Homeopathy for Older People

People often link old age with illness. To be old is to be ill.  The two go together.  How often have people been told – “you must accept that when you get to your age”.  The ‘that’ can be almost anything!  The ‘your age’ can be anything over 30!  The medical profession is often the worst offender. 

There is a story about a man who went to see his doctor because he had arthritis in his right knee. The doctor noted that he was 92 and suggested that he should accept some pain at his age.  However, the man reminded him he had another knee, the same age, which had not pain.  Perhaps the story is apocryphal, but it is an excellent point that he made.

Homeopathy considers that an illness is an illness regardless of age.  If it is treatable at 6 it is treatable at 60.  If it is treatable at 19 it is treatable at 90.  Often, age is used as an excuse for doing nothing, for fobbing people off, for laziness, or for having nothing more useful to offer.  It results from ageism, a means of discriminating against older people, undervaluing them, and not treating them on equal terms with younger people.

Of course, it is not quite as easy or straightforward as this.  Age increases our susceptibility to illness.  Ageing may mean that we may have ‘abused’ our body for longer, and it is now less able to cope – bad diet, too much stress, too much alcohol, and a host of other factors do take their toll in time.  If this is the cause of illness a change of lifestyle, and taking more care of the body, is as useful as homeopathy.

Homeopathy can treat all illnesses and disease. It can even help people to cope with the feelings of loneliness that so often affect older people. In doing so it works quite differently to conventional medicine. It works alongside the body, helping to support it in performing its normal functions, its natural ability to maintain itself.  

Conventional drugs tend to be grouped together until titles beginning with “anti-“ – anti-biotics, anti-histamines, etc; or it works to suppress or kill pain.  In other words it seeks to change the normal working of the body, to force it to do something it would not do itself.  The body usually struggles against this; so it overcomes pain killers, and bacteria becomes resistant to anti-biotics.  Ailments that are suppressed return, often in a more serious or more painful form. This often leads to an increasing dependence on drugs.

        “About half of all senior patients take several prescribed… drugs simultaneously, and frequently over prolonged periods.  Many conditions mistakenly considered new diseases are, in fact, unrecognised drug interactions.  Doctors then prescribe yet more drugs to solve the new problems, which only makes matters worse… The greatest overuse of medicine is among the institutionalised elderly.  The average nursing home patient received eight different drugs a day”.
What Doctor’s Don’t Tell You (April 2002)

Homeopathy is an alternative to conventional treatment.  It does not produce miracles but it can make people feel better when they have long believed that their illness is untreatable, or their pain an inevitable part of old age.  It is often more complicated treating older people, especially if there has been a long history of illness, drug taking, and operations.  This makes treatment a longer process, and often one that can only ameliorate pain and illness.  But this is often all that older people expect.  And the advantage of homeopathy is simply stated - it will not make matters worse.

WARNING. 80% of older hospital patients discharged with the wrong drugs

The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology (reference 2018; doi: 10.1111/bcp.13607; and doi: 10.1111/bcp.13613) has published a study by the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in Scotland that has found that around 4 out of 5 older patients are being discharged from hospital with 'inappropriate' medication, such as the wrong drug. Not unsurprisingly they say that it is causing a life-changing reactions, and even death.

This has been reported in the magazine "What Doctors Don't Tell You", which should become a must-read magazine for anyone who wishes to maintain good health. They say that these prescribing errors are often responsible for the death of an elderly patient, and for those who are not killed suffer serious reactions requiring at least a further three hospital admissions before they recover.

• Around half of older patients die after they were given a wrong drug or weren't given the drug they needed, say researchers at the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in Scotland.
• They analysed the records of 259 patients—with an average age of 77—who had been discharged from hospital. They were given a total of 2,411 medications, which means many had nine or more prescriptions, and 59% were given 'inappropriate medications', such as a wrong drug, and nearly 70 per cent weren't given the drug they were supposed to have.
• Over the following 40 months, around half had died, and the rest had been readmitted to hospital at least twice.

WDDTY states that this shocking problem is far worse than any other research had suggested, and refers to another study in which researchers found that 1 in 3 older people suffered a serious reaction to a drug after being discharged from hospital.

The new study involved 1,280 people, and the researchers said that the cost to the UK's NHS is £396m a year, with 90% of that figure being related to hospital readmissions.

POSTSCRIPT JUNE 2018

More research is now reporting a similar pattern, with GP's being urged to be 'vigilant' as a new study from the Brighton and Sussex Medical School revealed that between September 2013 and November 2015, one in six older adults "suffers preventable medication-related harm following hospital discharge". It found that within 8 weeks of discharge, 75% of patients who experienced drug-related harm needed more healthcare. The researchers estimated that such harm costs the NHS £396m every year, with more than 90% of this attributed to hospital readmission. This was reported in the doctor's e-magazine Pulse, and published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.

