About Nikki

That is what I do.

I am Nikki Hawkes, a medical herbalist and functional medicine practitioner based in the UK. I have been in practice since , and in that time I have worked with hundreds of women, many of them with complex, long-standing conditions that had not responded to conventional treatment. I am a registered member of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists (MNIMH) and the College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy (MCPP), and a graduate of the Applying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice programme.

What struck me was that I was already growing many of these plants, and my chemistry training meant I could see what most gardeners could not: the complexity of the compounds inside them, the reasons they worked. Traditional cottage garden plants turned out to have serious medicinal properties. That garden became the starting point for everything that followed.

I studied herbal medicine for five years, graduating with a BSc (Hons) in Phytotherapy. I later completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Nutritional Medicine and the AFMCP programme. The learning has never stopped: herbs, nutrition, gut health, and how it all works together. The path from chemistry to herbalism was not a career change so much as a recognition that the same fascination had been there all along, just pointed somewhere new.

What patients often say afterwards is that nobody else has ever gone through their medical history and laid it out in a timeline that explains their current situation. That is the thing I do that other practitioners have not done for them. I find the thread.

From there, I put together a plan: food, herbs, supplements, lifestyle adjustments, whatever fits your situation. There is something important to understand about how herbal medicine works: your prescription will change. As things shift in your body, the herbs shift with them. The plan you start with will not be the plan you finish with. That is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It is the whole point. We are moving you in a direction, and the prescription keeps you moving.

This is fundamentally different from being put on a medication and staying on it indefinitely. In herbal medicine, the prescription evolves with you.

One of the things I have learned over twenty years of practice is how central gut health is to almost everything else. Long before the microbiome became a household term, my undergraduate research focused on gut healing. That understanding has become a cornerstone of how I work, and something I live by myself.

I also believe that people deserve to understand what is happening in their own bodies. I explain things simply, not because the science is simple, but because you should not need a chemistry degree to understand your own health. (Though it does not hurt.)

Professional memberships

MNIMH: National Institute of Medical Herbalists
MCPP: College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy

Both organisations require degree-level entry and ongoing professional development. Membership means I am accountable to a professional code of practice and ethics.

If any of this sounds like what you have been looking for, the best place to start is a Hello Call. It is fifteen minutes, completely free, and there is no obligation. We talk through where you are and whether working together makes sense.

Particularly if you have been told your tests are normal but you still feel unwell.

Find out more about what happens before, during and after my herbal consultation process: