About Us

This is your journey

The Kintsugi Health way

KINTSUGI (also known as KINTSUKOROI) | The ancient Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with precious metals like liquid gold, liquid silver or gold powdered lacquer. By highlighting the imperfections, the once broken piece is turned into something unique and valuable, stronger and with more beauty than before.

Kintsugi Health is about resilience – the ability to get up and to put yourself back together again when life pulls the rug from under your feet. It’s about a healthy body and a healthy mind – mending broken thoughts, repairing damaged foundations, changing unhelpful habits.

Kintsugi Health is about your health story – it’s about the good and the not-so-good chapters, it’s about taking control of the story line and re-writing the plot.

Using the principles of lifestyle medicine, our aim is to help patients change what they do and how they think, to provide a healthier foundation for their health.

We apply the principles of functional medicine to repair the imbalances caused by a damaged foundation, and to optimise cell health and function.

About the Kintsugi Health way of healthcare

Welcome To Kintsugi Health

My name is Dr Nelda Swart and I’m the Founder of Kintsugi Health. I qualified as a medical doctor in 1986 and have worked in mainstream medicine as a GP until 2018.

It was my love for people and their unique life stories, as well as a frustration with the limitations imposed by regular 15 minute consultations, that led me to open up my own slow-medicine practice in 2018. I discovered functional medicine soon afterwards and knew that this is the way I want to practice.

I have been overwhelmed by the number of patients interested in a holistic root-cause focused approach to their health problems. I soon realised that I was working as a ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’, and that trying to spread my skills and time so thin was a disservice for my patients.

For this reason I decided that we would rather help a smaller group of patients really well, than trying to help all patients a little bit.

That is why we now focus exclusively on metabolic health (weight management, blood sugar control and cholesterol issues), chronic pain, women’s health and gut health.

There is a significant overlap between mainstream medicine and functional medicine approaches in the management of these conditions. It makes sense then that these are the areas we can help our patients the most with.

What is functional medicine?

We head to the source

If you are experiencing chronic illness or pain then you may have found yourself in a fast-flowing river.

Mainstream medicine offers a flotation device to stop you from drowning. Functional and lifestyle medicine looks upstream to find out why you are in the river in the first place.

That's where Kintsugi Health can help.

Building a healthier foundation

Chronic illnesses like diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, heart disease, fibromyalgia, anxiety, depression, and many other conditions can not be cured with medication. They are caused by a complex interplay between our genes, our environment, what we eat, what we do and how we think.

Using the principles of lifestyle medicine, our aim is to help patients change what they do and how they think, to provide a healthier foundation for their health. We apply the principles of functional medicine to repair the imbalances caused by a damaged foundation, and to optimise cell health and function.

We acknowledge that emotional and physical well-being are intricately linked, and that behaviour change will be compromised unless we pay attention to both. Our patients hold the key to their own health and well-being. Our role as practitioners is to facilitate the unlocking of a patient’s own resources through education, counselling, nutritional support and lifestyle optimisation.

Patient Centered

At Kintsugi Health, rather than write your story for you - we give you the pen and help you decide what the next chapter is going to look like.

The journey that brought you to this point in time is unique to you. The combination of challenges you have faced, or are facing, is unique to you.

We honour this uniqueness by tailoring our services and treatment plans to best reflect your life story and health journey.

Root-Cause Oriented

We treat the root causes of your illness using non-pharmacological interventions. The result is an overall improvement in health, more energy and a general sense of well-being.

Medications are often a necessary, and at times even a life-saving part of a chronic illness treatment plan.

But what if you could reduce the number of medicines you take, or reduce the dose? What if you could get better without taking more medications?

Whole Person Focused

Underpinning everything we do is are the four pillars of health - nutrition, exercise, sleep and most importantly, resilience. We work with you to meet you where you're at now, and help address the emotional and behavioural barriers to change.

Unhelpful thoughts and emotions can upend the best-laid plans and intentions. For this reason we care about your emotional well-being, as well as your physical health.