Lies, Damned Lies and StatisticsWhen Numbers Replace Wisdom & Common Sense.Fifty years ago , when I was working as an operational research consultant for a major industrial corporation, I was modelling the growth of electricity demand with an IT colleague because the company couldn’t rely on the official forecasts from the electricity companies.It was a great piece of statistical modelling, taking into account every user and industrial sector development, but soon we realised that the electricity demand was following the growth of the economy. The company’s computer filled a large room, data was input with punch-cards and great sheets of paper printed out the results. Because we soon realized that the forecasts were so dependent on the UK economic growth forecasts, I arranged an appointment with a senior statistician at the Government’s National Statistics Department.What a shock I had when this expert statistician and computer modeller told me, in his opinion economic growth was not dependent on labour, investment, capital, world market forces or any other usual measures, but primarily on the “spirit of the nation”. He then gave me the example of post war Britain’s growth versus that of Germany. We had won the war and everyone expected an easier life and the benefits normally gained by victors in war but the Germans had been destroyed and every man woman and child had to rebuild their lives from scratch. Hence the high-growth rate in Germany compared with our poor progress in Great Britain post-war. I left this interview much wiser and have, ever since, had severe reservations about any forecasts that leave out the human “X” factor.Unfortunately, the world has moved on, we are now increasingly dependent on IT, computer modelling, algorithms and statistics and less and less on experience, wisdom and common-sense. So today we are witnessing a world thrown into chaos and crisis not entirely because of a new virus. This virus is very much like others in the past decades and like any virus it has its own unique character in the way of invading its host. No! What is different is the way that almost every government throughout the world has been driven by the science, by advice from the most prestigious organisations like the World Health Organisation and by leading epidemiologists using statistical algorithms of the way the virus spreads, by others forecasting the meltdown of our health systems and by most of the population driven by fear during this crisis, relying evermore on directives and protection by their governments.Governments have likewise been forced to take decisions primarily based on the computer models of statisticians and epidemiologists and have feared to ignore these forecast at their peril, possibly losing credibility and support of the people. There are other possible reasons for the way this particular epidemic has grown into a major economic and health pandemic associated with global commercial forces, but I leave others to discuss what these may be. HERE In ancient times the forecasters or soothsayers came from a different priesthood who would study the entrails of slaughtered animals sacrificed in a religious ceremony to give guidance to the politicians. Their politicians balanced this knowledge of the expert seers with their own experience and wisdom before deciding policy. Today we are more civilised and have far more sophisticated scientific methods to guide our politicians, but are we any wiser?To quote Lord Horder “ ..health does not necessarily depend upon Science at all. There were millions of healthy persons living before Science, as we understand it today, existed. “Nature taught man how to be healthy long before Science discovered the laws of health.” “ Direct action, force, suppression of individual freedom of choice and remedies directed towards the masses do not produce results that have any permanence.”  

Your Health in Your Hands!

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics, When Numbers Replace Wisdom & Common Sense.

A Doctor's viewpoint on the Pandemic COVID-19 2020

Coronavirus Through The Looking Glass

Health is the best protection against disease!If we had a better understanding of what we mean by health we might not have had the 2020 Pandemic. Although most people have an intuitive understanding of what health is, we have been systematically taught a different definition.A healthy organism, whether a primitive amoeba or a human, is by definition an organism that is able to respond effectively to its environment and survive. It is in fact response - able or more grammatically, it is responsible for its life and survival. Only when it ceases to be responsible, or unable or willing to respond to its environment does it suffer dis-ease or death.Primitive life forms seem to develop and modify their responsiveness to their changing environment naturally and automatically otherwise they cease to survive as a species. Higher life forms including we humans can over-ride our innate ability to respond well to our changing environment. This may be in part due to the overwhelming power of our rapidly chasing environment, in part to primitive genetic programming that no longer aids survival, to our ability to rationalise any behaviour we choose to have or just to the fact that we have become increasingly distanced from the real world of nature.Whatever the reason or more likely the multitude of reasons, we are now able to live without responsibility; we can eat to excess, we can eat  junk food, we can consume toxic or harmful substances such as drugs either recreational or medicinal, we can avoid exercise, we can get stressed over trivial matters, we can be mentally damaged from an early age simply by being born into a dysfunctional community or society. The end result is that the vast majority of us can no longer claim to be healthy, the vast majority of us are all dis-eased to some significant extent and therefore cannot live our lives, able to respond to the environment we find ourselves in an effective way for survival and well-being. The arrival of a novel virus finds us unable to resist it taking hold of us as a useful host. How successful it is depends on how weak or diseased the individual is. This is not primarily related to the age of the person, we note the young appear to be poor hosts perhaps because they have not yet developed any chronic disease, and that many elderly people who are healthy do not succumb whilst the majority who suffer the most are those who are chronically unhealthy with or without a recognised disease.There are many who have claimed that an infection can be a valuable cleansing process and that the individual that recovers is stronger and healthier for the experience. This is not mainstream thinking today, when every effort is made to protect everyone from birth with an ever increasing cocktail of vaccinations, such that our infinitely complex immune system that has taken a million years to develop is overwhelmed or over-reactive. No, the future protection against the next virus will not be more of the same but a paradigm shift towards promoting healthy living. Sadly there is little profit in such a venture and many of us have grown accustomed to a way of life that is unhealthy and that promotes chronic disease. A new generation of doctors, health workers and individuals who hold health as the prime force will be needed backed by an economic system that also puts health first over profit or short term alleviation and suppression of symptoms. A new generation of people who are more in tune with nature and who know we must be guardians of our natural environment, if we are to survive as a species.Check out a vast array of information to help you make changes in your lifestyle and regain a state of health you may have had when young on my website : 

