SPEAKER_03 0:00

You're listening to Confidence to Thrive, the podcast for ambitious healthcare practitioners and entrepreneurs, supported you by Alex.

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Confidence to Thrive, the podcast helping growing practitioners and healthcare entrepreneurs navigate the challenges and risks regulation while building brands that matter. Every episode, we tackle a different issue facing healthcare practitioners and entrepreneurs, or we interview a guest who is working on the leading edge of private healthcare, building something that matters in their sector or profession. On today's episode, Christopher Cloak Brown, director at Our Lit City, speaks to Dr. Kirsty Lawson, PhD, a CNHC registered nutritional therapy practitioner and co-founder of UNutrition, which offers one-to-one clinical and educational support to individuals with complex health needs. Kirsty's specialism is adults who have been diagnosed with or at risk of developing motor neuron disease. And the discussion with Christopher covers the reasons for her journey to specialising in neurodegeneration, challenging narratives, and advocating multidisciplinary teams in healthcare. Now over to Christopher.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

So thank you very much for making time. Dr. Kirsty Lawton, we're here to talk about nutrition and nutrition particularly on brain health and neural deterioration, which is a topic close to many people's hearts at the moment. So maybe we could start with what is your business and what was your journey to where you are now?

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Sure, of course. So my business is called UNutrition Limited. It's a clinic, but also we're a research clinic and we're an educational hub, and I have an amazing team. So our specialism is neurological and neurodegenerative health conditions. My own specialism is motor neuron disease or ALS, and I have a team of four of us focusing on that. I also have a Parkinson specialist, a cognitive health specialist, so focusing on dementia and Alzheimer's, a brain injury specialist. The team also focuses on neuroimmune conditions, PAMS PANDAS or autoimmunity, and then we have a pediatric team as well who focus on complex neurological conditions in children, but we also do a lot more general pediatric work as well. I kind of I've always had an interest in human physiology. I was a bit of a little doogie houser as a child. You know, my mum worked in a phlebotomy laboratory at Cromer Hospital, and I had my own little station there and would spend as much time as I possibly could looking down the microscope, swabbing the cheeks of her patients as she did her blood rounds. So I've always had that interest, you know, when other when other children wanted to be ballerinas, I wanted to be a coroner, driven by Quincy. Quincy, you know, you remember Quincy?

SPEAKER_02 2:56

I do, I do.

SPEAKER_03 2:57

Quincy's sidekick that I wanted to be, because he was the smart one. Um, and so it was always there. And then as a child, I started to have seizures, and I always had this sort of diagnosis of epilepsy. It was always a question mark on the end of it. And my mum said, Well, if you can't give us a diagnosis, you're not medicating. So I always had that in my life, you know, wondering why my brain was a bit different from other people's. And I think then, as I reached sort of 10, my stepfather's mother had Parkinson's disease, and it was my first exposure, really, to someone with a neurological health condition, and that stuck with me as well. And then I continued through life. I made the decision that I wanted to specialise in nutritional medicine, went to Queen Margaret University to do my first degree, which was in public health nutrition, and on to a PhD there at Queen Margaret as well, and started working in pediatrics, and from there did a lot of work internationally. So, Malawi, Mozambique, Haiti, other places, working on projects in Gaza and Afghanistan, and loved that work, and then got a role in the UAE for 10 years, running a nutrition and dietetic department for the UAE Armed Forces and for their national service programme, which was great. And every one of those steps gave me more knowledge, gave me new skills, but I still wasn't doing the kind of nutrition I wanted to do that I'd sort of set out with thinking I was going to be using foods and nutraceuticals and hubs and lifestyle changes. And so I made the decision to go back to the Institute of Optimum Nutrition and retrain. And I did that coming out of there around 10 years ago. And so that's been me ever since, really, just very clinical, still focusing a lot on education. So I've spent four years at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition creating and running many of the modules on the UK's first graduate diploma in integrative functional nutrition, which was designed for healthcare practitioners like medical doctors and allied health professionals and other professionals to add nutrition to what they do. And so I left there in May last year. I left my health coaching job with second nature at the same time to really focus on the clinic. And a few years ago, I sort of had this situation where I'd had this whole career in pediatrics. I was teaching pediatrics at Ion at Worcester at the University of Northampton. And every time anything came up that was related to Parkinson's or neurological health, it was really grabbing my attention. And I was like, I've just but I've been doing PEADS for so long, and I have this great reputation. And but in the end, I just thought you've got to do what you're supposed to be doing. And so I just almost made this announcement across all platforms in our world and said, I'm moving away from PEADS, I'm bringing in a PEADES team, but I'm personally moving into neurodegenerative health. Got started with that, was doing loads of work in Parkinson's. My first motor neuron disease client came through my door, and I was like, This is what I'm on this planet to do. Like it was just this absolute, uh, I have found it, you know. I have found what I'm supposed to do after this whole big journey, and so that is now my thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

