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Posts Tagged ‘health’

What strikes you?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »

A key theme of “heroes not zombies” is waking up and becoming aware. It’s too easy to drift through a day in a state of semi-consciousness, doomscrolling social media, following routines, swallowing the stories corporations and governments want you to swallow. The Romans used “bread and circuses” to control the population. Modern capitalism uses algorithms.

But there’s a way to break out of these mind-numbing loops….paying attention to what strikes you.

In homeopathy, there’s a teaching about looking out for the “Strange, rare and peculiar”, the symptoms a patient relates which strike you, which stand out, which seem particularly relevant, or particularly unusual. These symptoms might be the key to understanding the patient and finding the right remedy for them. It’s a practice which is the opposite of seeking what is “usual” or “typical”. The thing is, in diagnosis you need to grasp both – the typical symptoms can point to a pathology, but it’s the particular, the personal, and striking ones which point to the patient who has that pathology, which open the path to understanding what the patient is experiencing, how this disease emerged in their life and how it’s affecting them.

I’ve often written here about the power of wonder and awe. I experience wonder and awe when something strikes me. I’ll be wandering through the forest and suddenly see a flower I’ve never seen before, or I’ll hear a bird call I’ve never heard before (or, certainly, not around here). The important thing is to follow that noticing. When something strikes me, I’m drawn to it, I slow down, stop, and explore further. I allow myself to pass a few moments appreciating whatever it is.

We can do the same through the day with lines we read in books. I’m sure you have the experience of reading a novel, or a non-fiction book, and a particular phrase or sentence leaps it out at you. It strikes you. When that happens, why not note it down? Why not slow down, and consider it? I use a mix of methods in this situation. In some books I’ll underline the particular phrase. In others, I’ll get out my phone and take a photo of the passage, then save that photo to my Notes app. Or I’ll get out my notebook and copy it down. “And not or” is my motto. I’ll often do a combination of those things.

Sometimes we’ll be struck by coincidences, or by a feeling of deja vu. These moments can be gold. They can stop us in our tracks and inspire some wonder, some reflection. They are worth noting down too.

Other times I’m struck by a phrase I hear, maybe just a snippet of a conversation, or a remark in the cafe, or in a queue. Again, it’s worth noting these down, taking a moment to consider them, to enjoy then, to reflect.

When I visit a gallery I’ll move fairly quickly through a room, scanning the works of art, then, almost always, some particular painting strikes me, grabs my attention, and stops me. Those always become my favourite paintings.

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, noticing what strikes you changes your day. It jolts you out of zombie mode, and gives you an opportunity to make the day your own, to make the day special.

Try it out….notice what strikes you today, and explore it.

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Getting better

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 7, 2025| 3 Comments »

I read an article recently about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and its “evidence base”. The term “Evidence Based” is thrown around these days as a kind of label of approval. You might think it means “proven” or that scientists have examined the therapy and found that it works – well, when they say it works they mean they found it to be statistically superior to the control group. What they don’t say is whether or not the patients actually get well. And here’s the problem with CBT – a recent review found that 75% of people with depression treated with “CBT” did not become well, even though the statistical findings applied by the researchers led them to conclude it was “effective”. Can it be called effective if it doesn’t make people well?

CBT researcher Alan Kazdin put it bluntly in the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association:

“Researchers often do not know if clients receiving an evidence-based treatment have improved in everyday life or changed in a way that makes a difference. It is possible that evidence-based treatments with effects demonstrated on arbitrary metrics do not actually help people, that is, reduce their symptoms and improve their functioning.”

It’s strange really. The second half of my career was spent working at Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital, which developed into the NHS Centre for Integrative Care. We worked exclusively with patients with long term conditions, and, for the most part, with those who had failed to find relief through the orthodox approaches of drugs and surgery….or at least, who had failed to become well again.

We used an in-house assessment tool to measure the patients’ progress. It was a simple scale, 0 to 4, where 0 represented no change, 1 a change which had not made an impact on daily living, 2 a change which had made an impact on daily living, 3 a change which had made a major impact on daily living and 4 for completely well (there was a corresponding scale 0 to negative 4 for people who got worse). The person who assessed the change was the patient. The important point about this simple measure was that it was focused on the question…..has this therapy been of value to the patient in their daily living. That’s quite a different question from what percentage of the patients had a change in their blood lipid levels, their blood pressure, or whatever.