Health is the best protection against disease!

Ladies! End Your Monthly Misery – Change your hormones with your diet! The latest research offers a possible alternative approach to many problems suffered by most women during their lifetime associated with their hormone production. Rather than taking prescribed additional hormones or other drugs, simply changing your diet may be the answer.Why should a change of diet have any significant impact on these problems that include; premenstrual tension, severe period pains, fibroids, endometriosis, menopausal problems and fertility? We have all heard the old saying, “We are what we eat”, but how many of us have really taken this idea onboard?Well, it is now recognized that a change of diet can rapidly change the hormones our bodies produce with often remarkable effects; menstrual cramps gone in a month after a change of diet, fertility restored after a few months, diabetes improving within weeks, improvement of thyroid function, along with normalization of weight and general improvement of health.Why haven't you been told about this before?Well, you may be surprised to learn that nutrition does not represent a significant part of every doctor's medical training and it is only in the last few years that research has been directed at this simple approach to health improvement. Why so? Well, the vast majority of medical research is funded by drug companies who are more motivated to discover new remedial drugs, rather than how to improve people's lifestyle to avoid diseases. Another reason may be that doctors often find patients unwilling to make any serious changes in their diets or lifestyle and expect “a pill for every ill”There is a good physiological reason for the dietary effects that can be very briefly explained here:The ovaries and adrenal glands use fat cells to produce many different hormones. With the right level of fat cells, hormone production is normal, but with any many major deviation of fats cell availability whether too low or too high, hormone production is seriously disturbed.In addition, body fat is associated with the production of a special protein that can control the action of sex hormones. Too high body fat can reduce this protein, and this combined with increased hormone production creates the above problems. Too little body fat may also have serious impact on health. Just like Goldilocks tale, “just right” is what is needed!What then is just right? A simple measure is the BMI measure, the Body Mass Index that compares a person's height with their weight. Roughly speaking a BMI over 30 or under 20 could be significant but this varies with age so check this out. Additional dietary problems are associated with inadequate fibre in our diet, especially with a high meat and dairy diet that provides almost no fibre. There is an added problem associated with dairy foods that have a high fat content, zero fibre and additional hormones normal in all milk.So what might help with all these problems?Very simply, a Whole Plant Diet of a great variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds, with little or no meat, fish or dairy products. This is a diet that used to be the staple of many countries such as Japan and China where most of our modern diseases were rarely seen, until their diets began to become Westernized.For a brilliant and detailed explanation of this topic, I highly recommend the newly published book by Dr. Neal Barnard “Your Body in Balance – the new science of food, hormones and health.”It is available on Amazon HERE    

Ladies! End Your Monthly Misery – Change your hormones with your diet!