So that leads us nicely into the what impact do you hope to have. But before we do that, just a couple of things. Yeah, I was interested when you said motoneuron, because of course that's the instances of motor neuron. I don't know, and maybe you can comment on that when you answer is whether it's just we're more aware of it or there are more instances. It appears a lot of sportsmen are getting motor neuron disease these days, very sadly. I would just like to touch upon you use your doctor title, but you're not a medical doctor. And would you like to comment on that? Because I think that's quite an interesting thing, especially in this sort of nutrition, functional, integrated well, less integrative, but nutritional and functional medicine. It seems to me from the time I've spent in it that the training for traditional medicine doesn't really give you the complete picture that you would need. And actually, personally, I would trust somebody more with a PhD in biochemistry for understanding all the biochemical processes in the body.

SPEAKER_03 7:35

Yeah, that's a really interesting question, and thanks for asking. I do make it very clear on my website that I'm not a medical doctor. I have a degree in nutrition, I have a three-year diploma in nutrition from Ion, which is now a degree. It's the same course, it's just been changed slightly to partner with the University of Portsmouth that can award degrees where ION could only award diplomas at the time. I have a PGC in higher education, I'm one module of finishing a three-year master's degree in neuroscience and neurodegeneration, and I have my PhD.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

And that is that makes you well qualified, I don't say.

SPEAKER_03 8:27

You know, doctors study hard and follow a pathway and have knowledge, but there is more knowledge out there. That there is there are alternatives out there, and we shouldn't be closed off to that. We've all become a little bit programmed to think that if there isn't a pharmacological answer, there is no answer. And that really disregards traditional Chinese medicine, traditional Ayurubedic medicine, traditional Persian medicine, traditional African medicine, where we've used plants, we've used foods, we've used homemade blends and alexias for centuries, and we shouldn't really be discarding that. And I think functional medicine is a bit of a movement, and within that, there's things that I also don't love. I think there's a lot of people using the functional medicine name that aren't truly practicing functional medicine as it's supposed to be taught, which is really diving into the biochemical pathways, microbiology in the gut, and really trying to understand what is going on at an individual level for someone and trying to resolve that using herbs, supplements, diet, lifestyle change, environmental change.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

I went to the Nordic Labs conference in London at the end of last year, and they're getting down to the level of detail where it's not just particular gut microbes, but it's particular strains of that gut microbe that are having particular impacts. So they're even looking at the DNA of the strain of the gut microbe, it is so complicated.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

Absolutely, and and and where then we think about being a medical doctor, just having a degree in medicine, it's not enough. We live in this world of the internet and a world of new research coming out every single day on every single topic, and it's a lot to keep up with, I get that, but I never had a gastroenterologist complete the gut module on the grad dip. And I have never met, and I'm sure there are gastroenterologists out there that do have the knowledge, but I'm yet to meet a gastroenterologist that truly understands the gut microbiome, and you know, I'm sure that creates a little controversy, but actually, you know, to dismiss all of the research that's been going on for 25 years on the gut microbiome, it's a bit unquestionable now that the gut microbiome impacts human health. And I think it's a snooze or lose situation. You can do your degree and call yourself the expert and disregard everyone else, disregard other health professionals, but you're doing a disservice to yourself and you're doing a disservice to the people who are believing in you because we've been indoctorated to really believe in medical professionals. And I actually the other day had this, had a bit of a rant on my socials, but I was like, the whole concept of medicine is first do no harm, but what does that mean? Because you can do harm by ignoring things. Doing no harm isn't just about what you do, it's also what you don't do. It's not being open to other alternatives when you have no tools left in your toolkit. And MMD is a perfect example of that. Other than Milusol, there aren't really many medications, there's nothing really pharmacological to help people with MMD. There's new gene therapies being trialled, there's new immune therapies being trialled, and there's some brilliant researchers in some brilliant labs doing incredible work to try and find a cure. But to dismiss the importance of nutrition, the importance of lifestyle change, the reduction in exposure to various environmental factors, I think is doing harm.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

