care & healing through precision Medicine
I'm Dr Chloe, a GP in Brisbane, with advanced training in functional and longevity medicine. I help people understand what's driving their health concerns and help those who already feel well stay well for the long run.
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I work with two kinds of people: those with health concerns that haven't been resolved and want to understand the cause, and those who feel well and want to stay that way as they age.
Areas I work in:
My background: MD MPH MHLM BmedSt LLB(Hons) Bcom(Acc&Fin) FRACGP with further advanced training in functional, lifestyle and longevity medicine. I'm also a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland.
New here? The [FAQ] answers common questions about how I work, appointments and what to expect. Or read more about my [approach] and [background].
My Areas of Interest
Wholistic mental health care and deprescribing
In Australia, around one in seven people now take an antidepressant — one of the highest rates in the world. But mental health is rarely a simple story. The causes are layered: biological, psychological, and social, not a chemical imbalance, as many of us were told. The biological can include things like nutrient status, thyroid and hormonal function, gut health, inflammation, and sleep. The psychological covers how someone thinks, copes, and carries past experience, including stress and trauma. The social is everything around them: relationships, work, finances, isolation, and the conditions they're living in. These layers interact, and a symptom that looks the same in two people can have very different roots.
I'm interested in why, not just what to prescribe. That means getting to the bottom of what's actually going on for someone and working through those layers, rather than treating only the surface with medication.
For some people, that work includes coming off antidepressants or other psychotropic medications where it's appropriate — a particular focus of mine. It's rarely as simple as stopping. Withdrawal effects are common, and for some more difficult and longer-lasting than is often recognised: dizziness, disturbed sleep, anxiety, low mood, and the electric-shock sensations some describe as brain zaps. Because these are easily mistaken for the original problem returning, it's worth doing slowly and with proper support.
How the dose is reduced makes a real difference. The relationship between dose and effect isn't a straight line, so a reduction that looks small can have an outsized effect at lower doses. I favour a gradual, carefully staged taper, paced to how someone is actually coping rather than a fixed timeline, so the body has time to adjust at each step.
Ongoing health conditions
Some problems don't resolve neatly. Gut problems, fatigue, hormonal imbalances, autoimmune conditions, skin issues, joint pain — to name a few — tend to build over time, don't always show up on a standard test, and rarely can be resolved in a ten-minute appointment. More often than not, they get managed at the surface rather than understood.
I work with patients who want to explore why they've ended up where they are. Many arrive feeling dismissed — told their results are "normal," that nothing is wrong, or that what they're experiencing is just stress, ageing, or in their head. Often they've been offered something to manage the symptoms without anyone asking what's driving them in the first place. Being taken seriously matters, and that's where I start: with the question of why.
Finding that answer usually means looking wider than the symptom itself. We work through your history and the underlying causes across a few areas that tend to overlap: the physical — what's going on in the body, from gut health and hormones to immune function and inflammation; the lifestyle — how you eat, move, sleep and handle stress; and the environmental — what you're regularly exposed to, at home and at work. These rarely sit on their own. More often, they feed into each other, which is part of why something can drag on when each piece is treated separately.
From there we build a program designed around you and revisit it as we go. That usually means lifestyle changes, targeted supplements, other healing modalities such as acupuncture and osteopathy, and prescription medication where it's appropriate.
Health optimisation/Longevity medicine
Most people only think about their health once something's gone wrong. This is the opposite. It's about looking at your health while you're well, getting a proper read on where things sit, and working out how to get where you want to be in the years ahead.
I start by getting to know you — your history, how you're actually living, what runs in your family, and what you're hoping for long term. Then we go through your bloods and other markers in real detail, not just a standard panel, so we can see where your risks are and what's worth focusing on.
The numbers are only the start, though. They matter because of what they tell us about you, and what we decide to do with them. I'll put together a plan that fits your life, keep an eye on it, and change tack as your results and your circumstances do. The point is having a doctor who knows the whole story and can actually do something with it, rather than handing you a report and leaving you to it.
Topical Steroid Withdrawal Syndrome (TSW)
Topical Steroid Withdrawal Syndrome (TSW) can follow the prolonged use of topical corticosteroids. Over time, the skin can grow resistant to them, and when they're stopped, it can react in ways far more severe than the original condition — burning, redness, weeping, flaking, and waves of intense flares.
TSW is still poorly understood, and for a lot of people, poorly recognised. They're often told it isn't real, or put straight back onto the very thing they're trying to come off — which can leave the whole experience feeling more confusing and isolating than it already is.
This is something I've dealt with myself, so I understand it from the inside — how long it can take, and how much it helps to have someone who actually believes you. I'm glad to support people going through TSW: to take it seriously, to talk through what's going on without rushing you back to where you started, and to work through it together at a pace that suits you.
Let’s get started on your health journey
You can find me at Foundations Clinic
3 Cramond St, Wilston, 4051 Qld
To book your consultation, simply click the button below to access our scheduling system.