Podcast # 28  Your Challenge to Save The Planet & Your HealthHi, this is Michael Lingard introducing you to podcast twenty-eight entitled “Your Challenge to Save The Planet & Your Health” in 2020.If everyone on the internet joined forces to ensure a healthy planet for future generations, it could solve the existential problem that no government dare tackle, climate change and environmental pollution and damage. All you need to do is to commit to changing your lifestyle over the next twelve months with a twelve step programme, just a month at a time. Click “HERE” for tips!January: Try to avoid buying anything made of or packed in plastic. Plastics are based on fossil fuel for production and produce an almost permanent environmental pollutant that will take many years to start to rectify. There are biodegradable alternative materials produced from plants. . HEREFebruary: Buy local produce wherever possible. This would both stimulate farmers to shift to plant food production for humans, reduce the vast energy consumption involved in shipping food to and from warehouses and from abroad. . HEREMarch: Cut back on your consumption of “stuff”. We all are encouraged to consume or buy far more material things than we really need, we need to remind ourselves that every article represents a substantial use of the earth’s scarce resources. HEREApril: Help plant a hundred trees. With the estimated 4 billion internet users worldwide this would produce 400 billion trees, the most efficient carbon dioxide consumers would remove around 8 billion tons of CO2 per year, that would help balance the residual fossil fuel use. Global production of CO2 from transport is about this quantity. HEREMay: Support your local community any way that helps the environment. There is a close connection between the health of the planet, the health of individuals and the health of a community. By building stronger communities we would be find mutual support in building a sustainable future for our only planet, the earth. HEREJune: Cut out all meat, fish and dairy foods from your diet. This alone would cut greenhouse gases by between 25 – 50%, stop the loss of the earth’s lungs – the rainforests, reduce the need for food production by 75%, with the right distribution system ensure adequate food for everyone, improve the health of everyone, reduce the incidence of chronic diseases, reduce the pollution of coastal waters from agricultural medicine run-off and animal waste, permit the regrowth of our fauna and flora, especially endangered species, and much more. Currently estimates suggest between 50 – 75% of all grain and pulses go to feed animals! . HEREJuly: Conserve fresh water whenever possible, it’s a scarce resource. Fresh water will be more valuable than oil in a few years’ time. Sources of fresh water are increasingly being depleted due to pollution or over exploitation. Producing animal and dairy foods is a major reason for this. HEREAugust: Make your own health your responsibility. If you have already shifted your diet to a whole plant diet and are getting more exercise walking you are well on the way to meeting this challenge. HERESeptember: Reduce the use of your car by walking more/using public transport. This will go towards the August challenge; taking more responsibility for your health. HEREOctober: Turn your home thermostat down a few degrees lower. Just a few degrees drop will save you over a hundred pounds a year and reduce the consumption of energy nationally. HERENovember: Try to reduce food waste to close on nil. Currently we waste over a third of our food. That would feed most of the undernourished or starving throughout the world. . HEREDecember: Switch your car to any that halves your fuel consumption. Today there is no technological reason why we cannot produce cars that will give over 100 miles per gallon; even this would make a significant reduction in CO2 emissions. This needs to be the most important criteria for car purchase, not its sporty performance. . HERETo learn more about each of these challenges go to the transcript of this podcast to click on related links.The global environmental destruction, pollution and our impact on climate seem problems too big for you and I to have any significant impact on their solution, but just remind yourself that if billions of humans can generate the problems so we can just as easily fix them, one step at a time. All that is needed is ,an awareness, a will and our actions. We have the RESPONSE-ABILITY, let begin to use it! 

