Discover how Bread making can be prescribed as Lifestyle Medicine

A Lifestyle Medicine Prescription Membership

We work with partners including doctors and healthcare practitioners, and your practitioner may recommend that you do one of our Presciption Memberships as part of your treatment. In our easy, affordable, interactive Presciption Memberships, we explore the amazing science of how baking can transform health.

Social Prescribing

Our Presciption Memberships are prescribed patients by Doctors and healthcare professionals who have graduated the Nutritional and Digestibility of Bread Diploma, and are part of The Sourdough School Systems Change Programme.

A Prescription course can be both a Social Prescription and lifestyle Prescription. As our in-house GP and Medical Director, Dr Alex Davidson, explains: ‘This approach is a preventative medical approach that uses evidence-based behavioural interventions to prevent, treat and manage chronic disease.’

The Sourdough Club Community Membership and our Prescription Memberships are both social and lifestyle prescription Memberships.

What do you mean by a Prescription Membership?

There are two definitions of a prescription. It is a recommendation that is authoritatively put forward, and it is also an instruction written by a medical practitioner that authorises a patient to be issued with a medicine or treatment. Our Prescription Memberships fit both of these definitions.

Preventative healthcare is a medicine is an approach to health that identifies an optimal balance between the internal and external body, and develops a treatment plan based on this. This approach is about looking after your health before you get ill, rather than only thinking about it once you are already unwell.

Preventative medicine, then, is not focused on immediate disease, but on preventing disease in the first place.

Our Bread Protocol isn’t just about baking amazing bread; it offers a preventative approach to chronic diseases through a lifestyle  that helps people to restore balance, address nutrient deficiencies, heal the gut, and change the way you feel.

What to expect from a prescription bread-making Membership

We have had amazing advances in healthcare, but there is no pill to cure a poor diet. The best medicine is prevention via a healthy lifestyle, and our Memberships teach you that you can change the way you live through making sourdough bread. It’s delicious, sociable and healthy, and also incorporates functional exercise. Our approach will help you in so many ways. You may find you are able to sleep better, and that you have less anxiety and depression and more energy, as well as reducing your overall risk of chronic illness.

Can I just buy a Prescription membership?  Yes absolutely.

All our memberships are available to buy.  The way they are taught is underpinned by extensive research and evidence-based approach. This approach to baking for health has been researched and developed by The Sourdough School and it follows the principles of The Bread Protocol.

Each course aims to share knowledge and step by step techniques of how to bake and eat delicious that supports both physical and mental health, and optimally nourish the gut microbiome.   So, you can bake, eat and share bread that supports health for you and the people you love.

At the Sourdough School, we have taught hundreds of people over many years, sharing with them our approach to making and eating bread. Time and time again, students have reported back changes in mood, sleeping patterns, digestion, weight management and mental health, so we researched the changes to the gut microbiome and the impact on health, and created our online Prescription Memberships. You don’t need a doctor to tell you to eat well and priorities your health, so you can self-prescribe by enrolling yourself on a course to improve your health and wellbeing.

How much do the Memberships cost?

There are a number of Memberships, and they range in price. However, if your course has been prescribed to you by your healthcare practitioner, then that course is usually about 80 – 90% reduction in joining fee and monthly subscription

Why isn’t my course free when it was socially prescribed?

These Memberships are only free if you have been given a 100% voucher prescription by your healthcare provider. This is not often the case?

Why? Well there are 2 reasons.

Firstly we are not a charity, so the cost is absolutely minimum that we break even on when you take into consideration the running of the club

Secondly  – we know from research and from many years of doing this that you have to have what we call skin in the game.   A small fee, which is a fraction oof the normal cost of the course or subscription is better for you too.  You are invested, and we know you more likely to stick to the membership when you put something, even a small amount in.

You become part of the change

These prescriptions are part of our Systems Change Programme. Upon graduating from our Nutrition and Digestibility of Bread Diploma, our doctors and healthcare practitioners are given a practitioners’ licence. If your doctor or healthcare practitioner is one of  our Sourdough School graduates and they feel that this bread-making prescription course is something that will improve your health, then they can prescribe the course for you as a social prescription.

This programme enables graduates to apply their understanding of the Bread Protocol to help improve physical and mental heath in their patients. We know that when you are feeling poorly, a little compassion goes a very long way towards helping you feel better. Vanessa, the course director, often explains that compassion is catching.  The social prescription Memberships are not just about learning to make bread. They are about discovering a sense of purpose. Through making bread that is good for you and the people you are connected to, you will also learn about communication and kindness – as well as getting to enjoy amazing bread that fills the kitchen with delicious aromas.

Because the real meaning of bread is friendship.

Making it simple

• The Memberships are delivered online.
• There is no need for any prior knowledge of baking.
• The breads are created by applying the principles of our Bread Protocol.
• We have designed the Memberships around inexpensive and accessible ingredients.

Eligibility criteria guidance

We do understand that this lifestyle prescription has limitations, and our healthcare practitioners will need to ensure that patients to whom they give a prescription have:

• access to a suitable device and the internet in order to be able to register online and watch the tutorials
• access to a kitchen with an oven
• access to simple equipment, including a bowl, a wooden spoon and a bread tin or ovenproof dish
• a good command of the English language (the Memberships are currently all in English)

What if my practitioner has not given me a prescription?

We are working really hard to find ways to train more healthcare practitioners and make our prescriptions more widely available. We are not doctors, so we are not able to do the social prescribing ourselves. If you are feeling unwell or overwhelmed, it is really important that you see your GP or healthcare provider.

If your healthcare provider does not have a practitioners’ prescription, you can self-prescribe by paying for a Prescription Course yourself or using one of our free recipes.

What if the Flour is too expensive?

Please email [email protected] and speak to us about the vouchers available to you.