Time and time again our reviews showed that around two thirds of the patients rated a 2, 3 or 4 – in other words, two thirds of the patients experienced a change with had impacted on their daily living.

Yet, our approach, our tools and our therapies were rated as “not evidence based”, and year, after year, the Service was cut back and cut back, whilst at the same time online cognitive therapy programmes expanded on the back of their being “evidence based” (even though most patients didn’t become well again)

It’s a great idea to look at evidence, relevant evidence, but the pioneers of EBM said the clinician should take into account the research evidence, their clinical expertise and the preferences and values of their patients. How often does that happen?

It’s long past the time we should stop rubber stamping an approval on treatments which haven’t been shown to make a difference in most patients’ lives.

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The tyranny of the quantifiable

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 6, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Rebecca Solnit, in her “No straight road takes you there”, quotes the environmental writer, Chip Ward, as referring to “the tyranny of the quantifiable”.

There’s an obsession with numbers in our world. From measurements to statistics, there is a determination to quantify every aspect of life. Yet, Life, itself, is not quantifiable. Neither is Love, Beauty, Goodness, Happiness, Self esteem or self worth, despite the attempts by psychologists to attribute numbers and scales to any invisible phenomena.

This is an issue I had to deal with every day of my working life, because neither “health”, nor the most troublesome of symptoms such as pain, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, itch or breathlessness, can be observed objectively and be measured. Many people used proxies to measure the invisible – scales, such as “from 0 to 10, where 0 is the least troublesome and 10 the most, what number would apply to your “X” today”?

I remember the story of a dentist who ran a facial pain clinic. He insisted that every patient begin the consultation by telling him a figure from 0 to 10 related to how much pain they were experiencing. If they started to describe their symptoms, he’d interrupt, and insist “The next thing to come out of your mouth should be a number”. His successor in the clinic was baffled when the first patients would sit down and rather than say “hello” or start to describe their symptoms, they would say “7”, or “5”, or whatever. The old chief had trained them so well! “The tyranny of the quantifiable” indeed!

But let me return to health, because we all seek that, and doctors, surely, would hope to improve the health of their patients. But health, as Gadamer describes so vividly, in his “Enigma of Health” essays, is not visible, and not quantifiable. Rather, it’s pathology which makes an appearance….in the form of a rash, a swelling, an irregular heart beat, or a restriction of function. When the pathology recedes, health reappears….the painful hand becomes unnoticeable again.

The experiences which make every day seem worthwhile are equally, not quantifiable. Wonder, awe, joy, love, happiness, a sense of connection, of being understood, a feeling of belonging. We can’t measure those with a smart watch, a smart phone, or a fancy scanner.

That’s why our individual stories are so important. Only you can describe what you are experiencing, and only your story helps you make sense of your life. The counter-balance to the tyranny of the quantifiable is appreciation of, and the telling of, our encounters with wonder, joy, love and connection with others.

Your story is unique, and, together, we create a world worth living in by sharing our stories and co-creating the ones which we value the most.

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Why cooperation not competition should be our foundation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The dominant narrative in our current industrialised society is competition. It’s held up as the key success factor in capitalism, in business, and even, often citing Darwin, in evolution. It’s presented as the main way in which we humans have improved ourselves, succeeding over other species, beating each other to the top. It’s presented as the way to power and wealth. The key to success and happiness.

There is no denying that competition exists, and that its greatest worth is how it pushes people to improve. Sport is all about competition. It’s exciting and it drives human performance constantly to do better than has ever been achieved before.

Clearly, competition has its place.

But putting front and centre of the whole of life seems seriously misguided to me. Throughout history it has brought war, violence, exploitation, abuse and corruption. Because it all depends what you are competing for. If it’s more power and wealth, it too often results in division, xenophobia, racism, selfishness and cruelty. If you’re competing to improve, to achieve your best self, to create the best, fairest, healthiest society, maybe it’ll help.

I worked all my life as a doctor, so my area of knowledge and skill is what makes human beings thrive. If you consider the human body you can see that it contains billions of cells. Billions. Many of those cells grow together to form body organs, like the heart, the lungs, the liver and kidneys. Many grow together to form tissues, like bone, ligaments, skin. Other grow together to form systems of chemicals and cells, like the immune system and the endocrine system. Are all these cells, all these organs, all these tissues in competition with each other to be the best they can be? No, they are not. If our heart was in a continual war with our kidneys, we would be sick. If our immune system was in a continuous race against our endocrine system, we would be sick.

