153: Helen Gowers and Jon Furniss – The Lifestyle Club

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Helen Gowers and Jon Furniss

Helen is passionate about improving the options for people with type 2 diabetes after seeing the destruction it caused her dad. She wants the NHS to support people to achieve remission using a real food, low carbohydrate approach. She is a registered dietitian and director of The Lifestyle Club (TLC) a health coaching service for adults with type 2 diabetes, developed by the charity, Public Health Collaboration. TLC has helped over 700 people and is already commissioned by 44 GP surgeries around the country. She recently launched a crowdfunding campaign for a TLC research study with the University of Surrey which is starting in September.

Jon is a type 1 diabetic himself and having taken control of his own diabetes and normalising his blood glucose through his own independent research he now wants to share the experience and insight he has gained and support other diabetics towards achieving similar results to his own. Jon chose to join the PHC to achieve this aim and after having set up and run his own volunteer ambassador programme to support participants drawn from his local GP surgery. He then went on to train in the first wave of TLC health coaches to support what is now many hundreds of people living with diabetes and pre-diabetes from all over the country. Jon finds the work hugely rewarding, and each story of remission he hears fills his day with joy.