Main Areas of Expertise at Synthesis Clinic

Our integrative cancer care, cancer survivorship support and cancer pain specialist physicians offer personalised healthcare that seeks to address the underlying causes of symptoms and health issues, intelligently synthesising the best of conventional, nutrition, lifestyle, psycho-emotional wellbeing and complementary medicine. You can work with a physician alone or be supported by the broader clinic care team under the guidance of your physician. Many of our patients and clients also see our nutrition team and may also engage with other input, e.g. yoga therapy, physiotherapy, psychology or acupuncture as needed.

Nutritional therapy uses up-to-date nutrition science to promote mental and physical health and wellbeing. Each plan is personalised to you and tailored to your needs, considering not just nutrition but also your environment, exercise, sleep and stress management.

All our nutrition professionals are BANT registered nutritionists and nutritional therapists and have specialist training in their area of interest in addition to their core nutrition education.

We also offer specialist dietitian input for support during and after cancer treatment, including renal dietitian care for people with kidney problems.

Cancer and its treatments leave their mark on the body, and you may experience persistent fatigue, joint pain on hormonal therapy, chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, lymphoedema, loss of strength and conditioning, restricted shoulder movement after breast or thoracic surgery, or pelvic floor problems after prostate or pelvic treatment. Our cancer rehabilitation and oncology physiotherapy service, led by Senior Physiotherapist, Becki Drewett, alongside cancer rehabilitation specialist and physiotherapist Liz Yull, offers specialist assessment and treatment for these issues. Becki and Liz are integrated into our wider multidisciplinary team, working alongside our integrative oncology doctors, our pain consultant (Dr Deepak Ravindran), dietitians, acupuncturists and yoga therapy professionals, so your rehabilitation sits within a coordinated plan rather than as a stand-alone appointment.

Whether you're preparing for surgery, recovering from active treatment, or rebuilding function months or years afterwards, we tailor exercise prescription, manual therapy, including scar therapy, and self-management strategies to your medical history, treatment context and personal goals. Care is delivered alongside your NHS or private oncology team with shared clinical communication where it helps. Our cancer rehabilitation and physiotherapy services are available online across the UK and in person at our Reading clinic.

A health coach is a partner in an individual's behaviour change process, supporting clients to develop the confidence to make conscious, sustainable lifestyle choices and pursue activities that support that individual to achieve their whole health potential. A health coach understands and respects that each client or patient is an expert on their own life and is a non-judgemental ally, supporting, educating and motivating them to find sustainable and practical ways to break through resistance and challenges.

We offer health coaching for cancer survivors and menopause after cancer, as well as mindfulness support and coaching for people who experience chronic pain during and after cancer treatment.

A cancer diagnosis doesn't only happen to the body. The fear that arrives with the first scan, the dissonance of being told you've finished treatment when nothing inside you feels finished, the surge of anxiety before every follow-up appointment, the grief for the person you were before, the strain on relationships, the sleep that won't come back — these are not weaknesses or signs that something has gone wrong with how you're coping. They are common, well-described, and treatable. Our clinical psychology service is led by Dr Karen Clough, an experienced Clinical Psychologist with a specialist interest in menopause and cancer survivorship and cancer support during treatment. Karen offers individual sessions for patients during and after cancer treatment, and dedicated psychological support for partners, family carers and bereaved carers, recognising that the people holding someone through cancer carry their own psychological load, often invisibly and without permission to ask for help.

The 2023 SIO–ASCO Clinical Practice Guideline on Integrative Oncology Care for Anxiety and Depression in Adults with Cancer (co-authored by our Medical Director Dr Nina Fuller-Shavel) sets out the evidence base for psychological support in oncology, including cognitive behavioural approaches, mindfulness-based interventions, and the wider role of integrative therapies in symptom management. In practice, Karen works with patients and carers experiencing recurrence anxiety and fear of progression ("scanxiety"), low mood and depression after treatment ends, post-treatment identity loss and the "I should be over this now" feeling, intimacy and body-image concerns after surgery, sleep disturbance, anticipatory grief, and the particular distress of caring for someone with serious illness.

Karen works closely with our integrative oncology doctors, our pain consultant Dr Deepak Ravindran, and the wider psycho-oncology team, including Aga Kehinde (EFT and emotional wellbeing), Vania Rodrigues (mindfulness and health coaching), and Marcia Mercier (yoga therapy), so that psychological care is part of your wider plan rather than something separate. Sessions are available online across the UK.

We offer emotional wellbeing coaching to support your inherent abilities to move through life’s adversities, heal, grow and thrive in spite of the challenges and previous trauma. Our approach draws from extensive healthcare and coaching experience and combine these with additional training, e.g. Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), NLP, breathwork and other mind-body approaches.

Specialist integrative oncology therapies, such as mistletoe injections, IV infusions (such as high dose IV vitamin C) or oncothermia, only work if they are delivered safely, prescribed appropriately, and properly coordinated with the rest of your treatment. Our integrative oncology service is led by Diogo Madureira, our Chief of Staff, Nurse Prescriber and Nursing Lead, who holds clinical governance for the nursing team and oversees the training and coordination that makes home-based therapy possible. Pedro Bessa Pereira is our in-house Registered Nurse and Nurse Practitioner for phlebotomy and infusion support, working alongside Diogo at our Reading clinic for patients who attend in person. For patients who would rather receive their care closer to home, our mobile nursing network now covers most of England (currently Dorset, Kent, Lancashire, Liverpool and Manchester, London, and East Anglia, with York and the West of England under active recruitment).