A healthy body is based on collaboration. It’s based on relationships, especially “integrative” relationships. Integrative relationships are defined as “mutually beneficial relationships between two well differentiated parts”. In other words, health, and, life itself, emerges from a vast, interconnected web of collaboration. When it works, we have harmony. We have flow. We have ease. We have growth and maturation. When it doesn’t work we have sickness and death.

I often think of that when I read about society, politics or economics. Why base those systems on something more likely to drive violence and a world of “winners and losers”? The body doesn’t do that.

Not only that, stop for a moment and reflect. Which human being could thrive entirely by themselves? In isolation, with only their themselves to deal with everything? None. There’s not a single baby born who would have made it to adulthood without the care and support of others. There’s not a single human being on this planet who has made it to adulthood without a vast web of “integrative” relationships – between themselves and others, between themselves and other living creatures, between themselves and the rest of Nature.

What would society be like, what would politics be like, what would economics be like, if we based it on the natural reality of life on Earth………not excluding all competition, but putting collaboration, care and sharing at the heart of everything we do?

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Nostradamus, the doctor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 22, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Before he became famous for his predictions, Nostradamus was an acclaimed doctor, who during a plague treated patients successfully. What kinds of treatments did he use which were successful back in the early 16th century?

Well, primarily, he gave good advice about how to live healthily….recommending that people went outdoors to get fresh air as much as possible, teaching them about hygiene in the home, getting them to rid themselves of rats and excreta in the house, changing and washing the bedsheets, and eating a healthier diet (low fat, I read, but I’m not sure of the details).

On top of that he prescribed a herbal remedy based on rose hips which contained high levels of vitamin C.

So about 500 years ago the most successful ways of dealing with infections and epidemics was already known – it came down to good hygiene and healthy living conditions, combined with a decent diet rich in vitamins. When it came to our most recent pandemic, Covid, the same proved to be the case. The highest rates of infection, serious illness and death were in those who were already suffering from chronic diseases and/or who were living in poverty, in overcrowded housing, and with inadequate diets. Great claims have been made for vaccines, but, at the end of the day, the best way to maintain the health of populations is the same as it’s always been – a good healthy living environment.

That’s why I think we should take good care of our commons – the air, the water, the soil – reducing pollution, and investing in healthy environments. It’s also why I think we should radically change our industrialised farming and food production to produce healthy, vitamin rich food, which should be the basis of everybody’s good diet. It’s also why I think we should invest in good housing, well insulated, easily maintained, and accessible to everyone.

In addition, I think Universal Basic Income and taxing the rich to reduce inequality and poverty are worthwhile policies to pursue (even if our current governments don’t seem to be doing that)

Finally, comes better health care. We do need to improve our health services, and our health care methodologies, but the way to healthy, resilient populations, has a lot less to do with health care than it has to the provision of healthy living conditions.

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Keeping our attention fixed on the whole

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The nature of any system cannot be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part by itself, since such a method often implies the loss of important properties of the system. We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the interconnection between the parts

Planck 1936

The Physicist Max Planck wrote this almost a hundred years ago, and he wasn’t the first to make such an observation. Despite that breaking things down into parts and studying them separately is still the predominant approach in the world.

When I studied Medicine at the University of Edinburgh in the 1970s we were taught “Medical Sciences” for the first three years of the six year course. We dissected bodies in the Anatomy class, studied pathological change in tissues and organs in Pathology, learned chemical pathways in Biochemistry and so on. In fact, the first time I saw “cirrhosis” was a diseased liver stored in formalin in a plastic box marked “cirrhosis”. It wasn’t until year 4 that I met an actual patient who had “cirrhosis of the liver”. Maybe all that has changed. But we still practice Medicine by focusing on parts. I often hear from relatives that on a visit to their GP, they are told they can only discuss one problem per visit….so, their asthma today, but come back to talk about their joint pain.