I I would agree with you, and I think very much that point was made at the Nordic Labs conference. So that might bring us on perfectly to the question of what impact do you hope to have on your sector market or profession?

SPEAKER_03 12:41

Well, so UNutrition Clinic has expanded hugely, and I've got this incredible team that I am so proud of. Every single member is a powerhouse in their own field. And actually, one of the people from Nordic is on my team as well. So we see this area where for years there's just been this narrative of nothing can be done. And I'm like, you know, I'm back to being that little kid in that laboratory with my mum and just thinking, really, nothing, nothing can be done. We can't improve someone's gut health when they're constipated, or help that itchy skin that they've got, or or help with the anxiety they're suffering from, or you know, there's always something that can be done. To say there's nothing that can be done is a little bit uh easy. So it means I don't have to go off and spend all my day reading journals and trying to find solutions because there's nothing that can be done. It's quite like across the board, isn't it? It's like nothing can be done. We're trying to push back against that narrative. We always think there's something that can be done. Whatever stage someone is at in a neurodegenerative or neurological pathway. We want to be a leading voice in the world of neurodegenerative health. We want to be advocates for our patients, we want to be educators. In September, we're launching a 48-hour, hopefully MTEC accredited. We're working on the certification with MTEC course in pediatric nutrition, and we're following that up with another 48-hour training course in nutrition and the brain, covering all brain health, and we're also bringing out a 12-hour practitioner training program in Parkinson's because we're trying to raise the standards, raise the knowledge, push practitioners to really consider the latest evidence across all neurological and neurodegenerative conditions. And so that's where I'd like my clinic to be. We want to be a voice for MND, but also for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and other conditions.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

And that's what my my business partner, Roger and I love about working with this sector is I love this can-do attitude, and it comes over so strongly in functional medicine, as you say, the the idea that mainstream medicine is just oh, well, you know, here's my box, and oh sorry, there's no tools in there for you. Uh, whereas in in the functional medicine space, you're it's always a positive attitude, always something can be done, always trying to find out. So it's really great to see.

SPEAKER_03 15:28

So many tools in my toolkit. I'm like, I say that to my patients all the time. I'm like, I've still got tools in my toolkit. So we're not, I'm not empty. We've still got things that we can focus on, you know. And people need that. It's always very interesting to me, especially with MND, because you could have someone with a stage four metastatic cancer and they're being told to have hope. And then there's this narrative in MND that you can't give any hope. To give hope is negligent, you know, and it's like I don't know, you know, I think hope as a placebo will keep someone alive longer than someone who has no hope. So uh we don't like to give false hope, but we do feel that there's symptoms that can be improved.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

But the power of the mind and medicine is another sort of big question that's not certainly not answered yet.

SPEAKER_03 16:20

Um also just the power of nutrients, you know, we sort of forget, like the mitochondria, we know that all neurodegenerative conditions have mitochondrial dysfunction. And I'm like, at what point in your training as a nutritionist or dietitian or researcher or doctor did you forget that the spinning wheel of mitochondria cannot function without vitamins B1, B2, B3? At the very basics of biochemistry, we need those key nutrients, certain nutrients that are needed for neurotransmitter development. At what point did we forget that very simple biochemical pathway? And if anything, with functional medicine, it's like we're going back to that sort of the biology books and looking at the exact nutrients needed, and we're focusing on things in a very much a micronutrient fashion. And a lot of what the recommendations are based on now are the macronutrients, the proteins and fats and such, with very little consideration to all of those little tiny nutrients that are cofactors that help all of these pathways to function.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

And just to go off track slightly, but I do think this is interesting, and things that I'm seeing spoken about is I think a lot of even that sort of knowledge and understanding is lost. So now when you look at the whole global food industry, they only look at calories and calorie content and nutrients at quite a high macro level. And so there is a disconnect between food and and health, basically.

