SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're listening to Confidence to Thrive, a podcast for ambitious healthcare practitioners and entrepreneurs. Brought to you by Alicity Advisors. Welcome to Confidence to Thrive, a podcast helping growing practitioners and healthcare entrepreneurs navigate the challenges and risks of regulation while building brands that matter. Every episode we tackle a different issue facing healthcare practitioners or entrepreneurs, or we interview a guest who's 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 List T speaks to Sonia Jenkins, author, former NHGS nurse practitioner of 45 years, and midlife wellness expert. Through the Sonia Jenkins method, she supports high-achieving women over 50, navigating reinvention and midlife transitions with clarity and confidence, combining clinical depth, functional medicine, and essential emotions coaching. Let's join Christopher and Sonia.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

So thank you very much, Sonia Jenkins, for joining the um Confidence to Thrive podcast, where we are exploring sort of people are looking to build businesses in healthcare, particularly the more modern trends, I would say. Some of it's very old medicine in healthcare, which is looking to get away from some traditional pills and potions and more into natural cures and understanding the body and biochemical processes and what a person needs. Your LinkedIn profile says from depletion to vitality, restore energy, sleep, and emotional resilience, which is possibly something that we all need these days. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about what your business is and your journey on how you got there.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Yeah. So my work today centers around helping high achieving women in their 50s, and as you said earlier, to restore their energy, sleep, and emotional resilience so that they can step into what I call their most powerful chapter rather than shrinking in midlife. I spent 45 years working as a NHS nurse practitioner supporting people with long-term conditions. And what I began to notice over and over again was that many of the women I was seeing weren't just dealing with physical symptoms. They were exhausted, over-responsible, and disconnected from themselves. But those deeper levels weren't being addressed in a standard consultation. At the time, I had my own personal experience. I was a former athlete, and if anybody had looked at me from the outside, they would have thought, oh, she's living her best life. However, I looked fit and well by all the external measurements, and yet I developed an autoimmune disease, type 1 diabetes, in my 40s. And that really made me question the gap between what we know about health and how we actually live it. So as a nurse, we're allowed to retire slightly earlier than the general population. And I retrained in functional medicine and emotional coaching, essential emotions is called. What I do now is bring those two worlds together, not instead of medicine, but alongside it. Not a quick fix, not overwhelm, but helping women rebuild trust with their bodies, their energy, and their lives in a way that feels sustainable and deeply personal. And I hope that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

No, it makes absolute sense. It's something that we as we enter this space, I think we increasingly see, and it it is enormously interesting, and I think as you say, quite important. So I was chosen to Adrian Richards a while ago, who's a plastic surgeon and has has been doing aesthetics training for 25 years. And I think that was part of what he was saying, is it's interesting, isn't it, that we're all worrying about our health and vitality and energy at that sort of 50 mark. But I think it's particularly important for women. I think the world has not realized how how much burden there has been on women and how not wishing to be rude, but how ground down women have become. And that to me is a big change from all of this stuff. And you can be very critical of the aesthetics industry in terms of over expectations and glamorisation and and Love Island and all those awful things. But I think in terms of actually being a segue into women wanting to look better, feel a better about themselves, and try and correct some of that mental emotional stress, it has been quite powerful, and that's been a sort of platform and a segue into exactly what you're talking about. Cool. So great. It sounds like you want to have something of an impact in what you're doing. So it'd be great to hear a little bit more about what impact you'd like to have on your market segment.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