It seems the modern management techniques applied to health care chop the system and the patient’s experience into pieces, sending them to one person for a diagnosis, another for a blood test, another for a prescription, another for advice…..it’s horrendously disjointed. When my dad was in his last month of life in hospital, every single doctor I asked about his progress started their reply with “I’m not your father’s doctor, but I’ll look up his records….” I never found the person who seemed to actually know him.

Yet, we know from research that continuity of care increases both outcomes and satisfaction ratings of patients and practitioners.

In this age where so many people experience multiple “co-morbidities” we need to keep our focus on the whole even more than ever. If we only focus on the parts we begin to believe we know exactly what each drug will do when we prescribe it, yet, not only are the effects different for different people, but in reality, many people are taking multiple medications at the same time (for a multiplicity of disorders)

We need to focus on the whole, and that means giving priority to human beings, their uniqueness and their relationships. It involves trusting doctors and nurses to practice professionally focused on their patients, not on their protocols and clinical guidelines. And we need a lot more whole of life research, which will help us to understand the complexity of the effects of any drug, and the course of any disease in a real person over their lifetime.

It was never a good idea to ignore, or to relegate holistic knowledge. Learning about the parts should include learning about the limitations of learning about the parts.

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Ethnobotany

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »

This is Echinacea….maybe one of the best known medicinal plants, with a reputation for helping to boost the immune system. If I ever get a cold or flu, I take Echinacea daily until it’s gone. I don’t remember where I read it, but back when I was a GP I remember reading a few studies which seemed to show that taking Echinacea during viral illnesses could be associated with less severe symptoms and a shorter duration of illness. I’ve adopted the practice ever since.

I have quite a fascination for medicinal plants. There’s something extra special about finding or growing a plant with reputed healing powers. I was pretty excited last year to discover “self heal” suddenly growing all over the garden, and I do like to see plants like Echinacea, Chamomile, and Pulsatilla growing nearby. I even like the poisonous ones with potential powerful pharmacological effects (even though I don’t actually swallow any of them!) – Foxglove (Digitalis), Aconite, Belladonna, and Trumpet flowers (Brugmansia) – although the only ones I’ve managed to grow so far are the foxgloves.

I can’t remember when I first encountered the term, ethnobotany, the study of the place of plants in human lives, but I’ve often thought that, in another life, I’d probably have enjoyed studying ethnobotany at university. One of my favourite books on my bookshelves is “Plants of the Gods”, subtitled “Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers” by Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hofmann.

When I learned homeopathy as a young GP it fired up my interest in the potential healing powers of plants many fold, and I still think that’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed learning homeopathy so much. To be able to enjoy the beauty of a plant, to be fascinated with its growth, but in addition to know stories about human beings have interacted with it over the centuries seems, to me, to deepen and expand my enjoyment.

Many years ago I went to an ethnobotany exhibition at Inverleith House in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. In the middle of each room were plant filled stalls laid out like a street market, with explanations about each plant. I remember thinking, how on earth did nomadic tribes discover that one particular plant was good for treating diarrhoea, whilst a different one was great for dyeing your clothes purple? I mean, was it decades of trial and error? How many purple people died from diarrhoea?

That still absolutely fascinates me. How did the tribes in South America discover that a particular tree was good for treating fevers, only for us to discover decades later that it contains quinine, a great malaria treatment? And how interesting that when Samuel Hahnemann read about that in Cullen’s Pharmacopeia, he decided to take some of the tree bark himself, leading him to come up with the idea of “like treats like”, and, hence, the whole therapeutic method of homeopathy?

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Making life good…the power of water

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 7, 2025| Leave a Comment »

There’s an ancient spring opposite my house. It was there in the times of the Celts and the Gauls, then the Romans came and built a small viaduct and channel to harness it. The pool at the spring’s origin flows over a small wall into a narrow channel, and out into a stream which runs for kilometres through the countryside. Several of the villages near me have the word “moulin” in their name. It means a “mill”. The water flowing along this stream powered the millstones which ground the wheat. There’s little left of actual mills, but there are some with remnants of great stone wheels in their gardens, or at the sides of a house. The road follows the route of the stream. It follows it so closely you’d think they had both been created at the same time, but I think the water probably found its own way, and the people followed.

From time to time, I’ll spend a while across at the spring, gazing at the water flowing past the ancient Roman walls, and listening to it gurgling its way to the stream. It’s such a delightful experience. A few moments under the trees, standing on the grassy slope, paying attention to the flowing water.

