Good Health. If Conventional Medicine has failed, what is the alternative? A new NHS - a 'Natural Health Service'?

For over 100 years now most people have relied on Conventional or Pharmaceutical for their health care. Most people have become dependent upon it.

Most countries now have some form of subsidised health care service that dominates and controls the treatment we look to when we are sick. Today, most people rely entirely on conventional medicine because we believe it to be the best, if not the only system of medicine available to them.

Yet regular readers of this blog will realise that conventional medicine is failing, and failing badly, to meet the health needs of people around the world - for three main reasons. 

    (i) Conventional medicine costs the earth.

Spending on conventional medicine has risen, year by year, for decades now. And the demand for even more money and resources continues, year by year. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that health care costs are in the process of bankrupting the economies of many wealthy nations, and is already out of reach of many less affluent nations.

    (ii) Conventional medicine is ineffective.

Despite this epidemic of health spending, the rising levels of medical costs have not run parallel to improved health but to epidemic levels of chronic diseases, ranging from allergy, Alzheimer's disease, autism, autoimmune diseases, cancer, dementia, diabetes, epilepsy, heart, kidney, and liver disease, mental health complaints, and much more.

    (iii) Conventional medicine is dangerous.

Pharmaceutical medicine has also added to the national burden of sickness and disease through the 'adverse drug and vaccine reactions' known to be caused by pharmaceutical drugs. These adverse reactions are more than mere 'side effects', as they are usually described; they are often fully blown diseases, and they clearly contribute to growing levels of sickness, and to those epidemics of chronic disease.

So what is the alternative to conventional medicine?

Many more people are now realising this, especially since the health fiasco of the Covid-19 pandemic. For over a year conventional medicine had no treatment to offer us, except for the the ludicrously inadequate entreaty to hand wash, social distancing, face masks, lockdown, test and trace, et al. 

Thereafter we were pressured to take vaccines which we are now learning have caused such enormous patient harm.

So what do patients do now, when illness strikes, and we want to avoid the dangers of conventional  medicine? Our first thoughts are to consult a doctor, or go to hospital, with the almost inevitable outcome of being prescribed pharmaceutical drugs. If this is not a good idea, if it is no longer something we want to do, what are the alternatives? What can people do to get better, or maintain good health?

Fundamentally, for anyone who recognises the failure of conventional medicine, there is only two choices available: (i) to take the risk, and continue to trust the pharmaceutical medical establishment, or (ii) to start to trust your body again, and recognise the power of our natural immune system.

The Immune System

During the Covid-19 pandemic the pharmaceutical medical establishment (supported by government and the mainstream media) told us that only their vaccines could save us from the illness, that without it millions of people around the world would die.

Strange that we have barely had vaccines for 200 years, with most being developed over the last 60 years. So the question arises. What 'saved us' prior to the introduction of vaccines?

The answer, of course, is our immune system. Even during the gravest epidemics in human history most people survived! The 13th century Black Death is reputed to have killed 1/3rd of the population - which means that 2/3rd of the population survived! And it has always been thus, through the Great Plague, the multiplicity of 19th century epidemics, and the Spanish flu of 1918. During this time we did not understand how the immune system worked. This knowledge has only developed comparatively recently. Yet the pharmaceutical health services discounted this during the Covid-19 pandemic - only vaccines would work!

The science of immunology is comparatively young, starting really only during the 19th century. Our understanding is now more detailed. It is recognised that the immune system is an important branch of the medical science, that natural immunity protects us from infection and illness through many different lines of defence. Unfortunately, as has become so common within conventional medicine, immunology focuses more on the immune systems that is not functioning properly, rather than to study what can be done to ensure that natural immunity continues to function properly. In other words immunology has focused on why 1/3rd of people die, rather than why 2/3rd survive epidemics!

What is now understood is the damaged or compromised immune systems result not just in susceptibility to infection, but in diseases such as autoimmunity, allergy and cancer, and many of the other epidemics of chronic disease mentioned above, as well as many common disorders not traditionally recognised to be caused by immunity, including metabolic, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative conditions.

