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  ANH-Intl eAlert No 344 | 22 March 2017 International
Alliance for Natural Health
     
  e-ALERT  
  Charities, a fad-free food plan and restoring balance  
     
   




It is with great sadness that we have learned of the passing of Professor George Lewith on Friday 17th March. As Professor of Complementary Medicine at Southampton University, George has made a huge contribution to research in complementary and alternative medicine. As a medical doctor, he also showed how complementary medicine could be integrated into a mainstream clinical setting, and did much to encourage adoption of of some complementary therapies into the National Health Service (NHS). It’s been a privilege working with George recently on a major collaborative project along with Professor David Peters, David Balen and others to help measure patient experience across multiple modalities - and George’s wisdom will be sorely missed. We express our sincere condolences to George’s family - and George, we wish you the very best on your onward journey.




The prospect of 20 million people facing starvation in sub-Saharan Africa, bans on electronic devices in aircraft cabins and a potential £50 billion divorce bill for the UK following Brexit, are among the issues dominating UK headlines this last week. All of these are symptoms of the global political instability that has developed as a counter measure to the last few decades of relentless globalisation.

When a system is imperfect, instability is needed to bring it back into balance. Naturopaths, natural health afficinados and many others apply this thinking to self-healing. If the body is out of kilter, it will often express disease. If it gets the right information, a large part of that coming from the food and nutrients to which we expose ourselves, the body can self-heal. Natural health practitioners and huge numbers of the public have experienced this over and over again. Science is beginning to explain some, but rarely all, of the reasons why this happens.

So beware of the continuing rise of the skeptics, who deny human experience in favour of only accepting those facts that can be established by reason or logic. By its nature, that is a very limiting perspective, particularly in highly complex biological systems (such as human health) the intricacies of which we only partially understand.

In our lead story this week, we show how UK skeptics have forced the hand of the government commission to re-evaluate how it assesses the charitable status of organisations advocating complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). These kinds of threats generate instability, and it will only be with a powerful and thoroughly considered response, that balance can be restored. With the Charity Commission announcement of a consultation, it is now down to all of the charitable organisations engaged in CAM to respond – before the deadline of 20 May. You know who you are – and we’re attempting to engage with as many of you as possible in the coming weeks.

In their efforts to keep big businesses onside and maximise GDP and taxation revenues, governments frequently compromise in terms of their health messaging. We are sold a narrative that governments, as the executive of democratically-elected political representatives, are acting in our best interests.

Time and time again we find this to be untrue. Then the trust is lost. In our second story, we offer you a pre-launch sneak preview of an eating plan that should – but would never – be issued by government. It’s the brainchild of UK nutritional therapist Amelia Freer, and its simplicity and solid scientific and nutritional foundation makes it infinitely more rational scientifically than government guidelines that are doing little other than adding to the chronic disease burden of society. The public is lapping up information that is at odds with government advice – the public is trying to restore balance.

It’s happening in politics and it’s happening in certain aspects of health. Holistic thinking, that has brought with it so many solutions to the challenges of humankind, needs to be applied urgently to the real trouble spots in the world, such as Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria.  Fake news aside, balance must be restored, and one way or another, we can all play our part.

The reality is, this is just the beginning. We’d better help ourselves be as resilient as we can, because we need to be in it for the long haul if we’re serious about leaving the next generation with a more balanced world.

 

In health, naturally


Rob Verkerk, PhD
Founder, executive & scientific director
 
     
 
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