Why choose us?
Because the professional is personal.
Healthcare professionals
Yvonne Parker and Danielle McCarthy are healthcare professionals with decades of experience in research and in supporting women though their reproductive lives, from puberty to menopause. Helping women navigate this hormonal minefield is more than just a job: it’s a vocation born of personal experience.
Yvonne is an AfN Registered Associate Nutritionist who specialises in empowering women through their pregnancy journey. She combines her compassionate, evidence based approach with three decades of maternal health experience and advanced prenatal training to help you nourish yourself and your baby with confidence.
A Trusted Partner for Your Pregnancy
Yvonne’s unique background blends hands-on science with a deep understanding of maternal well-being:
- Decades of Maternal Health Experience: Yvonne spent 30 years leading diagnostic efforts in Maternal Feotal Health, dedicated on making pregnancies safer and identifying risks early on.
- Global Policy Insights: Yvonne spent 5 years representing the diagnostics industry at the FIGO (International Federation of Gynaecology and Obsterics), helping shape international guidelines for nutrition and blood sugar management during pregnancy.
- Specialised Prenatal Training: Yvonne is a graduate of the Institute of Prenatal Nutrition and an active member of the Lily Nichols Alumni program.
Yvonne’s goal is to remove the stress from prenatal eating, translating complex science into warm, practical, and comforting advice tailored for you.
Danielle is an AfN Registered Associate Nutritionist who helps you naturally balance your hormones for fertility and pregnancy. She pairs deep empathy with a rare combination of clinical expertise, culinary skill, and holistic care to support you through every stage.
Why Your Are in Safe Hands
- Advanced Hormone Specialist: Danielle holds an MSc in Applied Human Nutrition, alongside research into fertility, food tolerances and gut imbalances.
- Holistic Acupuncture: Degree qualified, with over 25 years of clinical experience using Traditional Acupuncture to support hormonal health, fertility, pregnancy, and postnatal journeys.
- Professional Culinary Skills: She uses her Postgraduate training in Holistic Thermogenic and professional cooking training to design delicious, practical, hormone-balancing recipes that sustain and rebalance your health.
Danielle continuously updates her knowledge and skills with specialised fertility-focused continuing professional development, translating complex science into actionable, practical food advice tailored just for you.
A personal insight
We met as students on the MSc Applied Human Nutrition course at Oxford Brookes University and spent many hours on our commute discussing our frustration at observing women coping with life-changing experiences who could have been helped before they got to the medical intervention stage.
“My background in IVF and pregnancy practice frequently left me wishing I could have seen couples much earlier and helped them ‘clean up’ their nutrition,” says Danielle.
We both have personal reasons for exploring hormonal challenges and nutritional impact.
“I’d had period issues from the age of 16,” Yvonne reveals, “ranging from migraines, bloating and horrendous cramps which led to a prescription for the contraceptive pill as the solution to provide some relief.
“As my business career progressed, the problems increased. I suffered flooding, with hugely embarrassing incidents at a business meeting in Germany and a holiday with my husband in Italy that left me mortified and severely dented my confidence.
“During one of the worst phases, I was passing clots the size of golf balls and became severely anaemic. Fibroids were diagnosed and I was prescribed medication to stem the blood loss.”
Danielle’s experience was equally distressing. “I suffered with heavy, painful periods right from the beginning,” she recalls. “I battled PMOS and endometriosis and went through years of hormone treatment, medication and surgery. Searching for alternative options led me to discover and study traditional Chinese medicine, which is holistic in nature. This was complemented by the nutrition knowledge I gained in clinical practice and during my studies at Oxford.”
Understanding and action
Learning about the effect of nutrition on reproductive hormones helped both of us join the dots between the symptoms we’d endured. “My genetics put me at an increased risk of obesity and insulin resistance,” says Yvonne.
“Combine that with global travel, eating a poor diet rich in refined carbs like cereals, bread and pasta, plus a stressful career, and it was a recipe for hormonal imbalance.
“Looking back, I had major gut issues, my liver was clearly under stress and I had all the hallmarks of insulin resistance. If only I’d known that with a few changes to the food I was eating, I could have saved myself from such a distressing experience.”
A determination to help other women avoid the same fate is why we’ve formed Plena Health.
“Health is the key,” explains Danielle. “We don’t call ourselves Plena Nutrition, but Plena Health. Plena is Latin for full, so full health. A comprehensive and holistic approach to health is at the core of our business.”
We’re committed to helping women avoid the unnecessary suffering of hormone-related symptoms – symptoms which are often dismissed or over-medicated.
Understanding how nutrition can increase your well-being throughout the reproductive stages can empower you to make dietary changes which will reduce the chances of experiencing challenges conceiving, during pregnancy or throughout the perimenopause.