So in looking for a 'new' approach to medical care should be based on relying on the immune system, and in particular, why 2/3rds of the population survive. We need to return to a medicine whose purpose is to upon our own natural immunity, recognising that ill-health always strikes down those people whose natural immunity is weakest. It is not that germs kill us, it is more that germs seek out the weakest, the most vulnerable. It is people with weak, compromised or suppressed immune systems that become ill and die. It is the survival of the fittest.

Therefore, any successful medical system has to be able to do just one thing - to support and strengthen our natural immunity.

How do we support our Immune System?

We now know the principles of supporting and strengthen our immune systems. I have written in more detail about this before, here, basically outlining 4 fundamental strategies that are known to be important in supporting and strengthening our natural immunity.

1. Diet and Nutrition
2. Exercise
3. Freedom from stress
4. Refusal to take pharmaceutical drugs

Each of these components concern life-style, they are not dependent upon complicated or expensive medical interventions. But each requires a medical system that disseminates this knowledge, and provides professional guidance about life-style choices. It is this that would form the basis of any new, more successful medical system: not a National Health Service but a Natural Health Service.

Yet it is exactly this kind of medical advice and guidance that has not been available to people during the Covid-19 pandemic. If the NHS had offered this it would have been an alternative to face masks, social distancing, lockdowns, and test and trace, all of which depend upon identifying and "chasing" an invisible virus! And almost certainly this would have meant that we would not have had to endure the human tragedy, socially, economically, and in terms of health, that has resulted from the Covid-19 vaccines. 

Most people, apart from those people with a compromised immune system (usually the result of poor life-style choices, including the taking of pharmaceutical drugs) would have been able to continue leading their social and work lives quite normally. In turn this would have meant that the economy would have not been damaged. Our mental health would not have been harmed, And much, much more.

Natural Immunity as an individual strategy

The National Health Service will not transform into a Natural Health Service very soon! But the good news is that those people who are looking for an alternative to pharmaceutical medical care can adopt this strategy TODAY. We do not need to be advised to eat a better diet, or adopt a sensible exercise regime, to reduce the levels of stress (often the self-imposed stress) in our lives, and to stop taking pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. We can all learn about it, and do it NOW.

People with Compromised Immune Systems

People with a compromised immune systems would need more medical support that goes beyond advice and guidance on the immune system. Yet they do not need medical support from the medical system that prescribes harmful drugs and treatments that are known to compromise immunity. Indeed, they have even more reason to avoid the drugs and vaccines of pharmaceutical medicine. 

Immediately, they might need to be protected by strategies such as hand washing, social distancing, and lockdowns. They would need to be protected from the germ, whilst measures are put in place to strengthen their immunity. But other therapies are available, all of which are based on supporting and strengthening natural immunity.

Natural Medical Therapies

All natural medical therapies, from acupuncture, homeopathy, herbalism, naturopathy, aromatherapy, hypnotherapy, reflexology, yoga, et al., are based on the principle of supporting and strengthening natural immunity. Indeed, pharmaceutical medicine is the only medical system that does not (more interested in promoting drugs and vaccines).

Any Natural Health Service would gradually have to transfer its attention, and some of its resources, to these natural medical therapies. They are not as expensive as conventional medicine. They are all safer than conventional medicine as the 'adverse reactions' to treatments are limited, and certainly not disease-threatening, or life-threatening. And their effectiveness in terms of patient outcomes could easily be monitored, and compared with conventional medical outcomes.

Again, there is no need to wait for these therapies to be offered. They are all available right now, although not usually within a national health service, which means that the therapist would need to be paid directly. All the individual has to do is to learn about them, and initiate contact.

The Remnants of Conventional Medicine in a new NHS

The organisation of the NHS (from national to natural) would obviously be subject to enormous but gradual change, but it is important to understand that much medical care that is usually encompassed within the heading of "conventional medicine" would continue.

Drugs. The use of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines would gradually be reduced by any medical health service that focused on supporting and strengthening the immune system. This is happening, and will happen anyway, as more people realise that drugs are one of the major causes of serious disease epidemics that we are experiencing now. 

Many more natural therapists would be needed, and many fewer doctors (whose expertise is necessarily dominated by a knowledge of pharmaceutical drugs) would be needed.

