As many of you know, specific immune support supplements are key tools for improving chronic infection and inflammation conditions. The immune-specific supplements I recommend are made by Pure Encapsulations and specially formulated by Dr. Sam Yanuck, Assistant Professor of Functional Immunology and Integrative Medicine at the University of North Carolina.

It is natural to want to help family and friends when they are struggling with their health and current health interventions don’t seem to be working. However, it is equally frustrating when your well-meaning (and often well-researched) advice seems to fall on deaf ears and the person in question settles into a slow steady decline. Here are a few observations gleaned over the years in clinical practice on how to talk to friends and family about their health.

Autism is on the rise. Approximately 6% of British schoolchildren are on the autistic spectrum. One in 20 children in Northern Ireland has a diagnosis of autism, in New Jersey in the US, this is one in 14 children. At the same time, mortality rates from neurological diseases has now overtaken mortality from other diseases. Without going into the triggers for autism, there are a few tools below for families coping with autism.

Unlike your other organs, your immune system is everywhere in your body and is designed to protect you from illness. If your immune system is strong and flexible and your nutrient status is good, it puts you in a strong position to combat passing infections.

What you eat and drink is the single most important factor influencing your physical (and sometimes mental) health. The standard western diet, which is choc full of inflammatory wheat, dairy, refined sugars and chemicals, is also the single most important thing that can wreck your health.

Fatty liver disease is probably the fastest rising medical condition in the western world. I am certainly seeing lot more of it. Its origins are linked to western processed diets, the increased number of environmental toxins and ubiquitous wi-fi.

For a long time, we have been conditioned to relinquish responsibility for our health to others. We have become accustomed as a society to expecting “a pill for every ill.” This is the road to health disaster because, like it or not, we are all responsible for the condition we find ourselves in. 

It is important to understand why I ask you to be gluten-free as minute exposures to gluten can make your case fail.  Gluten is a general name for a group of proteins found in grains (wheat, rye, spelt and barley). It acts like a glue that holds food together. 

here is a pandemic within a pandemic which has been with us for some years. It is a pandemic of chronic disease occasioned by chemical-rich processed foods, increased toxins and poor lifestyle choices. These factors make people much more vulnerable to any other pandemic. And right at the top of the class in any pandemic is the immune system.

A lot of people’s brains are inflamed to one degree or another. One of the manifestations of this is ‘brain fog,’ the number one symptom in Functional Medicine! There is, however, a particularly severe condition where the brain becomes inflamed and under attack from its own immune system. This is known as PANS/PANDAS which stands for Paediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome. The ‘paediatric’ part is a bit of a misnomer as this condition can happen at any age!

Parasites are a major cause of chronic fatigue. They are not just something you can pick up on your travels to exotic places. Parasites release their poop into your system in the form of nitrites. Your liver has to detoxify this fall-out. Multiple allergies can be the result. Parasites that get into your organs, such as your liver, are encapsulated by the organ as part of the body’s defence mechanism. In time, the body can start to produce antibodies against these foreign bodies and your immune system can end up attacking the organ itself.

PANS/PANDAS unfortunately has nothing to do with the cuddly furry black and white animal. Instead,it refers to infections which trigger the immune system to mistakenly attack its own brain tissues. This triggers a collection of neuropsychiatric symptoms which are caused by infection but which can easily get misdiagnosed as purely psychiatric in nature.

The bacteria that live in your colon (about 90 trillion of them) are a master switch that regulates your health. There is a saying in Functional Medicine that old age and death begin in the colon. At a time when the majority of our senior citizens end up with diverticular disease (herniations of the digestive tract), the Comprehensive Digestive Stool Analysis test from Genova Diagnostics is one of the most beneficial lab tests you can do.

Love Your Liver!

Cleansing the liver/gallbladder of gallstones is one of the most powerful health-changing processes you can do to dramatically improve your body’s overall health.

Gluten-Free Success

Whether you are recovering from a chronic condition or want to live as long and healthy a life as you can, I advise you to go gluten-free for the following reasons…

In the last few weeks a number of new patients suddenly cancelled their appointments because they found themselves in hospital battling to save their gall bladder. This kind of emergency is totally preventable with the right lifestyle changes. Even if you have left things too late to save your gall bladder, your troubles may not end with its removal if you don’t handle the factors that led up to the emergency. So your gall bladder really is worth trying to save, even if you are on the hospital waiting list.

Around 24% of the population cannot excrete the toxic byproducts (known as biotoxins) from mould and bacterial infections from their bodies. This is one in four people! The reason is that a particular group of genes (HLA genes) in this 25% don’t work correctly.

Traditionally the New Year is a time to refocus desires and goals. Sadly, much of that focus can quickly get lost in minutiae of everyday existence. However, I think you would agree that we are living in most unusual times and for many of you I hope this will provide added motivation.

Traditionally the New Year is a time to refocus desires and goals. Sadly, much of that focus can quickly get lost in minutiae of everyday existence. However, I think you would agree that we are living in most unusual times and for many of you I hope this will provide added motivation.

Many of you may groan at the prospect of not eating refined sugar at Christmas! The most common conversation I have with patients is how damaging refined sugar is for their health and how to wean off it successfully.