SPEAKER_03 17:58

Yeah, I mean, I recently had a situation where one of my clients, I emailed the NHS team and said, Are there any alternatives to this peg feed? Is there anything else? Is there anything a little more nutritious? You know, we're talking about the most unwell clients and we're giving them an ultra-processed food through a plastic tube. When that is questioned, it's like, how dare you question this? Like look at the ingredients. This is GMO corn multidextrin as the second ingredient, corn oil, canola oil, things that we know to be highly inflammatory. And what we've got at the moment is on one side public health SACN saying ultra-processed foods, we really need to reduce them, we really need to reduce sugar. But if you look at the components in a lot of the peg feeds that are available, they are so ultra-processed. And then how can you expect anyone's body to heal when we're putting inflammatory toxic products into them on a daily basis and giving them no choice? So that's something we're really campaigning about at the moment. Is what we need is training for carers to create homemade blended foods. And how can we think on any level that's not better than something that is ultra-processed that can sit on a shelf for five years, need to be in the fridge, and where all of the ingredients are just really toxic. I'm sure you saw in the news this week as well, one of the NHS trusts has been ripped apart. They've actually pulled the guidance down because they'd posted a suggestion for parents who had children who were struggling with swallowing to try Watsitz and wafers and pawn crackers and this entire list of really highly processed options, and then so many people went wild on social media saying, How is this possible? And the response was this wasn't general advice, it was only recommended for children that had difficulties with swallowing. And it's like, right, so you still think it's okay to give to a child who has difficulty swallowing?

SPEAKER_02 20:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 20:27

What about a smoothie? What about something a little more nutritious?

SPEAKER_01 20:31

What do you see as the biggest challenge in in your sort of business and market right now? And it sounds like that's almost one of them.

SPEAKER_03 20:40

Well, it really is. You know, I think what's happening at the moment is there's this big divide, and there's some brilliant people in the UK working really hard to try and change that. There's the British College for Functional Medicine trying to have functional medicine recognised with the GMC as a profession. And what that would do is it would get rid of all the cowboys because anyone that wanted to call themselves a functional medicine practitioner would actually be held accountable by the GMC. Um I'm BANT registered, I also do talks for AMP. There's some great governing bodies. I'm a CNHC registered nutritional therapist. So instead of just saying no nutritional therapists know what they're talking about and they're all cowboys, or you know, this view that we should be considered less than a dietitian, it needs to change. There is room for everyone, there is room for dietetics with the critically ill people in intensive care, there is room for the nutritionists advocating at a public health level, and there is room for nutritional therapy practitioners working with people with specific conditions that are chronic that there are no NHS tools available for, but that are. Functional tools available for. So I think the biggest barrier is just this clashing from conventional to functional. And it's just going to involve a lot of people opening their minds and actually acknowledging that perhaps they don't have all the answers, and us included. We, wherever possible, work with neurologists and other healthcare practitioners to make sure our clients are getting everything that they need.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

No, Roger and I our campaign is to have a Royal College of Functional Medicine. And then the controversial question is do you have to be medically trained to be a member of that Royal College? Because it would be the only Royal College that we wouldn't have to be medically trained, but I think they should open it up.

SPEAKER_03 22:41

Yeah, I think there needs to be. So there are functional medicine doctors that have created the British College for Functional Medicine.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Yeah, I know a number of them, yes.

