By Julie Wren
I decided to study Nutrition to ensure that I had a sustainable career future and because I wanted to do something rewarding with the chance to make a real difference to people’s health. Studying after the age of 50 has given me a new lease of life, it has opened doors and given me a sense of real purpose.
My story on this path began more than twenty years before when my mother was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer. I was horrified that she received no nutritional advice that may have given her a better quality of the life she had left. After my mother passed away I read everything I could get my hands on related to diet and lifestyle and their relationship to health and disease. I was busy with my life as a consultant working in a completely unrelated field, feeling all the stresses and strains of a life that was still out of balance; but I knew that one day I would take this thirst for nutritional knowledge and my quest for answers further into a career. However, it would be some years later and my own health crisis before I took the first real steps by retraining.
I enrolled at CNM because of the sheer scope of the course. Studying at a college focused on the naturopathic approach brought me the opportunity to connect with so many like-minded people, lecturers and students alike, all with special stories to tell and a passion for health. I felt constantly inspired, challenged and motivated in such an environment.
New career opportunities over 50
I graduated as a Nutritional Therapist in 2017 and I’m using my knowledge in a variety of ways. I’m still working for an Italian company specialising in skin and hair care, as their international master trainer; their focus is very much on lifestyle and how that impacts health not only of the skin and hair but also the body, so I hope to be running more specialised courses for them in the future. I have set up my own private practice in my home town and co-operate with a local GP, who has himself retrained and operates with a more functional approach to medicine, so this is a very exciting opportunity. I am also providing consultancy services to a company who wants to build a corporate wellness centre and programme for its staff and other companies in its premises. I’m hoping this will spur employers on to take more responsibility for supporting the wellbeing of their employees.
Some people don’t have the tools or knowledge about how their nutrition and lifestyle choices are affecting their health, and how to make necessary changes. As a Naturopathic Nutritional Therapist I love having the skills to be ‘therapist as teacher’ with the chance to positively impact on people’s health and lives through education. My role is to meet people where they are, then accompany them on their own personal health journeys, no matter the pace, inspiring them, helping them to evolve and to make lifelong changes. This can be so incredibly rewarding!
Julie Wren graduated as a Naturopathic Nutritional Therapist from CNM (College of Naturopathic Medicine). CNM is the UK’s leading training provider in a range of natural therapies, with colleges across the UK and Ireland. To find out more about CNM courses, visit www.naturopathy-uk.com…