Jan de Vries was born in Holland and grew up in the very difficult war years of 1940 to 1945.

As his parents worked with the Dutch resistance, he became involved in the Resistance work against the Nazis at a very young age. As a result, when only a young child, he learnt the importance of life and developed a very strong desire to help those most in need. This desire was firstly expressed in his study of pharmacy, in which he graduated in 1958.

However, after meeting the famous Dr Alfred Vogel in 1960, who introduced Jan to what is now called 'complementary' medicine, he left pharmacy work to study homoeopathy under Dr Vogel in Switzerland. He later went on to Germany to study osteopathy and also worked in China for some time studying acupuncture.

Along with Dr Vogel, Jan set up the first naturopathic clinic in Holland in 1960 and together they also started the company Biohorma which was involved in importing herbal and homoeopathic medicines to Holland. Biohorma expanded rapidly and now has a workforce of over 550.

Jan's desire to study further has led him to travelling around the world, living with local communities in many under-developed countries and studying herbal medicine in all its various forms.

He has lectured at several seminars and conferences and he is a well respected speaker at universities and public lectures throughout the world. Jan has also helped to develop natural medicine in India, Canada, Australia, America and Scandinavia.

Although, he has a great desire to develop natural medicine as far as he can and aims to promote more natural living to people, he has also put a great deal of work into several projects which have brought alternative medicine and orthodox medicine together. Jan believes that a combination of these two differing methods of medicine, resulting in 'complementary' medicine, will be of tremendous benefit for many suffering from ill health. He was also greatly involved in working, within a supervisory capacity, with one of the UK’s leading pharmaceutical companies.

In 1961 Jan married a Scottish girl with whom he had four daughters. In 1970, he set up a residential clinic, Mokoia, in Troon on the west coast of Scotland. The clinic flourished and after finding it necessary to move to larger premises, he set up the non-residential clinic ‘Auchenkyle’ in Southwood Road, Troon, where he sees people from all over the world. He now also has clinics in Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland and one in Dublin, Ireland as well as numerous affiliated healthcare centres and shops throughout the UK.