Testing. The ability to recognise what is going on within the body would continue to be required within a revamped NHS, albeit it a modified way. Much of the current testing would not be required, especially when therapies like homeopathy are used, as natural therapies do not necessarily need an illness to be diagnosed. For instance, in an viral epidemic, testing to prove the presence of a virus would less important than the ability to test the strength of an individual's immune system. So all testing would gradually be refocused on assessing and supporting the patient health rather than fighting unknown, and unseen pathogens, or similar.

Surgery. Most surgical activity would need to continue for those patients who require it. However, with patients taking fewer drugs, thus ingesting less toxicity, there would likely be a reduction in the need for operations such as organ and limb transplantation (which usually result from many years of failed pharmaceutical treatment).

Regarding health there appears to be three inexorable and inevitable processes going on. 

    First, people will always want to avoid being sick, and will look to the safest, and more effective medical system available to them. This has always been so.

    Second, people are realising that pharmaceutical medicine, after 70+ years of dominance, is no longer one of those medical systems that can guarantee wellness to anyone.

    Third, this leaves people have two choices; to continue to rely on pharmaceutical drugs; or to rely on our immune system, which we has always protected us (whether we knew it or not), which is understood better now, and which, ultimately, is the only thing we have that we can rely upon.

Coronavirus. COVID-19. Does Natural Medicine have an alternative?

No-one can be in any doubt about the message we are hearing about coronavirus, COVID-19. It is loud, clear, and insistent. This is a killer disease. It threatens everyone. We must all wash our hands. We must self-isolate. We must support the NHS. National governments around the world have determined that they must put our entire way of life, and our economy at risk.

So is there no alternative to the coronavirus panic? What about the natural medical community? Does it have anything to offer? According to the conventional medical establishment, and its political allies in government and the mainstream media, there is no such alternative. TINA rules. We must do what we are told, quite regardless of the personal, social or economic consequences.

Nor is there much chance that anyone who is part of the pharmaceutical medical establishment will want to know about any such alternative. They will fight against it, vigorously, for two reasons.

• First, they know that beyond 'washing your hands' and ventilators, their treatment cupboard is bare. 
• Second, they would not want anyone to know that there is another way of looking at infections, and the threat they represent - it might undermine their monopoly with mainstream health services.

Yet this does not mean there is no alternative! So let me try to trace what strategy might have been put in place - had natural medicine a voice, any voice, any role within the pharmaceutical-dominated mainstream national health systems around the world. Let me muster as much arrogance as I can, and try to speak not only for homeopathy, but for naturopathy, herbalism, acupuncture, and so many more natural therapies.

Natural Medicine and the Immune System
Any natural health strategy would be built on our body's immune system. It is what makes natural medicine different to conventional medicine. This is not only our best defence against infections, it is something pharmaceutical medicine routinely ignores, and on occasions actually tries to undermine.

Our immune system is specifically designed to fight bacterial and viral infections, and it will usually do so if we look after it properly, and support it whenever necessary.

General Advice
There has been nothing particularly wrong with the general advice given to us by conventional medicine establishment during the last 2-3 months - just a bit limited. We should all wash our hands. But there is so much more that should have been done to encourage people to support and maintain their natural immunity:

• good diet and nutrition, including the value of vitamins C and D,
• freedom from unnecessary stress and anxiety, 
• a sensible exercise regime, and good levels of general fitness. 

Natural therapies, in their many forms, always outlined how this is best done. Therapists would have described how we can all help to support our immune system. Every natural therapy would most certainly have stressed that 'natural' immunity was more important to our resistance to this coronavirus, or any other infection, than any pharmaceutical drug or vaccine.

An Infection Incident
Once there was an infection incident like the coronavirus outbreak, natural therapies would have placed even more emphasis on this general advice. Indeed, they have been doing so with their patients. If you have missed the message it is because it has been given no coverage by government, the conventional medicine, or the mainstream media. Their voice has been entirely censored. The wall-to-wall coverage of the pandemic has been monopolised by one system of medicine - that does not value the immune system is quite the same way.

All natural medicine stresses the importance of the immune system, and its message would have been to encourage everyone to improve their diet, to enhance their vitamin levels, to exercise, and keep fit. And this would, of course, have been done in addition to washing their hands!

In addition, each of the natural therapies, such as homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture and herbalism, would have been offering their remedies and treatments to anyone who wanted them, or who needed to boost their natural immunity against the infection.