The discussion in the Pulse article focused on improving the follow-up and discharge procedures from hospital. The mainstream British media has been silent. No-where has there been discussion that the NHS is operating a dangerous form of medicine which almost inevitably harms patients. The Pulse article does say that the research finding follows a think tank report found that emergency re-admissions within 30 days of leaving hospital had risen by a fifth in the last seven years. Nowhere was there any recognition that conventional medicine, dominated by pharmaceutical drugs, was causing these costs, and that these were contributing to the NHS's funding crisis.

NO WONDER THE NHS IS IN CONTINUAL CRISIS!

It's us OLD PEOPLE who are ruining the NHS! We should all be ashamed of ourselves for being so sick!

The NHS is in crisis. It always needs more resources. 
And when asked why it cannot manage, why every part of the NHS is failing to cope with patient demand, we are told that it is because of an ageing population. 
So, all you old people, it is YOU who are to blame! 
Or are we?

Old People Get Cancer

Yes, I can remember the time when cancer was considered to be a disease of old age. But no longer. Young children now get cancers of all kinds and descriptions. So do adults. It has been reported, for example, that 'young onset' colon cancer has quadrupled in the last 20 years, and in this Natural News article the prediction for the future is worse.

               "These numbers are only expected to get worse; calculations in a 2014 study show colon cancer cases rising by a frightening 90 percent among those aged 20 to 34 by 2030."

So its not just old age, something else must be happening. For instance, do pharmaceutical drugs cause cancer?

Old People get Dementia

Dementia, in all its guises, has been increasing rapidly, especially during the last 40 years, and this is another major reason for conventional medicine demanding more and more resources. Yet it is also recognised that this disease is now affecting younger people, to the extent that it has been described as 'the silent epidemic'.
The Alzheimers Research UK states that ever-increasing numbers of people, in their 40's, 50's and 60's, who are now contracting 'early onset' dementia.

               "Although often thought of as a disease of older people, around 4% of people with Alzheimer’s are under 65."

So its not just old age, something else must be happening. For instance, do pharmaceutical drugs cause dementia?

The term 'early onset', even 'young onset',  is now widely used within the conventional medical establishment! I did a quick web search and came up quickly with

• Menopause, 
• Osteoarthritis, 
• Scoliosis, 
• Parkinson's, 
• Intra-Uterine Growth, 
• neonatal group B streptococcal disease, 
• and many more.

All these 'early onset' diseases were once thought to affect older people, but they now affect younger people. And each one costs the NHS money and resources. Yet there is rarely, if ever, an adequate explanation for these 'early onset' diseases that were once associated almost exclusively with old age.

So it's not just old age, something else must be happening. For instance, do pharmaceutical drugs cause ALL these 'early onset' diseases? For instance,

• do they cause Osteoporosis? 
• do they cause Parkinson's? 

Is it the hugely increased consumption of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that is causing increased levels of illness in older people, and now in much younger people? And don't just take my word for linking these increased levels of chronic disease with pharmaceutical drugs. The evidence is in conventional medical literature, as all the above links demonstrate

Conventional Medicine and the medical treatment of older people

So what is the NHS, and conventional medicine around the world, doing to treat older people? Well, we are all getting a lot more pharmaceutical drugs. A Cambridge University study has found that almost half of over-65s in England are taking at least five different drugs every day. This was reported in the Telegraph in November 2017. The study found that this figure had risen from 12% only 20 years earlier. Moreover, the proportion of older people who were taking no drugs had dropped from about 20% in the late 1990s to 7% now. 

So why don't we benefit from these drugs? If doctors prescribe them to us when we are sick, why aren't we getting better. Isn't that what we take drugs for?

               "Researchers expressed concern at the increasing dependence on prescription and over-the-counter medicines - known as 'polypharmacy'. Studies show polypharmacy can increase the dangers of interactions between different drugs and the risk of frailty in older patients. It's feared many patients are left on medications long-term without thorough or regular GP reviews."

The article went on to express concerns that many of these drugs were

1. unnecessary, 
2. that the dangers of harmful drug interactions was increased, and 
3. there was the increased risk of death. 

It added that a Spanish study in 2015 had found that older people who were taking six medicines or more daily were nearly three times more likely to die prematurely than those on no drugs at all!
Death is not the problem, its the illness caused by drugs
Yet for the NHS, and its continuous financial crisis, it is not 'death' that is the problem! Death means we are no longer a problem, no longer a charge to them.

