Dee Brereton-Patel (BSc (Hons) Dip Nut CNM, IFMCP)
Dee is an experienced Functional Medicine and Nutritional Therapy practitioner, who is certified by the Institute for Functional Medicine.

She is a lecturer in Nutritional Therapy, and is the founder of Coho Health, with clinics in Manchester (UK), Palma de Mallorca (Spain) as well reaching people anywhere in the world through the Coho virtual clinic.
As you can see from our client success stories, Dee is absolutely passionate about achieving outstanding clinical outcomes, changing lives for the better, and instilling those same standards in our amazing team.
Dee’s journey…
As a successful Functional Medicine practitioner, you might think my own journey to resolving my hidden health issues was easy.
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
My own hidden health issues led to our first daughter, Anaya, being born with Spina Bifida Occulta, a condition that led to multiple surgeries and significant time in hospital – a life changing and at times life threatening journey for her, and a life changing experience for me as a parent.
And if it wasn’t for a chance comment from a surgeon, combined with what I later learned through my own study, and eventually becoming a fully qualified Functional Medicine practitioner and Senior Lecturer in Nutritional Therapy, our second daughter may well have needlessly been put at risk too.
But this was back when I was working in a high paying job in pharmaceutical R&D for big companies like GSK, AstraZeneca, and J&J, and I didn’t know any of what I know now.
So, while I might look like a successful health practitioner today, the truth is that I was just like how you might be now – unaware of the hidden processes affecting my body and the body of my child, and at the mercy of conventional medicine.
I definitely wasn’t an expert in any of this.
On my journey, the conventional medicine system let both me and my family down.
But I learned through my own experience that it doesn’t have to be that way.
Back then I felt alone, powerless and frustrated because I didn’t have any of the information I needed to change the outcome for my daughter, and my future family.
Despite having much of the right information, conventional medicine didn’t have the answers (or any interest in finding them), which meant the problems Anaya had were likely to happen again unless we figured things out for ourselves.
What made things worse was that our conventional medicine team didn’t have the time, knowledge or interest to think beyond the basics about the real root cause of why the problems had happened in the first place, or even to review the research papers I’d shared that would, in the end, change the outcome for our future family.
I felt condescended to and kept in the dark by our medical team, and I felt frustrated and powerless.
And while the conventional medical system let us down, that’s not to say that, at the same time, I don’t also have huge respect, and am eternally grateful for, the skill and the fantastic job the surgical team did, and the care they showed us as humans.
But it’s the paradox of the conventional medical system isn’t it, that such amazing and skilled humans are working in a system that is fundamentally not designed to truly treat the root cause of chronic health problems.
This is something I understand even more because my older brother is actually a doctor.
In the end, I figured out how to resolve my hidden health problems – the hidden health problems that had led to Anaya being born with congenital abnormalities – on my own, and now it’s my life’s mission to help you identify and fix the often hidden, root cause of your health problems, so you’re not left alone trying to figure out what to do like I was.
In fact, our consultant only mentioned in an off hand way at our very last appointment (after 18 months of hospital visits and surgeries, nobody had bothered to mention it) that our daughter actually had Spina Bifida Occulta.
Luckily for me and my family, coming from a clinical research background, I was equipped to do some of my own research.
I quickly discovered that there are underlying causes to congenital abnormalities like Spina Bifida Occulta, and that identifying and resolving these root causes could stop the same problem happening again.
It was like a light bulb being switched on!
Why hadn’t we been told that the life changing problems our daughter Anaya, had experienced were completely preventable?!
It seemed unbelievable that under conventional medicine as a system, you could go through all of those life changing and life threatening surgeries, and literally nobody mentioned once that it’s all completely preventable (which is obviously really important if you want have another baby).
Having been through so much, my mind was just spinning (we later found out that our consultant knew about all of these foetal abnormality risks very early in my first pregnancy, but nobody bothered to tell us).
This is when I first really started to learn all about the underlying, hidden causes of fertility and health problems, including the power of genetics, nutrition, lifestyle and advanced testing, and how this approach can help to identify and resolve the root causes of health problems!
It was now so clear to me how one small, hidden imbalance (that you’d never know about) can have such a profound and life changing impact.
I learned I could identify and fix my own underlying imbalances – imbalances that led to Anaya having Spina Bifida Occulta, and that I could help her to live a happy, healthy life, as well as make sure my second pregnancy with our daughter Tia, was completely healthy.
I also learned that the conventional medicine system doesn’t have all the answers (or really any interest in finding them), and in our case the medical team withheld vital information that, once we had it, meant we resolved the root cause of why the problem happened in the first place.
I discovered that doctors:
- Don't know how
- Don't usually understand
- And aren't usually equipped
to resolve the root causes of hidden (or known) chronic health problems, and that many people – just like me – actually need a truly personalised, root cause approach.
As a result of my own journey, I discovered my true purpose and mission in life – to study nutrition and root cause ‘Functional’ medicine to solve my own problem, and then commit to a lifelong journey helping others to solve the root cause of their health problems.
I started to understand the real power of personalised, root cause, holistic, science based medicine, and I empowered myself to solve my own underlying imbalances.
So I took the first steps on my journey by studying courses in nutritional therapy and Functional Medicine in order to gain a full understanding of the underlying factors that affected me, and that affect so many other people.
This was the beginning of my own personal 10 year journey, leaving my high paying job in pharmaceutical research and development, and becoming a fully certified Functional Medicine practitioner, while along the way I implemented everything I had learned about nutrition, lifestyle, genetics and advanced testing to have a happy and healthy second pregnancy.
After years of study (with lots more to come!), spending tens of thousands of £ / $ / € on courses and education (often every penny we had), and years spent helping our amazing clients in clinical practice, juggling a young family and long working hours, we created Coho Health.
I helped Anaya to live her best life despite her condition, and had a happy, healthy second baby, Tia.
I opened Coho Health with the mission to reach and help as many people as possible to overcome their own health problems.
I developed everything I learned through those years of study, and the practical experience of working with our amazing clients, into the Coho you=1 personalised medicine system, and our Coho Fertility you=2 Fertility Success Path.
These systems, developed over the past 15 years, continue to deliver life changing results every day in our clinical practice, and I hope they can help you too.
We’ve now had the great pleasure of helping thousands of clients, from 25 countries around the World, to take control of their health and change their lives for the better, often overcoming complex chronic health issues.
And in the end, all of this means I’m now able to make a difference, both to your personal healing journey, and hopefully, adding my voice to change how medicine is done.
So when I say your journey and results are personal to me, I really mean it – because I’ve been in a similar position to where you might be now.
I stood up and fought to resolve my own health problems, and I’ll fight for you too – that’s my promise.
To your optimised, healthy future,
Dee & the Coho Health team

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