Biography
Diana was born in Bath in November 1945, the daughter of a pharmacist, Richard Franks, and Barbara, maiden name Beard. Diana's maternal grandfather was a keen gardener and he taught her all about plants from a very young age. She was brought up to eat fresh fruit and vegetables straight from the garden. She enjoyed gathering the produce, as well as picking flowers to decorate the house. She also discovered that she enjoyed helping people.
Diana attended Fosseway Infants School and Moorlands Junior School, before passing the "11plus" and taking a place at the City of Bath Girls School, before Bath secondary schools became comprehensive.
As a child, she loved to visit her father at work and was fascinated by the use of plant extracts in the making up of medicinal mixtures. She admired the way that her father was able to put people at their ease. He was always willing to listen to a customer's troubles so that he knew how to help them.
Diana's love of plants and wish to help people seemed to join together in the subject of Pharmacy. She therefore decided to pursue this as a career. Her father had qualified at the Merchant Venturer's College in Bristol and she decided to follow in his footsteps. The Pharmacy School had been transferred to Bristol College of Advanced Technology, then based at the Muller's Orphanage buildings on Ashley Down. This in turn moved to Bath University of Technology during 1968, the year that Diana gained her Bachelor of Pharmacy, Bath.
Diana did her year's postgraduate training experience in her father's pharmacy in Chippenham, Wiltshire. This qualified her as a member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, (now the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain) a legal requirement for practicing as a retail pharmacist. As such, Diana became accustomed to discussing ill health with customers. Whilst her approach to health is very different now, this role did give her experience in assessing people's health problems by listening to what they had to say.
As the use of medicinal plant extracts diminished in the practice of Pharmacy, with the introduction of more and more unnatural, chemically produced, substances from the pharmaceutical industry, Diana's attitude towards practicing pharmacy changed. However, having been brought up in an environment of strictly conventional medicine, she had no idea of any alternative approach to health. It was not until 1984, when a friend of hers introduced her to a book, "Not all in the Mind" by Dr. Richard Macarness, that the world of complementary medicine opened up to her.
Diana embraced this new world wholeheartedly, because it made so much sense to her! She knew the pharmaceutical side of things only too well! There is not one drug without non-optimum side effects, some of which even need another drug to reduce their bad effects. Although manufacturers claim that many drugs are derived from plants, research for beneficial plants leads to the extraction of an ingredient that is deemed to be "active" and then a chemical equivalent is produced and patented by a pharmaceutical company. This does not seem to Diana to be the same as the taking of a plant extract. With a plant extract, the specific part of a plant is used as a whole, to produce a liquid concoction from the plant's complexity. Diana's approach became "nature knows best" and any chemical is "second best".
From her own experience of unbelievable improvement in health for both herself and her family, by changing their diet and taking vitamin/mineral supplements, Diana began to query the wholesale prescribing of drugs without looking at other issues first. If diet and natural supplements could give such huge benefit, why swallow chemicals? She was drawn to the idea of helping other people with an alternative approach. So, having personally discovered the benefits of a nutritional approach to health, she left pharmacy in 1986 to become a natural health care practitioner. Since then she has done a great deal of practical research, as well as study, in her quest for the simple fundamentals of health and well-being.
It seemed to Diana that, because the body consists of millions of cells, efficient cellular function had to play a key part in health itself. She found out more about how cells keep healthy and how cellular function can be maximised. Whilst reading books, and attending seminars on Nutritional Therapy, Body Cleansing and the holistic approach to health, she actively sought out simplicities, believing that truth is found in simplicity.
During this quest, she learnt about an essential factor of body function that she had been totally unaware of before. It had not been mentioned to her at school or university, although she had had considerable training in both how the body works and in body structure. This unexpected feature was the Meridian network in the body, originally recognised thousands of years ago!
Diana first came across meridians whilst training as a Kinesiologist in 1988-9. She attended the initial certificate course run by Brian Butler, the founder of the Academy of Systematic Kinesiology and its Association, A.S.K.. She now holds a diploma, DipASK, from the same training academy and has been running successful natural health care practices since 1989.
More recently, in 1996, Diana became an advanced Rei-ki practitioner, trained by Barbara McGregor from Australia, and hence learnt about a different physical energy supplying the body. This is an energy that the body can use to heal itself, which can be drawn upon through the palm of the hand.
Diana discovered "FoodState" supplements in the early nineties, and the concept behind them made total sense to her. She later learned that they had been developed by another pharmacist! She now has many years experience in the use of such supplements, both personally, and as a successful Kinesiologist.
About a year after moving to the Malvern area, she accepted an opportunity from Cytoplan Ltd to become a member of their Nutritional Support Services team. Her duties in this role included the manning of the company's telephone Helpline. Diana worked for Cytoplan in this capacity for over four years, gaining further knowledge and experience, not only in advising how to deal with health problems naturally, but also in the technical side of the FoodState range.
Diana has an urgent desire to make all the knowledge she has gained widely available. She is willing to deliver seminars, talks or tutorials on her various topics, to both professionals in health care and to interested public. She is also writing a series of booklets, which will become available as soon as they are complete! Watch this space!