Research Herbalist
MSc (Herbal Medicine) UCLAN, ILADS, FLS.
Monica is a Research Herbalist with a Masters degree in Western Herbal Medicine from the University of Central Lancashire. She is the research herbalist heading up the Napiers Claid Clinic (formerly the Napiers Lyme Clinic). Her clinic specialism is Lyme disease Borrelia burgdorferi and co-infections – crypto-infections Bartonella, Babesia, Rickettsia, Erlichia, Anaplasma, Mycoplasma, etc. As a research herbalist Monica does not run a general clinical practice which allows her to focus on Lyme disease and bacterial and viral infections. She is a Member of ILADS – the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society. ILADS is a nonprofit, international, multi-disciplinary medical society, dedicated to the diagnosis and appropriate treatment of Lyme and its associated co-infections. Monica is an advisor to the Lyme Resource Centre Scotland charity and in 2020 she was awarded an Inspiration Award for her work with Lyme in the Scottish Wellbeing Awards.
Her Masters dissertation was on the concomitant prescribing of the proton-pump inhibitor drug, omeprazole, with herbs and micronutrients. She has a particular interest in beneficial concomitant prescribing and in Integrative Medicine, when patients who need to take chemical (allopathic) drugs also wish to take herbal medicines as part of a holistic, patient-led healthcare plan. Experience has taught her that a holistic approach can often reduce chemical drug side effects in a beneficial way for the patient while still ensuring the treatment that they need. To this end she often works alongside infectious disease consultants and G.P.s. (Previous specialist fields include the study of chelated iodine in seaweed and its effect on iodine insufficiency and thyroid function.)
Monica is a guest lecturer on the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh RBGE Herbology Diploma course covering the medicinal uses of seaweeds, mushrooms, trees, lichens, and has also taught the mushroom module for Grassroots Remedies. Public lectures include the annual U.K. Medicinal Mushroom Conference. She has a deep passion for plants, fungi and the natural world. Meeting a Kikuyu herbalist on the Kenyan farm of her childhood, inspired a lifetime of interest and studying of herbal medicine. She is a Fellow of the Linnean Society, a founding Member of the Association of Foragers, a Member of the British Mycological Society and a foraging teacher of wild food and wild plant medicine. Mo is the author of The Wilderness Cure published by Simon & Schuster in 2022