, have you dealt with this obscure rare genetic condition that's only affected 30 people in the last 20 years? Hoping that we're going to say yes, right? I don't mean to say that flippantly, but...
it is sometimes the case like that and the fact is you know like i had a patient and we spoke to like this week or last week i think it was and want to know if we dealt with this particular condition it was a very uh rare condition i've actually dealt with once in in 20 years and 30 000 patients And I had to deal with one case.
And interestingly, on the exploratory call, they said to me, so what happened to that one case you had of our particular condition? I'm like, that was like 12 years ago.
I'm not going to remember, right? But it's much more important to me to know what type of person has a condition than to know what condition a person has,
right?
Um, so I think it's helping coaching people who call up to try, I know it's years of paradigm, but trying to get them out of that allopathic paradigm of, you know, we look for a condition and we test for it and we treat it because there's a lot more nuance to, I think the type of what I think medicine, and I think there's other commentators have said, this is often more of an art than a science.
And it's like that quote, especially around testing you mentioned, attributed to Einstein, you know, that quote, which is not everything that can be counted can be counted.
So it's like, well, you test for something and just because it's out of range, do you treat it? um or because it's not out of range do you not treat it
yeah
um i think that um your question has many layers and i think the one going back to what you said about um people go to their doctors they do a number of tests which normally i would add are not comprehensive enough
I think people are very much stuck on, predicated on this sort of model of, which is very allopathic in nature, which is Everyone wants a diagnosis and I want a diagnosis of my condition.
And the way I get to that conventionally is we do some testing that might test for something that I might have.
By that test being positive, we then form a hypothesis that says, well, if that test is positive, I must have condition B.
Or if I don't have condition B, I have a condition that the doctor or clinician hasn't got a clue what I have, and it's going to be called some type of syndrome.
Or it's going to be called, you know, something like fibromyalgia, which is basically fibromyalgia, which is like another syndrome, which basically comes from the Greek meaning pain in multiple places, which then doesn't tell you anything, especially if you get a syndrome diagnosis.
The problem with that model, though, it's very hard to get people out of that mindset.
So the way we work tends to be a lot more from, you could say a systems, many different ways you work from, but one way is perhaps a systems biology perspective.
So we're often as naturopaths or functional medicine practitioners, not really concerned too much.
And this is where there can be a bit of a disconnect with the person on the phone is we're not that concerned too much with the diagnosis because the diagnosis for us fits into maybe four or five different buckets.
when people ring you up, they want to know, hello, Caroline, or at London Clinic of Nutrition, have you dealt with this obscure rare genetic condition that's only affected 30 people in the last 20 years? Hoping that we're going to say yes, right? I don't mean to say that flippantly, but...
it is sometimes the case like that and the fact is you know like i had a patient and we spoke to like this week or last week i think it was and want to know if we dealt with this particular condition it was a very uh rare condition i've actually dealt with once in in 20 years and 30 000 patients And I had to deal with one case.
And interestingly, on the exploratory call, they said to me, so what happened to that one case you had of our particular condition? I'm like, that was like 12 years ago.
I'm not going to remember, right? But it's much more important to me to know what type of person has a condition than to know what condition a person has,
right?
Um, so I think it's helping coaching people who call up to try, I know it's years of paradigm, but trying to get them out of that allopathic paradigm of, you know, we look for a condition and we test for it and we treat it because there's a lot more nuance to, I think the type of what I think medicine, and I think there's other commentators have said, this is often more of an art than a science.
And it's like that quote, especially around testing you mentioned, attributed to Einstein, you know, that quote, which is not everything that can be counted can be counted.
So it's like, well, you test for something and just because it's out of range, do you treat it? um or because it's not out of range do you not treat it
yeah
um i think that um your question has many layers and i think the one going back to what you said about um people go to their doctors they do a number of tests which normally i would add are not comprehensive enough
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