December Blog 2010

NEWS:

By Clive Lindley-Jones | December 3, 2010 2:17 pm

Serious and imminent threat to Health Freedom of Choice

I do know how time consuming zooming off to this or that e-mail campaign can be. Before you know it your work plan for the day is totally off and you wonder what you did with your day. However, in my opinion the film will be well worth your attention and the time it will take. Listen to Dame Judy Dench, Dr. Robert Verkerk of the Alliance for Natural Health, and a number of American senators & congressmen flag up the dangers for us all, if we allow this next step in disproportionate, poorly thought-through and discriminatory  legislation emanating from Brussels bureaucracy. It could represent the single greatest threat to the ongoing expansion of natural health in the European Union.

On May 1st 2011 it is likely that this will force from the European Market, of 450 million people, thousands of products associated with traditional systems of medicine and some commonly used in food supplements. While we all wish to be protected from adulterated foods and medicines, this is not the way to go, and is a grave danger to your health and that of your family and future generations.

I hate to sound paranoid but it does seem to be true that steadily and,  so far, seemingly unstoppably, under the friendly cloak of public protection, some very restrictive laws are being introduced. These would seem to be not for your protection, but for the protection of those who would rather you only seek health solutions through their, often dangerous  ineffective and contentious drugs.

I don’t want to come across as a ranting anti-drug nut. I am only too well aware of the life changing efficacy of some modern drugs. This is not an attack on drugs per say, but rather an argument for the best medicine to be kept available and for the channels to be kept open to ensure that future plant & nutrition based options are researched and available rather than crushed and banned before their full efficacy has been understood, in favour of a more profitable, but inferior,  twentieth century reductionist medical model. It is not too fanciful to imagine that some of the greatest plant sources of healing are still unknown to us but are in danger of being lost in the headlong destruction of the worlds rain forests. Scientists working in Indonesia with primates observe them utilising an extraordinary 4000 separate plants species. It is reasonable to assume from observations of pre industrialised forest peoples, that this ability to naturally discover the healing properties of plants and foods around them, was our birthright. However, clearly ‘civilisation’ has robbed us of this wonderful ability as can be seen in any supermarket check out.

Take action.

So when you have seen the film, may I suggest you write to your MP and MEP and make a noise now, while it is still possible to shape the outcome.

Re-setting the tiller on the ship of heath care.

This is about more than a few mediocre pills at some tedious,  health food shop, this is about both freedom of choice and the direction of medicine in the future. Every day we hear of this £ billion plan or that other hugely costly plan to reorganise the NHS. Very, very rarely do we hear discussion of whether we have got the content of all that is done in and by the NHS, with our money, quite right (approximately £80,000 of yours over your tax-paying life).

Could we have just got things slightly out of balance? Why are more and more people suffering from chronic diseases (78%) and yet still our whole system is organised and funded around acute intervention, important thought this is? At a time when public money is scarce, we need to watch very carefully where our money is being spent, and wake up to the enormous waste of resources that is being perpetuated in our name through the  unwillingness to change the shape of health care away from a model that has its roots in another century, with other challenges.

I started this month’s Health-E Coaching blog about dyslexia. Let me finish in support of one of the most impressive activists we have, who just happens to be dyslexic. If you thought that dyslexia was always a barrier to making a significant mark in the world for good, take a look at this impressive short TED lecture from the wonderful Jamie Oliver. For someone who doesn’t read books he has certainly published a lot of them.

He could have been content with being just a celebrity chef. Instead, to his eternal credit, he has gone so much further and become a hugely effective campaigner in this self same battle to restore good health, through good food, to the world.

Do take some time, when you can, to watch him give his excellent shtick to this TED audience; you won’t have wasted those minutes. Some things are just too important not to take a stand on.

Now please go and have a look at the wonderful work that Alliance for Natural Health are doing to bring Good science and Good law into the darker corridors of power. Your MEP needs to hear what you think,  write to him/her and make your case, this website will help you make a cogent short, powerful,  one page, 4 point argument in favour of something better than the proposed  disproportionate, poorly thought-through and discriminatory  legislation.

Thank you.

The other day Kerstin called me down to watch a programme on BBC3 where actress and Strictly Come Dancing contestant Kara Tointon, presenting a documentary, explored her own dyslexia and meets other dyslexics whose moving stories reveal the at times devastating  impact it can have on young lives, without the right support.

What was so good and, sadly, unusual was having this brave, young and attractive woman  not only expose her own feelings of inadequacy and frustration, that surely almost all of the  10% of the population who suffer from dyslexia feel for much of their childhood, but that it was made clear to others who perhaps have no clear idea what having dyslexia involves, how much of the sufferer’s life, beyond just the act of reading, is  detrimentally effected.

Book of the Month

Optimum Nutrition For your Child’s Mind: Maximise your child’s potential

by Patrick Holford & Deborah ColsonNot unrelated to the above rant is the eduction and feeding of the next generation. There is a  desperate need to spread the ideas of this book to more and more parents who, somehow over the last four generations have lost the art of feeding their children good, healthy, food that is also going to nourish their brains and, as the subtitle of the book suggests, maximise their  potential.

The first part of the book reveals why certain foods will benefit the brain and why others are not good. The second part explains how to maximise your child’s potential for better school performance, happiness and personal fulfilment.

The third part explains how to identify and solve mental health problems in children. Part four explains what you need do to feed your child properly, with plenty of shopping tips, recipes and practical ways to keep your child’s diet on track.