Okay, so as you alluded to earlier, I want to change the way we understand midlife because at the moment it's often framed as a slow decline, something to manage, cope with, or push through. But what I see every day is our women can be at a turning point into something incredibly powerful. So their midlife is a turning point, and if we know how to support it properly, it can be impactful. So I want to have a two-fold impact. Firstly, for women, I want them to stop thinking this is just how it is now when they feel exhausted, flat, or not quite themselves. And secondly, within the profession, I want to bring more attention to the role of lifestyle, nervous system regulation, and emotional well-being as a core, not optional, because many of the challenges women in midlife are facing is not to do with lack of discipline. They are mismatched between how they're living and what their bodies are telling them now. And it's quite interesting. I was talking to a lady yesterday, and we're all brought up a certain way with our manners, etc., etc. And the things we're taught as children don't always suit us or help us as we get older and find our own morals and meanings. Um, and they can sometimes be a bit of a hindrance because yes, you want to be seen as caring, a nice person, but sometimes you do need to pull back from say family, for instance, just because they're a family member doesn't mean that they need to be in your life all the time. Because they can be an energy vampire, which was the conversation we were having yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Yes, yes. No, that's I certainly have a certain amount of experience of that, so I understand what you're uh the point you're making. I also think just to pick up on another one of your thoughts, uh, and I think that's really interesting, and what I think part of what's emerging from all of the functional medicine style health and the understanding that's bringing of the body and the body's needs, and almost the biochemical processes and the speculation of the evolutionary causes of some of those processes, yeah, is that we are increasingly getting to a place where I think we're understanding the way the world is right now doesn't really match people very well. And I just wonder whether the understanding that's coming from functional medicine will actually have implications on what we think of, or as you know, our views on what society should be. Um, because it then they are so clearly mismatches, and as you've highlighted in your work, the consequences of bearing those mismatches for too long are not great for people at all.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

It is, it's just I think there is a parody and shift which is happening, and the change from the doctor always being right, and you wouldn't dare disagree with the doctor. Now you're finding that people are doing their own research and they are looking at these different areas and thinking, that's more aligned with what I think and feel. And another thing I'm very aware of, people will feel something is wrong before their body cre gives them the symptoms, those gut feelings we have, our intuition, we have them for a reason, but people aren't yet, excuse me, aren't yet confident enough to go with them, whereas if you don't go with them, sooner or later they come and kick you up the bottom.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

No, absolutely, absolutely. Oh yeah, and we strongly recommend to all practitioners in healthcare to uh to go with your gut feelings on whether or not to treat a patient. We find those are strengthly fairly accurate, so that's there's quite a lot to be said for gut feelings, I think.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

And not to take it personally when a patient or a client challenges you, because the number of times I've heard colleagues say, Oh, so where did you get your doctorate or where did you get your qualification to a patient who dares to question something they've said? And I found that if I follow them, or just think, oh, I'll just go and look into that. Eight and a half times out of ten, they're spot on.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yes, okay. So it sounds like that might be one of your challenges, and it would be interesting to see what challenges you face in achieving your ambitions.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

I actually think my biggest challenge is all the noise. There is so much information available on diet, supplements, trends, must-do routines that many women feel like they should be doing everything, and as a result, they end up doing nothing consistently, or they blame themselves when something doesn't work. What's often missing is context. No one is asking what is this woman carrying, what is her life actually like, and what does her body need now, and without that, even good advice can feel overwhelming and ineffective because we all have our perceptions, and depending whether we slept well last night or we had um something that upset us, say, on the way to the consultation or whatever, the way we perceive the conversation we're having or how we put ourselves across can change with what we left the house with to go and tell the coach, the health professional, whoever, what our issue was. So sometimes we have not sometimes, I think we need to listen and actively listening, not listening to so we can get our question, get our answer out, but truly listening and trying to see what is behind the words because a 10-minute consultation is just a snapshot into here and now. It doesn't tell you all the stuff that has come, it hasn't told you about the person's background, it doesn't tell you what's going on in their life, you're just dealing with that snapshot there and then, and I think that's one of our big issues is time to actually listen.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Yes, yeah, and I think that's that's also goes back to the the idea that it's a commentary on where society's got to, in that uh if we're just looking for everything from a sort of pure superficial here and now efficiency perspective, then time to listen isn't massively efficient, but it's all the consequences of that not happening. Yeah. I also really resonate with this idea of noise being a huge issue in the sector, and especially now, as you say, what people need and context. We've been quite involved in the sector for a few years now, and they're getting more involved and go to a number of conferences and um read all sorts of books and papers and stuff, and there are some incredible things that people work out and do. Um, but it is very particular to that person, as you say, their circumstances, what works for them, and a practitioner who spent several hours doing lots of tests and analysing to come to that conclusion. And then a month later, I see a headline that says, Do this diet, and you'll live 10 years longer. No, it doesn't it just doesn't work like that.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