Your Challenge to Save The Planet & Your Health

Hypoxia & Its TreatmentTissue hypoxia can occur in many ways but the effect on the affected tissue is usually the same, its healthy functioning and energy is weakened. Hypoxia could be the most significant factor underlying most chronic diseases and general sickness, and like chronic hidden hyperventilation it is almost ignored in modern medicine.Perhaps the key problem arising from tissue hypoxia is impaired energy production by the cells’ mitochondria, the cell’s energy source. This reduced cellular energy lays the foundation for an unhealthy cell and susceptibility to disease and poor health.The evidence is now well established to link most chronic disease to hypoxia, this includes heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and almost every other disease of modern man.So how can we combat hypoxia?There are two proven approaches, one involves improving the way we breathe and eat, the other is a radical new discovery that uses oxygen-enriched water.Breath Training to Aleviate HypoxiaPoor breathing or more specifically chronic hyperventilation is a 21st century epidemic in modern societies. Over 75% of people in the West suffer some degree of hyperventilation or over-breathing. This arises from the lifestyle of modern western man; stress and diet being the two main factors causing this. Stress triggers the primitive fight/flight responses that includes increased respiratory rate. Chronic hyperventilation leads to loss of carbon dioxide and subsequent poor delivery of oxygen to the body’s tissue due to the Bohr Effect. Diet, the second major cause, arises from excessive over-consumption of meat, dairy and over-processed junk food that leads to metabolic acidosis. The body tries to correct this by eliminating large amounts of acid-forming carbon dioxide simply by hyperventilating or over-breathing..Usually both these factors are involved. My recent research has shown a high correlation between the way we breath and what we eat, and between what we eat and the quality of our breathing.Thus long-term health benefits can be achieved by learning better breathing and improved eating habits, and the good news is that as we improve the one it leads to improvement of the other!The Buteyko Method of breath training improves tissue oxygenation long-term and a progressive shift to a Whole Plant Diet that eliminates the metabolic acidosis associated with SAD (Standard American Diet) not only improves oxygenation, but gives many beneficial effects from the reduction of meat, dairy and highly processed foods.As part of any lifestyle changes, efforts should be made to ensure adequate hydration, as the vast majority of the public today also suffer from some degree of dehydration. Remember we are water-body creatures with liquid conductors for electric nerve impulses not copper wires, and it is water that transports all the nutrients to our cells, and it is water that carries away waste products and toxins and it is water that carries hormones that control body functions!If there is poor circulation of blood in any area of the body, cells there may still be suffering from hypoxia even with improved respiration and normal oxygen delivery to the rest of the body. This is especially the reason for using the second approach to deal with hypoxia, the use of oxygen-enriched water. Since every cell must have water for its survival, the oxygen-enriched water will be well absorbed and the oxygen supply will be increased to eliminate the hypoxia. Hydration with Oxygen Enriched WaterTo speedily address hypoxia it is now possible to achieve this by drinking oxygen enriched water and even bathing in this water. Because our body circulates water to every cell, if oxygen enriched water is used, every cell in our body is better and rapidly oxygenated, hypoxia is eliminated, even in areas where blood circulation is impaired, where improved respiration would have little effect.The oxygen enriched water is not simply water with added oxygen but it is the result of a special treatment that extracts hydrogen from the water leaving highly active and readily available oxygen. It is available internationally under two brand names, Kaqun Water or Elo Water.The great advantage of this latter approach is that it does not demand any lifestyle changes, re-training of our breathing habits or changes to our eating habits. Improved oxygenation is achieved almost regardless of the individual’s current lifestyle.What appears to happen is that over time, as the individual’s health improves, they tend to change their lifestyle towards a healthier way. This is similar to the effect of better breathing leading to better eating that my research has already demonstrated. Practical ConsiderationsFor anyone not suffering from any chronic disease and just wanting to improve their general health and well-being it would make sense to combine these two approaches initially and then to reduce the use of the oxygen enriched water over time. Such an approach would give a kick-start towards improved oxygenation and all the health benefits that derive from this. In the real world, the additional cost of oxygen-enriched water must be taken into account.For others with significant ill health associated with hypoxia, a more intensive use of oxygenated water for longer periods would be better combined with lifestyle changes as and when they felt ready. If the hypoxia has been causing damage for some time, a longer period of such water support would speed up repair and normalization of tissue oxygenation. Improved oxygenation may reduce the need for other medical interventions that would offset the additional cost of this approach.A balance should be met for each individual, depending on their state of health, their specific illness, their commitment to lifestyle changes and their financial status. 

Hypoxia: The Key to Support of Most Chronic Diseases & General Health.

Hi this is Michael Lingard Orthopath, Buteyko Educator and Plantrician introducing the ninth podcast entitled “What is an Orthopath?” The Orthopath sees health as based on restoration of all functions and physiology to normal. Structural correction is always part of their work but structural correction is not enough.Usually nutritional screening and advice is offered to their patients but that is still not enough to help the patient to optimal health.Advice on suitable exercise and rest is routinely included in their therapy and this adds a little more to the health promotion plan. The patient’s work and environmental factors are reviewed to check whether there are health issues here that need attention. Some orthopaths will routinely check the patient’s breathing to assess any deviation from normal optimal breathing. Even all this may not uncover other hidden problems that are having an adverse effect on the patient’s health that may be from stress and mental attitudes. When all these factors and more are brought together we start to give a holistic approach to health care, this is the ultimate aim of an orthopath that may never be fully realized but it is the aspiration the orthopath works towards in their practice. Does an orthopath have training in physical therapy? Yes just like an osteopath, chiropractor or physiotherapist. Does an orthopath have a fundamental holistic approach? Ideally yes, this is not necessarily so with other physical therapists. May an orthopath use adjunctive therapies to benefit the patient? Yes, invariably. Many other physical therapists are restrained as to what they're allowed to use or, what they want to use, in addition to their physical therapy. Is an orthopath’s work primarily based on structure? No, unlike the other physical therapists, the orthopath tries to expand their realm of therapy and support beyond just physical structure. Is an orthopath expected to teach the patient health promotion? Yes indeed, this is a prime part of the orthopath’s work, to try to make the patient more and more self-reliant by helping themselves to better health. So can orthopaths advise on all aspects of health promotion? Yes indeed, that is what most orthopaths need to do and want to do. An orthopath is constantly updating and enlarging their therapy base and exchange experiences regularly with other therapists to develop a more holistic approach to health care. Every orthopath has to meet all legal, professional and ethical requirements like any other physical therapist. So you could say an orthopath is an osteopath-plus, a chiropractor-plus, a physiotherapist-plus, a sports therapist-plus, etc.