This means patients receiving mistletoe therapy, IV vitamin C or other prescribed infusions can be cared for in their own homes, near their own families, on a schedule that works around their conventional oncology appointments rather than travelling repeatedly to Reading for short procedural visits. Every mobile nurse works under full clinical supervision at Synthesis and within our CQC-registered governance framework, with prescribing handled by our integrative oncology doctors or nurse or pharmacist prescribers with all infusion plans approved at our regular MDT meetings with regular safety checks, including blood tests. The intent is straightforward: the clinical standards of a specialist Reading clinic should travel with the nurse to the patient's living room and work safely and effectively alongside your NHS or private oncology team, never as a replacement.

Patients with cancer often arrive at Synthesis taking a complex mix of prescribed medications, supplements and over-the-counter products, and need a clinical conversation about what's safe to combine with chemotherapy, immunotherapy, hormonal therapy or targeted treatment. This is a conversation that conventional cancer care services rarely have the time or specialism to deliver. Our integrative clinical pharmacy service is led by Roshni Kothari, our Integrative Clinical Pharmacist and the Superintendent Pharmacist for the Synthesis Clinic Pharmacy. Roshni provides medication review, supplement and herb–drug interaction analysis, and dispensing oversight for everything we prescribe, both prescription medicines and the practitioner-grade supplements that may form part of an integrative care plan personalised to your individual needs.

In practice, this is the part of the clinic that asks: does this supplement interact with your tamoxifen, your platinum-based chemotherapy, your CDK4/6 inhibitor, your immunotherapy? Is the dose right for your renal function, your hepatic function, your other medications? Is the product itself reliable, third-party tested, and from a manufacturer we trust?

Roshni works closely with our integrative oncology doctors, pain consultant, herbalists and nutritionists, so that prescribing and supplementation form one coherent plan rather than a list of additions.

Herbal medicine is medicine made from plants, either the whole plant or sometimes parts of it, for example leaves, flowers, roots or bark. It has been the main source of medicine used by people for thousands of years. Herbal medicine focuses on the patient and the cause of their illness rather than purely the symptoms that they have. The choice of herbs that a practitioner prescribes is based on detailed information given to the practitioner by the patient and the result of any clinical examination carried out during the consultation. This allows a bespoke, personalised prescription to be created.

At Synthesis Clinic we offer herbal medicine for women’s health with Sara Rooney and herbal medicine for cancer support with Dr Nina Fuller-Shavel as a part of her overall integrative care plan or occasionally to support our nutrition team’s care through a brief herbal medicine review.

Acupuncture is one of the best-evidenced supportive interventions in modern integrative oncology, and our service is delivered by two licensed, experienced Chinese Medicine practitioners (Chau Lai Wong and Damian Allegretti) who work across all three of our departments. The 2022 SIO–ASCO Clinical Practice Guideline on Integrative Medicine for Pain Management in Oncology recommends acupuncture for several common cancer- and treatment-related pain syndromes, including aromatase inhibitor arthralgia (joint pain on letrozole, anastrozole and exemestane), general cancer pain, and post-mastectomy and post-thoracotomy pain. The 2024 ASCO–SIO update on cancer-related fatigue and the 2023 SIO–ASCO guideline on anxiety and depression in adults with cancer (which our Medical Director, Dr Nina Fuller-Shavel, co-authored) further support a role for acupuncture, mind-body and Chinese medicine approaches in symptom management during and after treatment. Alongside acupuncture, Chau Lai and Damian offer Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) consultations and, where clinically appropriate, Chinese herbal medicine. All our herbal medicine recommendations are always assessed for safety and herb–drug interactions in the context of your active oncology treatment with our clinical pharmacist supporting our team.

In practice, this means we use TCM acupuncture and Chinese medicine to help with chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, joint pain on hormonal therapy, hot flushes and night sweats, treatment-related fatigue, nausea, sleep disturbance, anxiety, and chronic post-surgical pain. This is coordinated as part of your wider plan rather than as a stand-alone appointment. Chau and Damian work closely with our integrative oncology doctors, our pain consultant Dr Deepak Ravindran, our physiotherapy, yoga therapy, nutrition and dietetics professionals, with all herbal prescribing reviewed for compatibility with your conventional treatment. We work alongside your NHS or private oncology team, not as a replacement, and share clinical communication where it is helpful. Our TCM acupuncture and herbal medicine services are available in person at our Reading clinic with herbal medicine also accessible via an online consultation.

Yoga therapy is the process of empowering individuals to progress toward improved health and well-being through the application of the teachings and practices of Yoga. Yoga comprises a wide range of mind/body practices, from postural and breathing exercises to deep relaxation and meditation. Yoga therapy is the adaptation of yoga practices for people with health challenges. Yoga therapists prescribe specific regimens of postures, breathing exercises, and relaxation techniques to suit individual needs.

At Synthesis Clinic we offer yoga therapy for cancer support during and after treatment.