Books

When you’re living with chronic stress and fatigue, understanding what’s happening inside your body is the first step toward healing. In this empowering and deeply informative book, Jo Dunbar, a medical herbalist with over 25 years of clinical experience, explains how ongoing stress and viral infections can disrupt your body’s delicate physiology. She reveals how stress hormones and viruses alter the way your cells function – leaving you more vulnerable to chronic fatigue, brain fog and pain, post-viral fatigue or long Covid.

Drawing on decades of clinical insight, Jo shares the same practical, holistic advice she gives her clients – guiding you through the process of rebuilding your health naturally. You’ll learn how to nourish your body with functional foods, gentle lifestyle changes, and the power of common herbs that can often be found in your kitchen cupboards or garden.

Packed with easy-to-follow recipes and home remedies, this book offers both understanding and hope. It not only helps you make sense of how you became unwell, but also shows how you can restore balance, vitality, and resilience – so you can move forward and avoid falling into the same cycle again.

If you’re struggling with chronic fatigue, post-viral symptoms, or the lingering effects of long-term stress, this book is your compassionate companion on the journey back to energy, clarity, and wellbeing.

There is nothing as magical as picking a weed from under a hedge, brewing it in the cauldron of your teapot, and using the potion to restore health. It’s everyday alchemy, and it transforms us from the base metal of material gratification into the gold of connecting with the exquisite power of nature.

In recent years there has been a groundswell of interest in spending time in nature as well as using plant medicine in the home, as our grandmothers did.

Jo’s book is all about the herbs which you can grow in your garden, the weeds which you will not want to throw out, wild plants of the hedgerows and culinary herbs in your kitchen cupboards. It is packed with recipes such as Menopause Tea, Horse Chestnut Gel and Brain Spice Condiments, and chapters include Nourishing Your Adrenals, Herbs for the Heart and Muscles and Joints.

Beyond the herbal recipes, there is healing advice born of Jo’s almost three decades of practice as a Medical Herbalist, and spiritual insights from her Druidic practice. She also includes a bit of metaphysics, because when we bind the magic of plants with science, we find that nature is even more amazing than we had ever imagined.

Secrets from a Herbalist’s Garden weaves together the wisdom of natural healing with a longing to reconnect with nature’s rhythm. It offers guidance for protecting your family from everyday ailments while celebrating the art of harvesting herbs in tune with the seasons. Whether sought for a particular remedy or simply to deepen one’s connection with the plants, it gently leads the reader toward a more nature-led life.

Read the first chapter of the book here…

There are forgotten details of history and fabulous folk lore hiding away in the hedgerow. The Spirit of the Hedgerow tells the stories of the plants themselves. It follows the wild plants in the hedgerows, as they call attention to themselves throughout the year. Each month outlines modern medical properties, home remedies and recipes to follow, as well as some of the folklore or magical practice associated with the plants featured that month. There is also a brief explanation of the eight Celtic festivals of the year so that you may join in with the celebration of the turning of the seasons.

Spirit of the Hedgerow was written for those who want to know more about the medical properties of common wayside plants, and how they might be worked with in a spiritual sense. Over 40 common wild plants are described according to their medical properties with herbal remedies and foraging recipes to try at home. The spiritual aspects of the book invite you to see common plants from a sacred perspective, while stories such as the battle between the Oak King and the Holly King bring a sense of a wild drama going on right under our noses!

A review from Amazon:

“What a delightful book! Like most people, I love a walk in the countryside or a city park but in the past I’ve hardly given a passing nod to the flowers, plants and herbs growing there until now. This book is a true eye-opener, describing the wild food available for us as well as the very significant medical uses of so many ‘weeds’. The pages also come alive with wonderful and often amusing stories of the ancient folklore of our natural world, and the whole thing is beautifully illustrated with colour photographs. The author has that rare skill, too, of writing a book that manages to be both academic and totally down to earth at the same time, satisfying every kind of reader. Pack this in your bag next time you go for a walk!”

Candida is the common name for an overgrowth of yeast organism known as ‘Candida Albicans’. It appears with many varying and seemingly unrelated symptoms and affects almost every part of the body.

This is a very common and serious disorder, unfortunately not really recognised by mainstream medicine unless it is extremely severe. However, it can significantly disrupt the internal physiology, leading to many varied symptoms. This is not simply a fungal infection, which is treated with anti-fungal medicines. It is actually a disruption of the internal environment, and must be treated holistically.

The book introduces you to a thorough drug-free treatment programme, as well as tips on how to adapt your lifestyle comfortably to treating candida.

The effects of stress on our health can lead to devastating long term illnesses such as adrenal fatigue and chronic fatigue syndrome.

So many people feel absolutely burnt out and just do not understand how this affects their body or what they can do about it. Mainstream medicine has almost nothing to offer the person who wakes up feeling exhausted, who simply cannot cope with the smallest stress or feels so weak they can barely digest their food. Having helped people for 15 years to recover from these illnesses, Jo wrote this book so she could pass on her knowledge and experience to as many people as possible.

In Part One Jo outlines how stress affects your body systems, and clearly explains why stress can make people so unwell, sometimes for years. In these chapters Jo shows the reader how long term stress can lead to adrenal fatigue, reduced immunity, disrupted hormones, poor digestion and low thyroid function, amongst many other symptoms.

Part Two offers clear guidelines towards recovery, including advice about diet and blood sugar control, dealing with candida, restoring the immune system, rebalancing hormones, restoring the adrenal glands and energy using lifestyle changes, herbal medicine and nutritional supplements.

In Part Three Jo uses her experience to offer practical tips on how to adjust your life so that you stay well. The book concludes by exploring our modern lifestyle, why many of us choose to live to stressfully and how we might make more sustainable life choices.