What is an Orthopath?

Hello, welcome to podcast # 26 I’m Michael Lingard Orthopath, Buteyko Educator and Plantrician introducing perhaps the most important question for us all today, What Is Health? Is It More Than an Absence of Disease? Whenever I have asked an audience this question most people intuitively know that health is far more than freedom from diseases. Although health is a very difficult concept to define we do know what are the main causes of good health. If you have ever wondered what are these key factors that determine our health and longevity and would like some practical, reliable, information on this subject then stay tuned to this podcast. It is unfortunate that modern medicine has been primarily concerned with disease, illness and pathology for the past century and has not given the public much advice on health promotion. The main reason for this omission, is that doctors are not trained as health practitioners; they receive very little training in the fundamentals of health promotion: the need for good body mechanics, for good nutrition, for adequate exercise, good breathing, good relaxation, a healthy environment and a supportive community. Because of this disease model of medical practice, the system is overloaded with a sick population that is creating increasingly impossible demands on finance and resources. We also have trained an entire generation of the public to rely on their doctor to keep them well and have lost the sense of self-responsibility for their own health or are just unwilling to do anything to help them selves. There is today a prevalent view that “It’s pointless worrying about our own health and quality of life or longevity, just carry on & enjoy yourself as we all have to die of something don’t we?” The truth is we can have a profound effect on our health and longevity and we can usually choose either a long healthy, active life or a chronically sick existence for many years maintained with increasing medical & surgical interventions. If we follow the American lifestyle over the next few years we can expect the same outcomes; according to good medical authority we may be seeing parents routinely outliving their children for the first time in our history. It is now commonplace in America for young people to be suffering strokes or heart attacks and other chronic degenerative diseases that were usually found among the middle or old aged in the past. The major reason for this catastrophic decline in health and increased premature death appears to be largely due to diet, lack of exercise & an unhealthy lifestyle with increasing medical interventions with drugs and surgery. After thirty-five years in the healthcare profession I have tried to find an answer to this question from past doctors who have devoted time to research this topic. A few years ago I decided to put all my findings into one small book called “Connection – Towards a better understanding of health in medicine.” The conclusion I came to was that our health depends on almost everything! However there are just four factors we can all control ourselves. Let’s look at each of them now: Our Body. We must not forget that our body is an amazing mechanical structure that can suffer many of the problems that might affect any machine. It needs to be kept in fine adjustment to function optimally. We wouldn’t dream of driving a car with a twisted chassis or faulty wheel alignment, but most people happily try to get around with many mechanical problems in their spine. Luckily this is where your body is radically different from your car; it is able to compensate for many mechanical faults but at a cost of either pain or poor functioning. The first chapter of “Connection” explains the details of our body mechanics and what we can do to help ourselves. Our Food. We are what we eat, or “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”. Our diet is the most important factor underpinning health or laying the foundation for serious diseases for most of us in the West. I would heartily recommend you read an amazing best selling book giving the research behind this concept it is entitled “How Not To Die” by Dr. Michael Greger. My book “Connection” gives a very brief summary of some of the research findings that have led to these conclusions. Unfortunately the diet and nutrition industry has totally confused people and is driven by commercial interests that are very much like the drug industry. The truth seems to be that the most health promoting diet is the simplest and cheapest to follow. It is described as Whole Plant Nutrition and recommends you eat all you want of whole plant based foods and dishes and you will not need supplements (with just two possible exceptions), enzymes, special training or calorie counting. This diet drastically reduces the risk of developing most of