Two things would have arisen by a campaign to boast our natural immunity:

• it would have helped to prevent the number of people who contracted the virus,
• and it would have ensured the virus, if contracted, was in a mild form.

Protection Strategy
The panic that now surrounds COVID-19 has been generated by a medical system, dominated as it is by the drug industry, that has no effective protection or treatment against this, or any other viral or bacterial infection - beyond vaccines of highly questionable effectiveness and safety. As a result, the reaction to the panic has been to place most people in self-isolation, or quarantine.

This would not have been necessary for a medical system that had any level of confidence in its treatment.

Even the media is telling us that COVID-19 is killing very few people who do not have an 'underling health problem'. Natural medicine would have been able to look at this fact, coldly and rationally, and recognise that the virus was not as 'deadly' as we are being told, that the vast majority of people who were dying were actually dying of the  'underlying health conditions', with the infection an added complication.

If natural medicine was in the ascendant it would not have been necessary to place everyone into lock-down - a large proportion of the population would not have been seen to be vulnerable, or in need of special protection measures and self isolation.

Society would not have had to be closed down as it has been. The economy would not have to be placed in jeopardy. This would have had two consequences that would have enable us to take a quite different approach to COVID-19.

• Those who do not have 'underlying health problems' would have benefited from a supported immune system. They would have been allowed to continue working, contributing to the economy, and playing a part in maintaining normal social and economic life. Some of these people would, indeed, catch the virus. But with natural medicine there would have been an element of confidence in the bodies of fit and healthy individuals to either resist the infection, or recover from it. It would have had treatment that would limit the impact of the infection. I have discussed the homeopathic treatment of influenza here (and coronavirus is flu) and compared it with conventional medical treatment.

• Those people who did have 'underlying health problems', and so were more at risk of the infection, would have gone into self-isolation. In addition, these people would be offered the same advice about supporting their immune system, and where necessary receive treatments from homeopaths, herbalists, naturopaths and others. Ultimately, and where necessary, there would be the option of hospitalisation and ventilators.

Avoiding social and economic closure
The closing down of social and economic activity is a direct consequence of our almost total reliance on pharmaceutical medicine, which wants us to believe that immunity comes from a bottle of pills (even when it does not have any pills to offer), or a vaccination.

It does not.

The alternative strategy offered by natural medicine would have meant that only people with 'underlying health conditions' would have to take special care, including self-isolation and quarantine, et al. Otherwise, society would have continued normally.The size of the problem would have been instantly and massively reduced. The closing down of social and economic life would not have been necessary, with all the problems this is going to cause in future months - after this pandemic inevitably closes down.

The fit population, with a fully functioning immune system, could carry on with their normal lives, and help support the support of the most vulnerable.

The role of pharmaceutical medicine is causing the panic
And perhaps another lesson might have been learnt. Many people with 'underlying health problems' will have an opportunity to understand using pharmaceutical drug treatments (for a variety of illnesses and diseases), some of them quite intentionally, have actually undermined their immune systems. If there is anyone reading this who has any doubt about this you only have to look at what conventional medicine does with its 'immuno-suppressant' drugs. Anyone who takes these drugs, whose immune system is suppressed, is more susceptible to infection, including coronavirus COVID-19.

Treatment Options
What are the treatments that are offered by natural medicine? Homeopaths, for example, have been looking at the symptoms of this COVID-19 infection very closely since the earliest days of the outbreak, and a number of remedies have been identified that are known to treat the symptoms. They include Arsenicum Album, Bryonia, Gelsenium and Eupatorium. These, and other remedies, have been used successfully by homeopaths to treat flu-like illnesses (and COVID-19 is a flu-like illness) for a very long time.

The clinical evidence for their effectiveness of these remedies is huge, and a matter of public record. I have listed about 10 studies that vouch for this effectiveness in my "Why Homeopathy?"

Other natural therapies have done the same, and they would have been able to offer these treatments to patients in the same way, providing patients with an alternative, a choice, the opportunity not to panic.

ANTIBIOTIC DRUGS ARE FAILING. Drug companies know this, but they are cutting research on replacing them. So is Natural Medicine the only answer to the Antibiotic Apocalypse?

