In a calm and inviting space in Queensberry Street, you will find the key to improving your health and wellness.

Susan Hunter had been a naturopath in Bayside, Melbourne, for over fifteen years and around four years ago relocated to North Melbourne with her family. 

She opened Radius Health in 2021 in order to create a wellness space for her local community. Susan focuses on naturopathy and has a team of practitioners that offer other services, such as nutrition and remedial massage, to treat a range of ailments from mental health, stress, digestive and pain management and women’s and children’s health.

“We're very patient-centred and provide bespoke health solutions. We do a lot of testing and genetic profiling of our clients, taking information, their signs, symptoms, and history, and analyse their test results to see what's going on. Along with their genetic predispositions, we can get a complete understanding, and that helps us create individualised health programs or regimes.”

Radius Health treats people of all ages and offers a range of services and therapies that include acupuncture for chronic pain, medicinal cannabis treatment, group pilates classes, psychology and naturopathy. 

“Dr Khai-Ching Lim is a medicinal cannabis doctor, anaesthetist and acupuncturist that is getting incredible results for people living with chronic pain. Whilst, Clare Bellhouse is a clinical psychologist with special interests in perinatal mental health, parenting difficulties and complex trauma."

“Bec Stone, one of our nutritionists, really loves working in the preconception period and getting your body ready to have a healthy baby. Bec also works in female sports nutrition and sees a lot of athletes, especially teenagers who are going off to state and national championships.”

Each month they offer a complimentary Health Webinar called ‘Thriving Thursday’ where they discuss evidence-based health information with one of the practitioners to a worldwide online audience.

Susan describes the retail arm of Radius Health as a sort of apothecary.

“We stock eco-friendly, low toxicity products, functional foods, and supplements. We are trying to build up our herbal medicine dispensary,” she explains.

“We retail practitioner-only products and are here to service the community for their aches, pains and problems. They can come in and ask questions and be provided with health education.”

Susan came to natural medicine in her mid-20s. She was travelling through Asia and liked the philosophy of natural medicine of working with the body and treating the root cause of a health problem rather than just the symptoms. 

She came home to Melbourne with a new passion and studied a Bachelor of Health Science.

“I really like that natural medicine is so multi-dimensional. You have nutritional biochemistry; you've got the synergy of herbal medicines and their chemical constituents. Now we're seeing so much research into the gut microbiome and how strains of probiotics, herbal medicines and functional foods feed the gut.”

“Finally, the research is catching up with the traditional prescribing of natural medicine. I can present a slide deck to a group of doctors that has seventy different references and backs up exactly what we've been doing for a long time.”

Susan would love for Radius Health to become a destination wellness clinic and to further connect with the local community through treatments, workshops, programs, and coaching.

“My vision is to create a place for a variety of health practitioners that’s team focused and patient centred. A place where we can all work as team with a shared care approach and provide customised health solutions.”

Words by Joyce Watts