the chronic diseases, normalizes your weight and will often reverse pathologies such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and hypertension. This same diet may also be the fastest way of tackling global warming and the destruction of our planet if most of the world’s population followed it. Our Breath. Your doctor checked your blood pressure, your weight, your reflexes, your blood chemistry, your heart & lung sounds, you may have had Peak Flow tests, even given you X-rays or MRI scans but why didn’t he check your breathing rate? We can live for three weeks without food, for three days without water but only three minutes without air. That life’s most fundamental activity, BREATHING, is not routinely checked by Western doctors (unless you are complaining of breathing difficulties like asthma, COPD or bronchitis) is a serious omission. If there were just one measure allowed when checking the health of a person I would suggest THEIR BREATHING would be the best choice. Why? Firstly it’s a quick, easy and cheap test. It takes less than a minute, is none invasive and does not require special expensive equipment. Secondly, many medical researchers have claimed dysfunctional breathing may be the cause of over a hundred modern diseases, so wouldn’t it make sense to at least diagnose it and then perhaps address this problem first? Thirdly, although our breathing is normally automatic and unconscious – like our heart, liver, & kidney activity - we can take conscious control of it and change our bad breathing habits for good normal ones, with just a little training. Fourthly, this route to better health and wellbeing empowers the patient and reduces their reliance on medical care and drugs. Surely a very desirable aim? My third chapter of “Connection” explains how to check your own breathing and how most diseases are associated with poor breathing. You may decide to study my free podcast breath-training course. “Better Breathing Means Better Health” found on most podcast sites. Our Mind. Did you know that your brain tomorrow will be different from how it is today? This is the latest thinking of how our brain functions; it is about “the plastic brain”. The most amazing thing about the human brain is that it has the ability to grow, change, re-arrange all our thoughts and mental processing from birth to death. We have a plastic brain that can do remarkable things such as cope with a stroke and re-organized all the activities that were done in one area that is damaged and allow them to be done in another area. Areas of the brain that are normally associated with speech can be used for sight or hearing. The old thinking was that we were born with a brain divided up into little boxes, each was allocated a specific job, this has all changed with the latest research. What does this mean to you and me? The first lesson we need to learn is “never to say never!” We cannot tell what is possible and what is not possible. The second lesson is that we can change the way we think, feel or behave in remarkable ways with a little help and effort. The third lesson is that despite the fact that we function much of our waking time with habits learned since childhood (it would be tough to have to learn how to talk, walk or clean our teeth the new every day! ) all these habitually programmed activities can be reprogrammed. How we can do this is the subject of this section of my book. The phrase used today is “If it fires, it wires!” Repeated nerve signals create stronger pathways. Did you know that every child, at birth, has a greater potential intelligence than Leonardo da Vinci ever used? That includes your own children and grandchildren. This finding is based on many years of clinical research and practical application by the mothers or fathers of tens of thousands of babies guided by Dr. Glen Domam and others. Watch the video on YouTube entitled “Glenn Doman Introducing The Institutes (Part I) Working with Children for over 50 years.” Finally, remember your mind is closely linked to all of the body activities and is perhaps the most significant connection discussed in my book. We are emerging from a long period of study and thinking based on reductionism, or the analysis and study of increasingly smaller and smaller parts of our whole, but now there is a move towards the more difficult task of understanding how every part is connected to every other part and every system is affecting every other system, this is Holism or Wholism. We must remember we need both reductionism and holism if we are to make any sense of the universe we live in. My book “Connection” discusses other key factors related to our health including family, community and even cosmic factors! It also offers an alternative theory of the universe to deal with the awkward question “What happened before the Big Bang?”

