Dairy comes with a lot of confusion in the nutrition world! Eat it, don’t eat it, eat it sometimes, only eat butter…. How are you supposed to know! Let’s clarify a few things below.

Dairy includes anything that is made from an animal udder - most commonly from cows, sheep and goats. Depending on where the dairy product has come from and what type of dairy product it is can determine if it’s affecting your health or not. It is worth considering if it’s serving your health or not because if it’s not it can cause some unpleasant symptoms and ongoing inflammation which can affect energy levels, weight loss, sleep, gut function, hormone levels and more.

Firstly, let’s look at the different components of dairy: lactose, casein and dairy fat.

Grace is a passionate foodie, health advocate and outdoor enthusiast. Her love of people and nature led her into the health space. Grace has a background in both Human Nutrition and Neuroscience. These two modalities have enabled her to approach health holistically. She believes the key fundamentals of what we put in our mouth, how we manage our lifestyle and how we move our bodies have an underestimated impact on our health - we see this demonstrated in the Blue Zones - areas around the world with the greatest number of centurions.

Having some ‘bumps’ in her own health journey with amenorrhea (missing menstrual cycles) then painful and heavy periods and persistent acne pushed Grace to study in this area and immerse herself in lifestyle medicine. Consequently, seeing dramatic improvements in these concerns. Following university she worked for BePure Holistic Nutrition Clinic where she gained invaluable experience and knowledge. Since starting her own practice she has also studied Clinical Nutrition with the Holistic Performance Institute.

The daily healthy stories she hears from her clients encourages and motivates her to remain in this space. She’s observed countless success stories - gut health transformations, type 2 diabetes put in remission, 10+ kg’s released, overcoming persistent migraines, skin conditions cleared and confidence regained.

Her approach to addressing health concerns is a systems biology approach - this is a fancy way of saying she recognises that we are an interconnected system and if one system (e.g. your skin) is suffering it’s going to affect or be affected by another system (e.g. your gut). She doesn’t look at anything in isolation but examines how the entire body is functioning in order to address the initial problem - by discovering the root cause. She believes this as a much more effective and sustainable solution than just bandaging the initial concern.

Grace lives in Central Otago with a plethora of outdoor activities on her doorstep. When she’s not meeting with clients she loves hiking, mountain biking, cooking, gardening and reading books.