Talk about health

Following on from my previous posting, the letter signed by 13 scientists and doctors urging all non-tested treatments to be removed from the NHS in the UK has caused lots of reaction. As one comment mentioned, very few current surgical procedures have been scientifically tested, and many drugs have limited value.

One science editor in the media said that we taxpayers should stop wasting millions of pounds on treatments that do not work. He was talking about alternative therapies, but should he have included the conventional treatments that don't work as well? And how about the costs of dealing with the side effects of drugs?

Perhaps he was exaggerating a little. The figures I've seen are that the NHS spends £70 billion a year (£70,000,000,000), and of that just £3 million goes towards complementary therapies. I make that 0.004% of total spending. As a proportion its not very much.

I am not advocating wasting any money just for the sake of expanding alternatives to conventional therapy. There has to be some logic and proof that something has a chance of working to improve health. But, it doesn't have to be purely scientific proof.

Prince Charles is quoted as saying, "Many of today's complementary therapies are rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world. Much of this knowledge, often based on oral traditions, is sadly being lost, yet orthodox medicine has so much to learn from it."

And that is a great summing up of the situation, in my opinion. Too many doctors have blinkers on, so they choose not to see the living proof of the successes of alternative therapies. They hide behind the "we must have scientific proof" shield.

The result is that many more people are denied the chance of better health unless they are prepared to do it themselves, and invest some time and effort into finding out what is available.

In his letter, Professor Baum claimed that there is no proof that homeopathy works. Yet over the space of 24 years there have been 298 trials, analysed on four separate occasions. Each time the conclusion was that homeopathy was mcuh better than placebo.

The problem here is that scientists don't know how it can possibly work. They want to see the facts of how it works. But, the mystery of how homeopathy works doesn't mean that it doesn't work. There are many body systems and illnesses that we have no idea about - yet.

Homeopathy has been shown to work in asthma, influenza, pain, anxiety, chronic fatigue, migrains and more.

Many people are helped by homeopathy after conventional medicine has failed to help them.

I simply cannot accept that alternative therapies are unproven and a waste of money. They can do a lot of good for a great many people. Don't be persuaded by a few jaundiced professors and misguided journalists. Find out more for yourself. Go on over to my site at www.healthexplored.co.uk to find out more about alternative therapies, what they are and what they could do for you.