But like you say, that that is the society that we've got to that people don't want to put the effort in, yes, yes, and we are now a production of a pill for every ill. Yeah, and to use one of my favorite sayings, one size fits no one because it's an average, yes, yes, and they've proved that with car seats and things, haven't they? Exactly, and it's hard as well for people to have the confidence to go away from the mainstream without being ridiculed, and that's the other thing. And I'm a great believer when somebody will say something new, and I'll say we don't have the evidence yet. Yes, and after my 45 years, and I keep smiling every time I say that, because things return. I've noticed there's a 15 to 20 year cycle, that's something that we did. We worked out it doesn't work, they've brought in all these other things, and then somebody's gone back to what we were doing 20 years ago that we knew didn't work, as if it's a new concept, and then people are saying, Oh, you're not moving with the times. I say, I am, I just don't want to move backwards.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Yes, yeah. So I think we've identified some challenges that so what do we need to change, Sonia, to help to overcome some of these issues?

SPEAKER_02 17:55

We need to move from information to integration. It's not about giving women more to do, it's about helping them to understand what matters to them, what will actually move the needle and how to do it in a way that fits into a full demand in life. And I think we also need to shift the conversation away from willpower because women, the women I work with, aren't lacking discipline, they are incredibly capable, and what they need is support to reconnect with their body signals, regulate their nervous system, and create rhythms that work for them rather than against them, and that's where real lasting change happens, in my humble opinion.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

No, I think it's a very, very spot-on opinion, and yes, it's it is interesting, isn't it, that health is personal. I think that's very much emerging now. Uh and we are all different and different in so many ways, right down to our genetic makeups, which have a significant impact. I think willpower, as they say it, is a very interesting question. We work with some very leading white loss surgeons, so white loss surgery is not so common anymore. But they were talking about obesity as a disease even back in the early 2000s, and have been huge proponents of that. Everybody says, Oh, well, fat people just don't have enough willpower. It's not that. There's all sorts of causes and reasons and diseases that go all the way into genetic makeups and stress and trauma and all these things, and they have been very good at putting that forward for decades. And I do think it's starting to come through now, and people are starting to understand. So, yeah. So, hopefully, I think it'll lead us to wrap it up. Is where do you see the biggest opportunity? Just to be clear on that, it's not necessarily a financial opportunity, that is very much an achievement of goals or mission kind of opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

I actually think our biggest opportunity is that women are ready. There's a grown awareness, particularly in midlife, that something needs to change. Women are starting to question why am I this tired? Why does this feel so hard? And is this really how it's meant to be? And this curiosity, I feel, is very powerful because it opens the door to a different way of living. The opportunity now is to meet that moment with something better than quick fixes, to offer approaches that are grounded, personalized, and actually sustainable, and to show women that they don't have to choose between success and well-being, they can have both, but in a different way that they can be taught that hasn't been taught before, and just meeting people where they are.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Brilliant Sonia. Thank you for a really inspiring message and wishing you all the best in achieving that goal because it does sound enormously worthwhile.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

I'm thoroughly enjoying it, I'm thoroughly enjoying it, and I'm learning as much from the women as I'm imparting. So it's cool.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Okay, well, we'll enjoy watching you as you thrive.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

And thank you for the opportunity to put my voice out there.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

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 OurLitity can support you by finding the link in the show notes or visiting ourlitity.co.uk