SPEAKER_03 22:50

They're looking into that. Um, Dr. Indra is a real voice in that area and a fantastic practitioner, and really believes in that multidisciplinary approach. And I think if we can have that just for doctors, that's fine. I don't think that people should be using the term functional medicine practitioner because I think it in some ways gives the public the wrong idea of what their qualifications are. I think that we have to consider how we're all presenting ourselves because they're the things that are concerning the conventional health world. We all have to come together and say, perhaps we just have to call ourselves registered nutritional therapy practitioners. We use a functional medicine model to support patients, but we do need to also differentiate between the medical doctors who are qualified to diagnose, who are qualified to prescribe. We're not qualified to do that. And having a differentiation there is really important. But hopefully, if we can have a British College for Functional Medicine and we can have a team of leading medical doctors trained in there, the registered nutritional therapy practitioners will be welcomed into the NHS and will be able to offer support to patients. Currently, if people want to work with me, they're having to pay privately. I don't want that. I would love to for my clinic to be an NHS department. I would love for everyone to have access to what we do as part of the NHS. And so would a lot of other registered nutritional therapy practitioners. They would love to have an offering to people for free. And that can only happen if we're all welcomed in under the big umbrella.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

No, absolutely. So if you could you just expand on that, because to me that's really interesting. And it's one of the things that we think about quite a lot is how that works. Would you say it is ultimately doctor-led? Because, as you say, in the current sort of healthcare setup, the idea is that doctors are trained to diagnose and treat, if you like. I mean, actually prescribing aside, but it diagnosing and treating is a doctor thing. Whereas with a lot of, I would say a lot of the very advanced sort of nutritional work, especially the kind of protocols and treatments and analysis that Nordic Labs does, is is very much heading in that kind of direction. I know Nordic won't want me to say it's got there because that's got all sorts of regulatory issues. Um, but I would say that what you're doing is just as medical as what a doctor's doing. At some point, we need to actually even within this process reevaluate, you know, what the profession is. Is it that medical doctor or is it is everybody more on a level playing field?

SPEAKER_03 25:36

That's the thing. I jokingly said a while back, someone said to me, Oh, you're not a medical doctor, and I said, No, I'm far more qualified. Far, far more yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Well that's a big debate. Is are you a real doctor? Is it them or you who's a real doctor? Yes.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

I said it tongue in cheek, but it was like I chose not to become a medical doctor. And I chose not to become a medical doctor for very specific reasons. I didn't want to prescribe medication. I don't take medication. I grew up in a household where medication made my sister incredibly unwell and she was kept on a medication and it almost killed her. And my mum from that day on was like, we do not take medicines in this house. My mum refused medication for me when I was having seizures. We grew up in that house, and I always wanted to be someone that helped people, but I didn't want to be a medical doctor, and that's okay, you know, and I think there's a lot of pressure on medical doctors as well. You're expected to sort of be up there and almost playing God, but I think we don't have to look at it as medical doctor on the top and then down here as a nutritional therapist. We all bring value, and we have to understand what value each different profession brings. I'm not a herbalist, so I work with a herbalist who puts together formulas that I can then use for my clients if I want to use herbs. I'm not a homeopath, so I work alongside a homeopath. There needs to be medical doctor presence for diagnosis and for prescription of medications. That all has to come through a medical doctor or a pharmacist. We all have to work together. You know, nutritional therapists working in women's health do a brilliant job. We can run a Dutch test, we can look at people's hormones. But ideally, that person would also work with a medical doctor who was a prescriber who could compound a very bespoke HRT protocol for that woman. So any of my clients who come in, yes, they've got ALS, but they're still menopausal women. And so I work with Dr. Clementina LaRosa, who is an incredible doctor, who will then work with them and prescribe for them. But if we're working with children who have, for example, PANS Pandas, we need a medical doctor that, you know, there's typically the need for an antibiotic intervention with children with PANSPANDAS. That has to come from a medical doctor and be overseen by a medical doctor. And nutritional therapy practitioners are best placed for running certain functional testing and for acting on that with diet, supplementation, and environmental lifestyle change. But even then, in my clinic, we work with mold specialists who will determine mold levels, who will support people to remediate their home. I'm a nutritional therapist, I'm not going to go and knock through someone's bathroom wall and make sure there's no mold. It's seeing our place. And that is questioned, you know. So, for example, I had a really interesting chat with a medical doctor, and in their clinic, the medical doctor does all of the testing and the recommending the supplements. I would personally see that as more of a role of a nutritional therapist. But as long as a clinic determines whose role it is, then you're doing the best for the patient. You're working in a multidisciplinary manner.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