What is Health? Is It More Than an Absence of Disease?

**The Other “Five a Day” for Children** Every parent has become increasingly aware of the need for good nutrition, good exercise and supportive home & school environment for the health and wellbeing of their children. The government campaigns have advised “Five a Day” and more sport in schools, but as yet there has been no recognition of the equally vital matter of good breathing for good health. Poor breathing has been the hidden, silent factor responsible for many childhood health problems that can lay the foundation for a wide range of modern diseases in later life. Here is another “Five a Day” recommendation to help your child: 1. Ensure your child is a good breather. A simple test is the “Step exercise” Get your child to take a normal breath in then a normal breath out, then while they hold their nose see how many steps they can do, keeping their mouth closed before they need to release their nose to take another breath. This is a simple measure of how well oxygenated their body is: 120 to 80 steps indicates excellent breathing 60 to 80 steps is very good 40 to 60 steps is good 30 to 40 steps is poor and will be impairing their health. 20 to 30 steps is very poor with an almost certain adverse effect on their health Fewer than 20 steps is a dangerously low result and efforts should be made to correct this. Older children may be able to measure their breathing with a “Control Pause” Keeping their mouth closed, take a normal breath in then a normal breath out and see how many seconds they can hold their nose for before taking another breath in. This exercise should be easy and stress-free, it is a measure of their maximum COMFORTABLE breath hold. 45 to 60 seconds is excellent, 35 to 45 is very good, 25 to 35 is good, 20 to 25 is poor, 15 to 20 is very poor, 10 to 15 is seriously poor and under 10 suggests an urgent need to correct this. Why not check your own breathing with a Control Pause as well? 2. Help teach better breathing habits. Encourage quiet nose breathing all the time. Set a good example by improving your own breathing! 3. Watch for signs of bad breathing habits. The signs of poor breathing include mouth breathing, upper chest breathing, breathlessness, snoring at night. Set a good example by being aware of your own breathing faults! 4. Encourage relaxation and quiet when stressed. Teach quiet relaxation, breathing as gently as possible with all the body relaxed. Set a good example by learning to relax yourself! 5. Tell them why they need a nose & how to make it work well. The nose is for breathing & the mouth is for eating and talking. “They should breathe through their mouth as often as they eat through their nose!” Teach nose-clearing exercise: Breathe in then out through the nose, keep the mouth closed, hold the nose, gently nod the head until they need to breathe in, release the nose and take a breathe in. Repeat two or three times. Check their progress from time to time with (1) above. If your child, whatever age, mouth breathes rather than using the nose to breathe most of the time they could be heading for many health problems that could be easily avoided. Children who habitually mouth-breathe will usually develop crooked, crowded teeth and fail to develop normal facial features. They will be more at risk of developing asthma especially if there is a family history of asthma. They will probably suffer more throat and chest infections than others simply because they are not using their first line of defense; nose breathing that kills most airborne bugs and aids the immune system. As they get older and continue to mouth breathe they will begin to suffer the many health problems of chronic hidden hyperventilation, anxiety, panic attacks, hypertension, heart diseases, angina, hay fever, gastric problems, breathlessness, low energy, and the list goes on. Finally, there is a strong connection between what we eat and how we breathe, so this additional “Five a Day” is going to help with the original “Five a Day” and any improvement in diet will lead to an improvement in breathing. Don’t take our word for this, watch and hear a number of children from a Glasgow school who have trained this way, telling their own story on a video. HERE All this is not new, the dangers of mouth breathing were brought to the attention of the medical profession over a hundred years ago in a book published, not by a doctor, but by an artist who recognized the problem while painting the indigenous population of the Americas. “Shut your mouth and save your life”. Visit our website “Thebreathconnection.com” HERE to learn more about the health connections with our breathing, and if you want to understand the orthodontic relationship watch the video by Dr John Flutter, an Australian dentist HERE Learn the Buteyko Method on Skype at any distance and at your convenience, download pdf details HERE

The Other "Five a Day" for Children

Health & Fitness, Are They The Same? There is a lot of interest in keeping fit, getting fit and fitness training systems. But what is fitness? Is it about improving one's health? Is it about developing muscle bulk and strength? Is it about building stamina and physical abilities? Wikipedia has a definition: Physical fitness is a state of health and well-being and, more specifically, the ability to perform aspects of sports, occupations and daily activities. Physical fitness is generally achieved through proper nutrition, moderate-vigorous physical exercise, and sufficient rest. Wikipedia My question is “Could a person be physically very fit yet not be healthy?” We hear many stories of top athletes and bodybuilders suffering strokes, heart attacks or any other serious diseases despite the fact that they had achieved excellent physical strength and stamina. On the other hand, I would expect physical health for any person, would be an essential part of being healthy in mind and body. The confusion lies in the latter part of Wikipedia’s definition in my opinion; “nutrition, exercise and rest”. How many fitness centers and gyms promote the increased intake of quality meat for protein, the increased consumption of nutrient supplements such as milk protein, vitamins, and minerals without offering adequate advice on what might constitute optimum nutrition? There are many myths that are dispelled by solid scientific research, they include the belief that to be fit and strong we need quality protein from meat sources, that we couldn’t thrive on just a plant-based diet, that vitamin and mineral supplements are good for providing all the body’s needs and that with physical fitness comes improved health and increased longevity. Taking each myth in turn, it is a simple fact that the protein content of meat is about 30 grams per hundred calories consumed, and for plant-based food, it is the same 30 grams per hundred calories. To rely primarily on a animal product diet for ones protein needs would lead to a severe deficit of micro-nutrients such as vitamins and minerals, for the simple reason that the animal has already used up these nutrients for itself and with the consumption of the animal products come added toxins, residual antibiotics, or growth hormones generally found in factory farmed meat. As regards the use of mineral and vitamin supplements to make good such deficits, we discover things are a bit more complex, the body cannot process and absorb efficiently individual vitamins or minerals without the many other complex phytonutrients found in whole plant food. For instance, to replace the vitamin C benefit of an apple for our nutrition, we would have to consume many more times the quantity of vitamin C as a supplement, most of which would not be absorbed. Finally, although no one could disagree that we need a physically healthy body to enjoy optimal health, by over-concentration on this to the detriment of our diet, sleep, rest, lifestyle and mental state we can lay the foundation for other serious health problems including heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and cancer. So my recommendation is to take a more holistic approach to your health and wellbeing, yes, exercise, especially if your work is desk-bound, but don’t neglect your diet, your stress management, your breathing, your sleep quality, and get advice on all other lifestyle factors that will improve your health and longevity. The TotalHealthMatters! Lifestyle Course could be a step in this direction and can be accessed in the comfort of your own home on Skype. Details HERE

Health and Fitness, Are They The Same?

