Positive Health Online

Stop the MCA from banning our products and services!

I am writing to you over the proposed law that the MCA wish to explore – MLX249.

It will give the MCA unprecedented powers to reclassify borderline substances as medicines. Its effects will be to:
a.    Remove from the marketplace products currently classified as foods or cosmetics which are unlicenceable as medicine under UK legislation;
b.    Deny the public freedom of choice;
c.    Seriously undermine the integrity of the whole natural health movement;
d.    Contravene the European Convention on Human Rights.

This means that:
1.    People will not be able to choose natural health;
2.    Manufacturers of health products, natural products and foods will be put out of business;
3.    The marketing, advertising, design and media industries who promote these products will also be affected.

Publications like Positive Health will no longer have advertisers of products and may not be able to sustain a publication. It needs all your readers to bombard the MCA and their MPs, MEPs and the Prime Minister was well as the press with letters of protest against this. It is being kept quiet and the public are not aware of this. We all have to pull together to stop it. The final chapter is that there will no longer be complementary health practitioners. Please help stop this.

The Editor Replies: What You Can Do About MLX 249

MLX249 is a major threat to the continuation of many of our most useful and health-enhancing  supplements. If the Medicines Control Agency (MCA) deems that from now on vitamins B, C, E and supplements such as melatonin and coenzyme Q10 are medicinal products rather than food supplements, then any products containing these substances would require a licence and their sale without a licence would be an offence in law.

Please act now to prevent the removal of thousands of products from our daily lives.
•    Contact Consumers for Health Choice:
3rd Floor, 9 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9JA. Tel: 0171 222 4182; Fax: 0171 222 4192;
•    Write to Mr Paul Brittain, Medicines Control Agency, Market Towers, 1 Nine Elms Lane, London SW8 5NQ;
•    Write and lobby your Member of Parliament;
•    Bring this matter to the attention of your clients, colleagues and friends, communicate the urgency of quick action;
•    Please make sure that your suppliers support action against MLX249 and support Consumers for Health Choice;
    Please don’t delay. This legislation may be debated in May or June!

Dr Atkins’ New Diet Revolution: one reader’s concerns?

On page 7 of Issue 37 (February) appears what seems to be a review of Dr Atkins’ Diet Revolution Book. But this is NOT a review – just words lifted from the book itself.

I started this diet myself 3 weeks ago; it was extracted in detail in The Times earlier this month. Whilst it may well work for some people, I have had some very odd experiences on it – perhaps not too surprising as 99% of the advice involves eating meat practically all the time – with little or no fruit or veg.

A GP friend of mine is seriously concerned about cholesterol levels on this diet – yet the author seems to be claiming in the book that this diet will lower them!

This diet is supposed to work by saturating the body with fats. I tried the 2 week Induction Course. This comprises a minimal amount of Carbohydrate (20g max per day) and a maximum amount of fat. I lost 12 lbs in the first 7 days, then nothing at all. On day 14, I decided to let off, and had one Thai meal and 2 apples. That put me on 4 lbs within 24 hours!

I feel that, like most diets, this one drastically slows down the metabolism, and cannot work without adequate exercise, although you may not have enough energy to do the exercise in the first place.

As to the author’s other suggestions:
1.    I managed to obtain Ketolysis testing strips from my local Chemist, but barely had any reaction from these at all after 13 days.
2.    Cholesterol Home Testing Kits have been withdrawn from Boots and all other chemists, as far as I am aware. No reason has been given for this, but clearly regular Cholesterol testing on this diet is absolutely essential. This means that one would have to revert to one’s GP for regular testing: a chore, and one with which they may not agree to go along. I do not understand Dr Atkins’s assertion that his diet coupled with Chromium intake may well decrease blood Cholesterol levels.

After 3 weeks, I feel my body is sagging for want of fruit and a decent quantity of veg. Dr Atkins states that we may always have to severely restrict our intake of these. This seems, and feels, wrong.

Finally: according to his book, I would now appear to be one of the very small minority of his readers experiencing metabolic resistance – but I wonder how small this minority is. His suggestions for dealing with that appear unworkable.