Privacy Policy

Tree of Life holds some information about you. This document outlines how that information is used, who we may share it with, and how we keep it secure. This notice needs to provide complete details. However, we are happy to provide any additional information or explanation needed. Any requests for this should be sent to atreeoflife@myyahoo.com. We keep our Privacy Notice under regular review. 

What we do

Tree of Life provides nutritional therapy and health coaching services to clients to improve their health through diet and lifestyle interventions.  We focus on preventative healthcare, optimising physical and mental health and chronic health conditions.  Through nutritional therapy consultations, dietary and lifestyle analysis and biochemical testing, we aim to understand the underlying causes of your health issues which we will seek to address through personalised nutritional therapy, nutraceutical prescription (supplements) and lifestyle advice. We also provide group coaching, workshops and (corporate events). 

How we obtain your personal data

1. Information provided by you:

You provide us with personal data in the following ways:

• By completing a nutritional therapy questionnaire;
• By signing the terms of engagement form;
• During a nutritional therapy consultation;
• Through email, over the telephone or by post;
• By taking credit cards and online payments;  
• By downloading a free resource, such as an eBook. 

This may include the following information:

• Basic details include name, address, email address, phone number, other contact details and next of kin. Points of contact we have had with you, such as referrals and appointment requests.
• Health information, including your previous medical history, dietary, lifestyle, supplement and medicine details, biochemical test results, clinic notes and health improvement plans.
• GP contact information. Bank details.

We use this information to provide you with direct healthcare.  Our legal basis for holding your personal data is for legitimate interest.  ​

After completing your healthcare, we retain your personal data for the period our professional association defines.  This enables us to process any complaint you may make.  In this case, contract administration is the legal basis for holding your personal data.

2. Information we get from other sources

We may obtain sensitive medical information through test results from biochemical testing companies.  We use this information in order to provide you with direct healthcare.  Our legal basis for holding your personal data is for legitimate interest. ​

We may obtain sensitive information from other healthcare providers. This information is subject to your express consent. If we do not receive this consent, we cannot coordinate your healthcare with that provided by other providers, which means the healthcare we provide may be less effective.

3. How we use your personal data

We act as a data controller for using your personal data to provide direct healthcare.  We also act as a controller and processor regarding processing your data from third parties such as testing companies and other healthcare providers.  We act as a data controller and processor for processing credit card and online payments.​

At all times, we protect your personal data, including any health and contact details, in a manner consistent with our duty of professional confidence and the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) concerning data protection.  We will also take reasonable security measures to protect your personal data storage.​

We may use your personal data where there is an overriding public interest in doing so, e.g., to safeguard an individual or to prevent a serious crime, and also where there is a legal requirement, such as a formal court order. We may use your data for marketing purposes, such as newsletters, but this would be subject to you giving us your express consent.

4. Do you share my information with other organisations?

We will keep information about you confidential.  We will only disclose your information with other third parties with your express consent, except for the following categories of third parties:​

• Any contractors and advisors that provide a service to us or act as our agents on the understanding that they keep the information confidential.​
• Anyone to whom we may transfer our rights and duties under our agreement with you.​
• Any legal or crime prevention agencies and to satisfy any regulatory request. ​
• We may share your information with supplement companies and biochemical testing companies as part of providing you with direct healthcare.  We will not include any sensitive information.  ​

We will seek your consent before sharing your information with your GP or other healthcare providers.  However, suppose we believe that your life is in danger; in that case, we may pass your information on to an appropriate authority (such as the police, social services for a child or vulnerable adult, or GP in case of self-harm) using the legal basis of vital interests.​

We may share your case history in an anonymised form with our peers for professional development.  This may be at clinical supervision meetings, conferences, online forums, and through publishing in medical journals, trade magazines or online professional sites.  We will seek your explicit consent before processing your data in this way.

5. What are your rights?

Every individual has the right to see, amend, delete or have a copy of data held that can identify you, with some exceptions. You do not need to give a reason to see your data. ​

If you want to access your data, you must make a subject access request in writing to atreeoflife@myyahoo.com. Under exceptional circumstances, some information may be withheld. We shall respond within 20 working days of receiving your request and all necessary information. Our response will include the details of the personal data we hold on you, including:​

• Sources from which we acquired the information,
• The purpose of processing the information,
• Persons or entities with whom we are sharing the information.
• You have the right, subject to exemptions, to ask to: 
• Have your information deleted;
• Have your information corrected or updated where it is no longer accurate;
• Ask us to stop processing information about you where we are not required to do so; by law or the ANP guidelines. 
• Receive a copy of your data, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit that data to another controller without hindrance from us. 
• Object at any time to the processing of personal data concerning you.
• We do not carry out automated processing, which may lead to automated decisions based on your personal data. 

If you want to invoke any of the above rights, please write to the Data Controller at atreeoflife@myyahoo.com.

6. What safeguards are in place to ensure that data that identifies me is secure?

We only use information that may identify you by GDPR. This requires us to process personal data only if there is a legitimate basis for doing so, and any processing must be fair and lawful. 

Within the health sector, we also have to follow the standard law duty of confidence, which means that where identifiable information about you has been given in faith, it should be treated as confidential and only shared to provide direct healthcare. We will protect your information, inform you of how your information will be used, and allow you to decide if and how your data can be shared. ​

We also ensure the information we hold is kept in secure locations, restrict access to information to authorised personnel only, and protect personal and confidential information on equipment such as laptops with encryption (which masks data so unauthorised users cannot see or make sense of it). We ensure external data processors that support us are legally and contractually bound to operate and prove security arrangements are in a place where data that could or does identify a person are processed. 

7. How long do you hold confidential information?

All records held by Tree of Life will be kept for the duration specified by guidance from our professional association ANP.​

8. Website technical details

Forms 

We use electronic forms on our website, using an available ‘forms module’ with several built-in features to help ensure privacy. We also aim to use secure forms where appropriate. 

In compliance with UK/EU legislation, the following table lists the use of cookies on this website:

Accept Cookies: this stores whether you have agreed to receive cookies. Persistent for one year.

Google Analytics: These cookies collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect data anonymously, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have visited, and the pages they visited.

Cookies are small. We do not use cookies to collect any private or personally identifiable information. The technical platform of this website uses cookies solely to aid the proper technical functioning of the website. The cookies used contain random strings of characters alongside minimal information about the state and session of the website – which in no way collects or discloses any personal information about you as a visitor.

Advanced areas of this site may use cookies to store your presentation preferences purely technically with no individually identifiable information. Note also our statement on analytics software below – as analytics software also uses cookies to function.

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Analytics

Like most websites, we use analytics software to help us understand the trends in popularity of our website and of different sections. We do not use personally identifiable information in any of the statistical reports we use from this package. We use an analytics package called Google Analytics, which provides details of their privacy policy on the Google website.

9. Complaints

If you have a complaint regarding using your personal data, please email the Data Controller at atreeoflife@myyahoo.com, and we will do our best to help you.

If your complaint is not resolved satisfactorily and you wish to formally complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), you can contact them on 0303 123 1113.  

Reviewed October 2024