No, that's great. I mean, so while you're talking, it reminds me of a conversation. So I'm an engineer by background, not that I've done engineering in a very long time, but my step-grandfather was a very competent engineer, and uh still got so he gave me a wonderful book, which was the 1932 Engineer's Handbook, and it's several inches thick. But when he handed it to me, he said in 1932, that was everything there is to know about engineering. And this must have been in the early 80s. He said, Yeah, I went to a meeting with a client the other day, and by the time I've stopped talking, he had to call in nine different experts to talk about the different subjects. And I think that's happened with all this medicine and all these biochemical pathways and the understanding of the human body and human conditions and so on. As you say, it is a realization from everybody that there's lots of expertise, and it takes all of those expertise to get the picture.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

It is. I think where conventional medicine has been left a little bit behind to a degree, and I say that with full respect. I know lots of medical doctors who are phenomenal and kind and caring and brilliant. And there's, you know, I always say to my patients, medical intervention through conventional medicine is brilliant when you are coming into the world, brilliant when you are leaving the world, and brilliant if you get hit by a truck halfway through that journey. You know, like some of my friends that work in emergency medicine, saving people every day, like hats off to them. I'm a little jealous. That would have been the route I would have taken if I hadn't have gone down this route. But where functional medicine has really shone is this realization that perhaps we weren't right in polarizing ourselves down one field, that perhaps the kidneys are related to the liver, are related to the heart, are related to the brain. It's going back to that holistic viewpoint where if something is happening in the brain, potentially that is also linked to immune function, adrenal function, gut health, psychological health. This intertwining of every system has been lost a little bit in conventional medicine and functional medicine is bringing that back.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Lovely. So maybe uh we can just finish with where you see the biggest opportunity in your world and work in.

SPEAKER_03 31:47

That's a really interesting question because I'm just driven by the care for my clients. You know, I don't know if I view what I do as an opportunity as much as a calling and as much as doing what I can to really help those in most need. But where our clinic is going, hopefully, over the coming year or two, is really trying to raise the bar. So really trying to fill the gap that is there in education in certain areas. As I said, pediatric specialist course, Parkinson specialist course, more education on the brain, doing a lot of that in collaboration with the Nutritional Medicine Institute and Ben Brown. I've been on the editorial board of the NMI since its inception. So we're going to be running a few of those courses there. I love what Ben's doing with the NMI conference and really raising the bar with high-end speakers, very academically driven. So we're hoping to really push that. And as of the beginning of this year, our clinic, all of our clients have signed to provide permission for us to use their data for research. So I'm really hoping one more module left on my masters, and then looking at how we can use this data, how we can get out any findings, any correlations that we're seeing across different patients that are coming into the clinic, getting information out there either in research papers or just you know through our socials.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

I think that's great. And yeah, by opportunity, opportunity doesn't necessarily have to be financial. And I would agree with you, one of the biggest opportunities in what you're doing is as we discussed, to bring hope to people you who might not have been given hope before in terms of there is something that can be done about what they do or their conditions and there are treatments, and it's not a one-way ticket on some of these awful diseases.

SPEAKER_03 33:40

Um and it's not always about life extension, it's about life quality as well. You know, what can be done for life extension? Of course, that matters, but what can be done for the quality of life while we're still here? And that is as important, you know.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Yes, yes, and again, another topic, but it seems to be something that's been lost, isn't it? That people will talk about longevity. Um, so people talk about lifespan, but you see, people talk about the idea of health span. So, how long are you actually sort of healthy and functional uh for, which is in some ways a far better question.

SPEAKER_03 34:16

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Absolutely. So, thank you very much for the time. That was a fascinating journey.

SPEAKER_03 34:24

Very welcome. Thanks a lot for inviting me.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

No, uh absolute pleasure. Thank you for listening to Confidence to Thrive. Before you go, please rate, review, and subscribe to Confidence to Thrive on your preferred podcast platform and help us spread our message to others who are making a difference in private healthcare. This podcast was brought to you by Our Literity, insurance advisors who support your business ambitions. Our literity advises practitioners, owners, and entrepreneurs of healthcare practices on mitigating risks so your business can thrive. Learn more about how Our Literity can support you by finding the link in the show notes or visiting ourlitity.co.uk