It is estimated that over two million people in the UK are suffering from Long Covid. Office of National Statistics figures show that one in five people with Long Covid had the infection over two years ago. This is a long-term problem that is likely to grow.

The 3 I’s that drive modern chronic disease are Infection, Inflammation and Immune dysregulation. ‘Dysregulation’ refers to lack of proper control of one’s immune system. Today, more and more people, including young people, are presenting with chronic fatigue, brain fog, anxiety and other issues which is hampering their lives. The 3 I’s are driving this epidemic. The key message is that if you have a chronic condition, you are unlikely to see improvement unless you address the 3 I’s.

The topic for this Newsletter is a conversation I have with nearly all my patients - it’s about the harmful effects of refined sugar, the excess sugar that nearly everybody is eating and the absolute need to wean yourself off sugar if you want to preserve or regain your health.

The majority of people turn to pills and supplements as a method of healthcare. In an era where ‘a pill for every ill’ is an advertising mantra, both the medical profession and public seem hypotised into thinking that the answers to disease lie in pills and, now vaccines. Many have lost sight of the fact that food is the most powerful medicine. It builds the foundation of how we look, the way we move, handle stress, and gives the energy with which we interact with others and much more.

Autumn is here and Winter is just round the corner. No doubt there will be new viruses for us to contend with or variations on the old ones! The incidence of colds and flu-like illness is already rising. Your own immune system is your best defence against any infection. Now is the time to get your Winter toolkit in place so you can help your immune system to do the job it was designed to do - defend you from pathogenic invaders! Here are a few tools I use in my First Aid Tool Kit for infections. Each tool is backed up by evidence in the scientific literature.

Autism is a condition that most often results from both epigenetic and intra-uterine environmental exposures (toxicity, infections and mum’s own antibodies that cross-react with central nervous system tissues of the developing baby in the womb). The term ‘epigenetic’ means how environmental exposures affect your genes.

The last few years have highlighted the vital necessity of dealing with chronic infections and an immune system which is too suppressed to work efficiently. Chronic infections and immune suppression are the major drivers for Long Covid and related syndromes with symptoms of chronic fatigue, anxiety, brain fog, aches and pains. Infections suck up our energy and make us feel tired. They all involve the 3 I’s - Infection, Inflammation and Immune suppression.

Matthew was a popular 18 year old. He loved his family, friends and life. He played sports and was looking forward to graduating from secondary school. Before his exams, he had trouble sleeping and was having bad dreams and panic attacks. His doctor prescribed Matthew the antidepressant Citalopram. Within days, Matthew’s personality changed. He was withdrawn, he no longer wanted to attend the school leavers' Graduate Beach Week. Instead, he left home and took his own life by jumping off a bridge.

Public Health England states that high blood pressure or hypertension is the third biggest risk factor for all diseases. High blood pressure is responsible for half of all strokes and heart attacks. It is a risk factor for heart disease, kidney disease and vascular dementia. It rarely has obvious symptoms; that is why it is called “the silent killer.” It is estimated that one in three adults in the UK has high blood pressure In England alone, it is estimated that there are more than five million people undiagnosed.

I see an increasing number of people who still have symptoms over three months after being infected with Sars CoV-2. This is called Long Covid. The most frequent symptoms are fatigue, brain fog and aches and pains. Studies like Patterson et al. (2022) suggest that Long Covid may affect up to 30% of infected individuals. The underlying mechanisms as to why this should be so are becoming more clear from the research.

Menopause is a natural event when a woman’s periods stop. However, since the first half of the twentieth century, it has become medicalised and treated as a disease by scientists, doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. In recent years, non-medically trained “celebrities" have gotten on the menopause bandwagon to promote the negative aspects of menopause and the expectation that HRT will provide all the answers.

Would you let someone put the world’s most poisonous non- radioactive substance into your mouth? And leave it there for decades, just a few centimetres away from your brain? Well, that’s what dentists do when they place a mercury filling in someone’s mouth. Surprisingly, many people have no idea that they have mercury in their mouth or what this could be doing to their health. As a major toxin for the central nervous system, why wouldn’t mercury make you sick?

May 2023 is Lyme Awareness month. A lot of conferences and webinars have recently taken place with Lyme as the main topic. There is a lot of ignorance and misinformation about Lyme. Most UK GPs are not Lyme literate and rely solely on a standard course of antibiotics to defeat this stubborn infection. This is unfortunate as more people have Lyme disease than is generally realised. It can mimic almost any other condition. As one experienced Lyme researcher and doctor said this week, Lyme is now the real pandemic.

Potassium is very important for muscle and especially heart muscle function. Along with water, potassium is involved in multiple body processes. Low potassium on a blood test is a known risk factor for sudden cardiac death. The routine blood chemistry range is 3.5 - 5.5 mmol/l. However, this range is determined by life and death scenarios, not healthy scenarios. The medical literature on quality of life points to 4.5 - 5.5 as being an optimum potassium level. That means that a level in the low 3’s and 4’s is definitely a cause for concern. Even a level of 4.1 or 4.2 can reflect an increased risk of heart dysfunction.

New research confirms that jawbone infections (known as cavitations) produce inflammatory substances (called cytokines) that are impacted in heart disease, cancers, autoimmune, other inflammatory diseases and disability. This research was summarised at a 2011 presentation to the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT) by Dr Johann Lechner DMD, a German research dentist.

I see a steady stream of people in my clinic whose health has worsened since the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020. In a lecture given to the Academy of Nutritional Medicine last month, Professor John Lambert, Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Genitourinary Medicine at the Mater University Hospital, Dublin, outlined the main findings he has observed for the post-Covid health decline in the last three years. This Newsletter comments on these findings.

Mould biotoxin illness (also known as CIRS - Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome) is a major health issue. Public awareness of the problem has increased in recent months following the tragic case of the death of a two year old from prolonged mould exposure in a Rochdale flat.The medical literature on mould illness suggests that a quarter of the population may have a genetic flaw that prevents them from fully clearing mould biotoxins from the body. That is a sizeable portion of the population.

The chances are, unless you are a dental reCytokines are the unsung heroes of the immune system as they act like first responders to a pathogen invasion. On detecting a pathogen, cytokines radiate out from cells like a kind of wifi signal. They then attach to specific areas on cells andsearcher, you may not have heard of Rantes. What is it? Rantes (also known as CCL-5) is a cytokine i.e. chemical messenger secreted by immune and non immune cells in response to infection.

This is the condition of having a ‘beer belly,’ or excess fat round the middle that looks as though you are hiding a football under your jumper. It’s a very common beach look for both men and women these days. In fact, if you compare photographs of people on beaches in the 60’s and 70’s, there were far fewer beer bellies around in those days.

Recently, the news has been full of children falling ill with strep (short for streptococcal) infection. Parental concern has increased pressure on GP surgeries and hospital A and E departments. Usually, if a child’s immune system is working well, this common infection is overcome in a short space of time without complications. However, problems can arise if the immune system is not working well and cannot silence the strep infection. Unfortunately, many scientists have warned that the social distancing of the last two years could weaken immune function and leave people more vulnerable to previously common bugs.