There are many aspects of Nature which enhance our lives. The Japanese practice “forest bathing”, benefiting from time spent amongst trees, an experience I highly recommend. Researchers have discovered benefits to hospital patients in terms of speed of healing and reduction in pain and complications if they have a view of nature through the window from their beds.

Experiences of flowing water, for me, is one of these many circumstances which enhance an ordinary day. Fountains can have a similar effect. We don’t have any near us, but many French towns have a number of fountains in their central squares, and they always draw me to them.

Do you have anywhere nearby where you can spend a few moments next to flowing water? A stream, a fountain, a waterfall? If so, all you need to do is to pay a little attention to it. Focusing on some flowing water for a few minutes often seems to make a day a better day.

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The joy of everyday discovery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »

How do we improve the quality of our everyday lives?

One way is to do whatever brings us joy, and makes us wonder. And we can do that, either by pursuing an activity which we know brings us joy, for example, listening to our favourite music. Or, and this adds in the element of wonder and discovery, pay attention to the hear and now.

As I wandered through my garden one day, just looking to see what I might notice, I spotted this tiny plant. First of all, I’d never seen a plant like this before, so I didn’t know what it was called. Secondly, I kneeled down, got up close, and just looked. Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it amazing? What an incredible structure, and what beautiful colours. I love those tips of purple emerging from the green. Then I got my phone out and took a close up photo….this photo.

I like to take a photo for two reasons. First of all, I can then go back and look more closely over and over again. I can enrich an already rich experience. Second, because my curiosity has been stimulated, I can touch the little “(i)” button on the phone screen when I’m looking at the photo, and it magically tells me the name of the plant.

Apparently, it’s a “self-heal”. Oh, like all plants, it has many other names too, but the name “self-heal” immediately appeals to me. After all, in all my years working as a doctor, that’s exactly what I was trying to do – to stimulate and support a patient’s self healing. I know we live with a kind of medical myth that doctors heal us with their operations and their drugs. But they don’t. Nobody repairs a single wound without the body’s capacity to self heal. Nobody recovers from a virus without the body’s defence and repair system doing its job. Nobody heals without the body’s complex system of self healing doing what it is designed to do. Doctors should remember that. They don’t heal patients. Patients heal patients and the doctor, when working at their best, support, stimulate and work with, the capacity if the patient to self heal.

Once I had spotted this plant, identified it, explored more about it online later, then I suddenly saw it appearing everywhere in the garden. Well, not everywhere, but over a very wide area. Now there’s something else amazing about gardens. I didn’t plant this beautiful plant. I didn’t “propagate” it. But there it is, and it’s thriving. I find that wonder-full!

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Calling all souls….

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 19, 2024| 2 Comments »

This is one of my favourite photos. It shows two things which always fascinate me. Firstly, the duck, which is apparently just sitting on the water is sending out ripples across the surface in the most beautiful pattern of concentric circles. Secondly, the fish appear to swimming around the duck, some even following the actual ripples.

This is a great example of how just by living we change the world around us and influence the lives of others.

D H Lawrence said –

As we live, we are transmitters of life.

When I’ve looked at this photo in the past, I’ve been struck by how we “influencers”, but, after reading this sentence by Lawrence, I think “transmitters” is a better word to use. Besides, “influencers” has become synonymous with marketers, and, in so doing, has lost some of its beauty for me.

We transmit life just by living. As I breathe, as I consume food and drink, as I digest, as move around this little planet, I change the air, the water, the soil, as I go. As I think, and feel, and imagine, and communicate, I change the lives of others. This blog, which really started just as a personal space to gather things that interest me, has, over the years, become a transmitter. I know that from the feedback I receive from people all over the world. That’s become an explicit part of my writing here. I want to share my life experiences. I want to share my photos, my words, in the hope that you, and maybe others you know, will be touched by them, inspired by them. I hope what I create here brings you some joy, evokes some wonder and reflection, and brightens your everyday. Because, creating these posts, does that for me!

We are transmitters of life, and each of us leads a unique, special, life. We are transmitters of life through our personal stories, none of us telling an identical story to another person. We are transmitters of life through our actions and our thoughts. Collectively, we humans shape and sculpt the Earth. We should stay conscious of that. It’ll help us make better choices.

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