The crisis of the NHS, and conventional medicine generally, arises from the serious illnesses and diseases that are known to be caused by pharmaceutical drugs, the ones that actually DON'T kill us. It seems that we oldies regularly take 5 or 6 or more drugs, plus an annual flu vaccination. They don't make us better. But we do suffer from their side affects, the adverse drug reactions, and the serious illness and disease drugs and vaccines are known to cause.

The drugs our doctors give us, ostensibly to make us better, are actually making us sicker, more dependent, less able to live independent lives. So we become a continual drain on NHS resources. 

The more pharmaceutical drugs we take, the more care we need, and the more resources the NHS need to spend on us. So they can give us even more drugs and vaccines, which in turn make us even sicker, and even more dependent.

So it is no wonder we old people are a drain on NHS resources!

And the problem is that we just won't die, indeed we are getting younger! The 'old' people who 'need' medical care are actually getting younger, and younger, and younger. Is it any wonder that the NHS keeps running out of resources?

So excuse me if I opt out of this race for more and more conventional medical care. Allow me to progress through my old age without drugs and vaccines.

Instead, let me stay healthy by saying "No, thanks" to the pharmaceutical industry. They wanted to give me drugs for gastric ulcers, then for migraines, then for heart palpitations. Instead, I used homeopathy, and I no longer suffer from any of these conditions.

Older age has much to recommend it - 
as long as you stay away from conventional medicine!

Drugs and the Health of Older People. Is it time for a change?

NHS England has announced there is to be a pharmacist-led medicine review on 180,000 care home residents. The aim is to reduce the 'over-medication' of older people in care homes, and to reduce unnecessary hospital stays. The programme will require the recruitment an additional 240 pharmacists and pharmacy technicians costing £20 million.

In the late 1980's I managed two residential homes for older people. I was amazed at how many drugs the residents were taking; and despite they never appeared to get better! By that time I had already realised that conventional medicine was dangerous, but still hadn't fully recognised how ineffective it was as well.

In announcing the review NHS England said that many residents in nursing and residential homes have "multiple long term conditions" and "take an average of seven medications daily". In order to justify spending £20 million there must indeed be a considerable amount of 'over-medication' going on, and the clear implication is that it was this medication, the drugs given to older people, that were causing the problem, and that by reducing them there will be fewer hospital admissions.

So the review recognised two things, if only tacitly. Older people have 'multiple long-term conditions' which drugs do not deal with effectively. And that the amount of drugs prescribed for older people have led to unnecessary hospital admissions.

Back in the 1980's, when I began discussing the drugging issue with staff, residents, their relatives, and doctors, several conclusions were quickly reached.

• the drugs were NOT making the residents better,
• no-one knew, with any certainty, what was a real 'illness', and what was a 'side effect' of the drugs residents were taking,
• no-one had any idea about the potential drug interactions, and what problems they were causing

So it was agreed that each resident should have a drug review, that residents, relatives, staff and doctors would be involved, and decisions would be made about whether the drugs were necessary. Within 3 months the drug round had been reduced by over 50%. The result seemed to please everyone.

• Residents and relatives could see no real difference in their health, except that many were brighter and more engaged,
• The medical round was shorter, so staff had less work to do!
• Doctors, even those who had initially been sceptical, were relieved that they no longer faced the pressure and the expectation that they should prescribe drugs for every ill.

Before announcing its review, NHS England has trialed the policy in 37 care homes, and had seen an annual drug cost saving of £249 per patient. They also reported a 21% reduction in emergency hospital admissions, and a 30% drop in ambulance call outs. So the Chief Executive of NHS England, Simon Stevens, is reported as saying this: 

               "There’s increasing evidence that our parents and their friends - a whole generation of people in their 70s, 80s and 90s - are being over-medicated in care homes, with bad results. Let’s face it - the policy of "a pill for every ill" is often causing frail older people more health problems than it’s solving."

What no-one recognises, or perhaps what conventional medicine refuses to recognise, is what I learnt nearly 30 years ago from my little medication review - that pharmaceutical drugs did not make older people any better, and that their health suffered as a direct result of side effects of those drugs.

It was at that time that I decided to abandon conventional medicine, to refuse to take any pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, and instead to discover a safer, more effective medical therapy.

As conventional medicine sinks further into abject failure, as its drug and vaccines fail, as drugging makes us sicker, and leads to epidemic levels of chronic disease, as the NHS staggers under the pressures all this produces on resources, we all need to consider doing the same thing.

Moreover, it is important that we do so before becoming too old, before we find ourselves in residential or nursing care, taking a multitude of drugs that not only don't work, but through their side effects, make us sicker, and ultimately contribute to our dependency and death.