Health - Your Best Investment
Most people spend more on their holidays than their health. That’s ok as long as your health is fine. But it doesn’t really make sense if you are struggling with a condition that is affecting your ability to enjoy life. There is a saying that if you lose your health, you lose everything. But if it’s a choice between holiday and health - which one are you going to choose? I guess it depends on your considerations and how much you are suffering.
The idea that you should have to pay anything at all towards your health is unacceptable to many. The concept of free healthcare for all was influenced by the Beverage Report (1942) during World War 2. The report recommended that healthcare should be available to everyone, regardless of income, as part of a broader welfare safety net. The core idea was, and still is, that healthcare should be a basic right accessible to all, funded collectively through taxes. And so the NHS was born.
When the NHS was founded in 1948 in post-war Britain, infectious and acute diseases (such as polio, tuberculosis, and measles) were the primary health concerns. However, predominant disease patterns have changed over the decades. Factors like better sanitation have reduced the prevalence of acute infectious diseases. Lifestyle and environmental factors have now shifted the focus to chronic conditions that last for months, years or decades, rather than days or weeks. Acute infections like TB have now been replaced by the 3 ‘I’s - chronic infections, inflammation and immune dyfunction.
Challenges for the NHS in Adapting to Chronic Disease Care
The NHS infrastructure is still largely oriented towards treating acute conditions. The mainstream treatment model is treat the symptom with a drug rather than looking for and addressing the underlying causes. The problem is that this simply does not work for the complex chronic conditions of today. If the underlying causes of a condition are not found and addressed, that condition will keep coming back, no matter what the treatments given. Therefore, NHS staff are overburdened with large patient loads without the time or tests necessary to investigate and treat chronic conditions. Additionally, NHS staff have little or no training in lifestyle factors like nutrition, the key drivers of today’s inflammatory diseases. Furthermore, Covid interventions, including lockdown, have worsened the strains on the NHS, and patients find themselves waiting months to be seen at all.
Advantages of Going Private
I wish the NHS was not wedded to the pharmaceutical industry, that NHS doctors were trained in Functional Medicine, that the specialised lab tests necessary to uncover the root causes of chronic conditions were available on the NHS. But they are not.
And so, patients with chronic conditions who are told that their standard blood tests are all “normal” are faced with a stark reality - do nothing or take control of your own health by seeking alternative care outside the NHS, which means paying for consultations and tests. My advice is to look on this as an investment in yourself by setting aside an affordable sum each month in a “health account” and not using these funds for anything other than your private healthcare.
The advantages of being able to pay for your own healthcare are:
Longer consultation time to understand what is going on.
Access to wide array of specialist lab tests to help discover the underlying causes of the condition.
Personalised recovery plan based on your unique test results, rather than a “everybody-gets-this” approach.
Ongoing care to support your progress.
Greater choice of therapy agents e.g. effective non-pharmaceutical approaches.
Greater collaboration and swifter referrals to other specialist practitioners if needed.
Focus on reversing, rather than “managing” your condition.
Key Lab Tests
Specialised lab tests take the guesswork out of finding out what is going on. Some of the tests that are only available privately include:
Immune function tests to show if your immune system is unable to fight viruses or bacterial infections.
Immune markers to see how the immune system is performing - is it letting every infection in, or being over vigilant and damaging your own tissues?
Infection tests to see if an infection is currently active, not just if you had it in the past. Elispot and IgA antibodies are useful here. There are not routinely offered by the NHS, which means that many patients with chronic infections fall through the cracks.
A full thyroid profile with several markers, instead go just one or two which don’t give the full picture.
Saliva adrenal stress test (the most accurate measurement of cortisol).
Comprehensive stool testing to look at digestive function, the balance of bacteria in the gut and its implications.
Aggressive form of H. pylori infection test (a very common stomach infection).
Comprehensive parasite tests.
Elisa IgG/IgA Sars Cov-2 test used in Long Covid.
Spike-protein tests to see if Spike Protein from Covid is still active.
Key metabolic tests like KPU (Pyrrole disorder).Mitochondrial function tests.
Brain Autoimmune Panel plus other autoimmune markers.
Toxicity and heavy metal tests
Food allergy/sensitivity tests - IgG sensitivities, gluten cross-reactive foods and more.
Conclusion
More and more people, especially young people, are now suffering from chronic debilitating conditions and are not finding solutions on the NHS. There are solutions and a greater choice of tools outside the NHS. The welfare state, founded in 1948, is no longer able to match the expectations of free effective healthcare for those with complex chronic conditions. The choice facing the individual in those circumstances is - Can you afford to invest in their own health? Or can’t you afford not to?
If you feel stuck and would like to get to the bottom of a chronic condition, please get in touch with the Good Health Clinic on goodhealthclinic@outlook.com to request a free 30 minute Enquiry Call or book an appointment.
Please note that an Enquiry call is not a consultation but an exploratory call to see if this is a clinical approach you wish to pursue.
To your very good health,
Suzanne Jeffery (Nutritional Medicine Consultant)
M.A.(Oxon), BSc.(NMed), PGCE, MNNA, CNHC
The Good Health Clinic at The Business Centre, 2, Cattedown Road, Plymouth PL4 0EG
Tel no: 07836 552936/ Answer phone: 01752 774755
Disclaimer:
All advice given out by Suzanne Jeffery and the Good Health Clinic is for general guidance and informational purposes only. All advice relating to other health professionals’ advice is for general guidance and information purposes only. Readers are encouraged to confirm the information provided with other sources. Patients and consumers should review the information carefully with their professional health care provider. The information is not intended to replace medical advice offered by other practitioners and physicians. Suzanne Jeffery and the Good Health Clinic will not be liable for any direct, indirect, consequential, special, exemplary or other damages arising therefrom.