This blog is taken from the website of the Alliance for Natural Health, an excellent publication, and an excellently concise article on the failure of antibiotics, the antibiotic apocalypse that is predicted, and how natural medicine is stepping up to fill the void..

Big Pharma cuts research as antibiotics fail

The question is not if antibiotics fail, it’s when. 

Worse, there is no new breed of drugs to replace them. 

Compared to other potential blockbuster drugs there is relatively little money to be made from antibiotics, which is why Pharma is looking to significantly reduce or stop investment to find replacements or alternatives. 

Many people believe that they can’t heal from certain infections without taking a course of antibiotics and have come to expect to be given a prescription from their doctors. It’s this over- and misappropriate use of antibiotics that has led to the current situation where antimicrobial resistance is threatening our health again. 

Antibiotics are now failing, even the big guns held in reserve to combat the toughest of bacterial infections. In recognition of the warnings that by 2050, antimicrobial resistance is going to be responsible for the loss of around 10 million people a year, a new initiative has been launched. 

Aimed at overcoming antimicrobial resistance using natural medicine, environmentally responsible botanical company, Pukka Herbs, and The College of Medicine have come together to launch a new initiative.

This demonstrates two important differences between conventional, drug-based medicine, and natural medicines, such as homeopathy, naturopathy, herbalism, osteopathy, et al.

1. The pharmaceutical is more interested in profit than finding safe and effective treatments for patients.
2. Natural medicine, which works with, and alongside, are not failing; and as a result they are the future for anyone looking for health care.

CANCER. Does treatment by chemotherapy, radiotherapy and pharmaceutical drugs constitute natural treatment? WHAT IS NATURAL MEDICINE?

With conventional  in serious trouble, mainly due to its lack of safety and effectiveness, and the serious side effects (illnesses and diseases) caused by its pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, it seeks to use any argument it can find to justify itself.

Recently I saw an answer to a question of the Quora website which claimed that all conventional medical treatment for cancer were 'natural' treatments. This is how thes claim was justified.

• Chemotherapy uses chemicals found in nature.
• Radiotherapy uses radioactive isotopes found in nature.
• Surgery uses knives made from metals found in nature.
• Drugs also contain chemicals found in nature.

The writer went on to say that there were two main differences between these 'natural' treatments, and "the so-called 'natural treatments' offered by natural medical therapies like homeopathy, (i) conventional treatments had been tested, and (ii) they worked. The answer concluded by saying .

               "If you want to die in agony, by all means. waste your money on some shit off the internet. Meanwhile, us sensible folks will stick with science."

So let's ignore the name calling and gratuitous hostility and address the question - what is natural medicine? I use the term 'natural medicine' to distinguish homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture, herbalism, et al, from conventional medicine, and the definition is actually quite simple.

All natural medical therapies work on the basis that the only means of curing illness, and maintaining health, is to work alongside and in harmony with the body's own self-healing mechanisms.

Chemotherapy may use chemicals found in nature. Radiotherapy may use radioactive isotopes found in nature. The surgeon's knives might be found in nature. And pharmaceutical drugs may contain chemicals found in nature. BUT AS SURE AS HELL THEY DON'T BELONG IN TO THE HUMAN BODY!

Indeed, the chemicals and isotopes used by conventional medicine may well have been 'scientifically' tested, but despite this testing they still cause serious patient harm. And the evidence of the serious harm they cause is clearly spelt out in the doctor's own medical literature in BNF, in MIMS, in Patient Information Leaflets, et al.

And also in the medical literature is data about incidence of cancer. Cancer rates have risen exponentially alongside the increased consumption of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. Moreover, cancer is no longer as disease associated with ageing and older people, it is now a disease that is increasingly affecting middle aged people, children, and even young babies.

One cause of this epidemic level of cancer is the cavalier attitude towards poisonous substances that this doctor, and the conventional medical establishment as a whole, makes about them. There are a host of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that are known to cause cancer. So, in large measure, it is conventional medicine that has brought us to this dreadful situation. Anyone who wants to avoid cancer can take a huge step towards doing so by refusing to take pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that are known to cause the disease.

But then for this doctor to argue that chemotherapy, radiotherapy and pharmaceutical drugs are 'natural' treatments is totally bizarre. It demonstrates just how desperate conventional medicine is becoming to save their dominant role in health provision.