Positive Health Online

Many events have transpired since publication of previous issue Positive Health PH Online Issue 231 on 16 June, including the EU Referendum in which the Vote Leave Brexit campaign won a majority, Prime Minister David Cameron resigned, the new Prime Minister Theresa May appointed Brexit ministers and a department to disentangle the UK from the EU and negotiate new trade arrangements with the EU and the rest of the World.

How Brexit may (or may not) impact upon the lamentable and Kafkaesque situation with positive lists and permitted levels of nutrient regarding the availability of potentially life-saving nutritional and herbal supplements has recently been explored by Dr Rob Verkerk - Will EFSA Remove Road Blocks for Nutrients in Supplements? and Lynne McTaggart - Brexit - A Lucky Escape from the Vitamin Laws republished in the Letters to the Editor in this issue.

“For those who’ve watched closely the issue of EU regulation of nutrients over the last decade and a half, you’ll recall that dozens of vitamin and mineral sources were effectively banned as food supplements by the passage of the EU Food Supplements Directive back in 2002. The reason? They didn’t make their way onto a positive list of permitted nutrients. In true, ‘boil the frog slowly’ EU style, it took a further 8 years for the ban to be implemented. Among the nutrients that disappeared were all forms of vanadium and silver, the majority of forms of boron and big slather of many mineral amino acid chelates including the forms used as intermediates most directly by the Krebs cycle in our all-important energy-producing organelles, our mitochondria…”

Dr Rob Verkerk - Will EFSA Remove Road Blocks for Nutrients in Supplements?

“… One of the first tasks of the new British government will be to extricate itself from these overly restrictive laws and revitalize the innovative health industry. This will involve disbanding the positive list, studying the huge evidence of the benefits of high-dose supplements, relaxing some of the restrictions on herbal medicine, and disassociating Britain’s health industry from many of the restrictive definitions that essentially ban many products with an enormous amount of evidence...”

Lynne McTaggart - Brexit - A Lucky Escape from the Vitamin Laws

While the majority of physicians and practitioners are subjected to myriads of professional and licensing regulations and potentially draconian sanctions within their particular clinical disciplines, which permit the use of pharmaceutical drugs (within their respective guidelines) with their attendant toxic side effects, they are severely constrained when they choose to prescribe natural, herbal or nutritional medicine or to adopt clinical practices outside the medical or pharmaceutical mainstream. We have rehearsed these arguments many times in Positive Health PH Online as they pertain to paradigms in cancer treatments such as metabolic approaches rather than cytotoxic chemotherapy / radiotherapy including the recent review of Tripping Over the Truth: The Return of the Metabolic Theory of Cancer Illuminates a New and Hopeful Path to a Cure by Travis Christofferson.

A similar paradigm dichotomy has also been explored regarding psychiatry in Deadly Psychiatry And Organised Denial by Peter C Gotzsche and reviewed by David Lorimer, the review republished  in PH Online.

“…Two of the pillars of the conventional psychiatric approach using psychotropic drugs are the diagnostic categories in DSM-V and the biological approach that hypothesises that many mental disorders arise from chemical imbalances in the brain. Gotzsche argues that psychiatry has created a world full of erroneous ideas based on poor science and pseudoscience, “particularly in relation to the validity of diagnoses, the effects of diseases on the brain, and the effects of drugs on patients”. He quotes the homepage of the American Psychiatric Association on depression that “antidepressants may be prescribed to correct imbalances in the levels of chemicals in the brain. These medications are not sedatives, uppers or tranquilizers. Neither are they habit-forming. Generally, antidepressant medications have no stimulating effect on those not experiencing depression...”

Other events exerting an aggravating effect upon the equilibrium of my psyche include the almost daily occurrences of abductions, shootings, bombings, beheadings, and all manner of barbaric and medieval horrors inflicted on innocent civilians including women, children, young and old people in which the perpetrators relish their self-sacrifice. That so many blameless people’s lives are horribly ended and their loved ones condemned to suffer fathomless grief is beyond understanding and against all moral, religious and ethical codes which supposedly frame our civilizations and communities internationally. To murder is surely one of the most abominable sins and deeds to commit which carries with it a deep stain on the murderer; however the moral / karmic repercussions of carrying out multitudes of heinous crimes with our impotence to respond except to provoke more conflict must be imposing incalculable pain and stain over our entire civilization.

The intemperate language adopted between opposing candidates in the EU Referendum and in the US Presidential campaigns, in which both camps have somehow been given permission to insult, defame and spew hate speech against each other has also no doubt contributed to the extremely angry mood prevalent particularly in the USA, where mainly white police have very publicly shot young, unarmed black men.

That this rising volume of hate and anger may surely be influencing all of us is explored in Sally Ann Hutcheson’s thoughtful and articulate feature The Limbic System, Disease and Homeopathy – How Emotional Stress Affects our Health.

“…there are three parts to the brain, which have evolved sequentially since life on earth began. They are, in order of evolution - the reptilian brain, the limbic system and the neocortex…

 “...There are several components of the limbic system... we will focus on four of them: thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala and hippocampus…

“…The Thalamus - The link between the outside world and our brain, and subsequently, our whole being are the senses. The thalamus acts as a gateway - it processes sensory input and passes this on to the hypothalamus...

“…The Hypothalamus regulates the Autonomic Nervous System, and controls the endocrine system... The hypothalamus appears to be the link between the physical and the emotional… “…The Amygdala is known as the aggression centre stimulating anger, violence, fear and anxiety...

 “…The Hippocampus  is the memory centre responsible for forming new memories. It converts short-term memory into long term memory. If it is damaged there may be difficulty with short term memory. It is one of the first brain areas to show real damage in Alzheimer’s...”

Issue 232 is replete with solid and authoritative features exploring some of the most vital and central topics to our wellbeing - Pain, Cataracts, Alzheimer’s, Micro-Immunotherapy, Wellbeing, Obesity, Diet, Craniosacral Therapy, Arthritis and Yoga.

Pray that we may all return from our summer holidays reposed and less agitated.