Tanya grew up in Country VIC, and after leaving school studied performing arts and became a Dance Teacher.
While starting out her career, she suddenly she became really sick with no warning. She was diagnosed at the age of 19 with Crohn’s Disease. Even with the diagnosis her health continued to decline with her specialists not knowing what to do, she was bed ridden for 6 months.
She turned to a local Naturopath out of desperation who taught her how important her diet was for the health of her digestive system and rebuilt her health with herbal medicine and supplements.
Tanya made a move up to Darwin and lived there for 4 years getting a job at Reece Plumbing working as a customer service consultant. At this time she fell back into old eating habits, which left her feeling tired, lethargic and needing to constantly go in and out of hospital for minor bowel surgeries.
A move to Sydney led Tanya to meet her husband who was from Bangor. They moved to Menai and just before their marriage Tanya went to see another Naturopath and it was an eye opener. She started to lose weight and learned all about gut microbiome and gut health and she started to feel better. She started to come off the prescription drugs as she had found a diet that kept her feeling great without needing them. This experience re-sparked her interest in Naturopathy – she couldn’t believe how effective it was and how fantastic she felt.
A year after her marriage Tanya and Blake had their first child, Emily. While on Maternity Leave, she started to feel like she needed to do something different. Thinking about how she had lived experience of Naturopathy changing her life, she decided to study Naturopathy through distance learning and received her Advanced Diploma in Naturopathy. Because she was raising her daughter, and had her second child during this period, her studies took 5 years.
Once it was time to return to work, Tanya started working at Unwind Health in Miranda as their receptionist. She was working there while she was waiting to graduate from her studies which happened in 2017. After she graduated she started to see patients one on one at the Unwind Health clinic, do online consultations and also began to host group workshops. She has found her calling with Naturopathy and her regular workshops receive fantastic attendance and feedback.
In terms of her specialisations, Tanya, like most Naturopaths sees patients with all sorts of digestive disorders and gut issues – this is not something that she can control, or would want to control!
Having said that, she especially enjoys working with clients with Chronic Disorders, loves teaching them about gut health and the ways they can influence and take control of their health with nourishing food, managing stress and improved lifestyle habits. She combines Functional Medicine with Naturopathy to provide her clients with holistic services.
I asked Tanya what a typical consult with her would look like and she explained that she would normally take a patient’s family history, a detailed timeline of their own health and symptoms and gather all the pieces of their ‘health puzzle’ to provide them with a personalised detailed treatment plan. The plan would then map out a timeline for the improvements they want to make and explain the body systems that are causing them to feel unwell, then what steps were going to be needed for the patient to have the best chance to achieve their health goals. Most often this includes working with them to restore a healthy digestive system and gut bacteria.
As with many chronic health conditions, they don’t occur over night and neither does the healing process. Tanya does not work on a quick fix for her patients ailments, but strives to empower them with the knowledge and ability to make lasting changes and achieve life-long health improvements.
Changes are made with the patient gradually so that they can make changes to their habits and behaviours long-term which increases the likelihood of sustaining their new ways of eating. This also avoids overwhelming them with too much change at once. Each treatment plan is regularly refined and tweaked to give the patients the results that they need.
If you have digestive issues Tanya has one of her Gut Health workshops coming up in July – details are available by
CLICKING HERE.
If you’d like to get in touch with her directly, her email is
tanya@unwindhealth.com.au and appointments can be made through Unwind Health on 8544 8234.