What is Asthma? – Big Business or Medical Confusion? “What is Asthma?”This question was posed in the Lancet over twelve years ago (Vol. 368, No. 9537, 26/8/06) and demonstrated there is no consensus to the answer. To add to the confusion recent research suggested that up to 40% of those diagnosed with asthma had been wrongly diagnosed and should not be on the medication prescribed. (Middlemore & Green Hospitals March 25th 2007) This must seem confusing for all those suffering the many symptoms that constitute the diagnosis of asthma. The wheeze, the breathlessness, the high mucus production, the acute allergic reaction to many triggers, the irritating cough, the low energy, the disturbed sleep that all appear to be relieved with prescribed asthma medication. Surely with this array of symptoms we can rely on an accurate diagnosis of the condition? There is no doubt that modern medication helps manage the symptoms associated with asthma, but what if the underlying cause of asthma symptoms were something as simple as dysfunctional breathing? This was exactly the conclusion that Dr Konstantin Buteyko came to after forty years of careful research. He discovered that every asthmatic over-breathed and that their asthma attacks occurred when their over-breathing was excessive. He discovered that if patients were taught to normalize their breathing and make minor adjustments to their lifestyle, their symptoms would disappear and would no longer need medication. His teaching came to the West initially in Australia in the 1980’s and has spread across the world since then, much to the relief of hundreds of thousands of asthma sufferers who now either need no medication or far less than they used to need. But here lies the major problem. The medical profession rightly demanded more research papers to verify the Professor’s findings and the experiences of all those happy asthma sufferers who had supposedly benefitted from their breath training. In fact, all the clinical trials of the Buteyko Method for the support of asthma patients have demonstrated up to 90% reduction in the need for reliever medication and up to 50% reduction of steroids, reduced coughing, reduced wheezing and less breathlessness along with improved sleep and general quality of life. However additional large trials would need financing and the usual source of funding of clinical trials is from the drug companies who benefit from the sales of asthma drugs, often around twenty percent of their earnings come from this product group. They reasonably have not offered to fund such trials, as the confirmation of this relationship would severely hit their profits and their first responsibility, as for any company, is to their shareholders. You may want to see two videos on my website: Asthmacarekent.co.uk entitled “Understanding Asthma“ and “Understanding Asthma- A Different Viewpoint” that compare these two views of the origins of asthma. Meanwhile, millions of people are being treated with ever-increasing doses of asthma drugs with poor results. The UK is one of the worst countries in Europe for asthma treatment according to the latest reports. Why should this be? There are many reasons besides the fundamental one of treating symptoms rather than the root cause. Inappropriate prescription of asthma drugs, inadequate A&E support, poor compliance of patients with their asthma management programs and excessive reliance on medication rather than greater education and training of asthma sufferers have all led to the current situation. The reason for our failures is being put down to inadequate funding, but more cash is not always the panacea. If every asthma nurse were to teach their patients the significance of breath control based on the clinically proven Buteyko Method there would be two major outcomes; the asthma drugs bill for the NHS would be reduced by half and patients would be better able to manage their asthma with less reliance on drugs and enjoy a better quality of life. The cost of the additional training would be offset within months by the ensuing savings on drugs, doctors’ appointments and reduced A&E admissions. Two doctors who referred a number of their asthma patients for Buteyko Training found they were saving thousands of pounds on drug prescription and medical intervention; the cost of training was quickly offset by the savings in the first year and since the training is a one-off, the savings continued into the future. At present Buteyko, Training is only available from private centres but considering a course may cost less than the servicing of your car and could transform your life, this ought not to be a barrier to asthmatics paying themselves. My Skype Training Course is available anywhere in the world and costs £150, it is based on five sessions over three weeks. Details are available on my website: HERE You don't want to pay anything to learn the Buteyko Method? Why not try to learn how on your own to start with? Now go to my **FREE podcast "Escape from Asthma" **HERE

What is Asthma? - Big Business or Medical Confusion?

Podcast 22: What’s The Cause of a Disease? Pathology or Ethology? Many years ago I asked myself the question, “What is the cause of health or what is the etiology of health?” A much wiser and experienced doctor also asked himself this same question over eighty years ago, he was a pathologist and although he understood the origin of most diseases, he had no answer to this question. He spent the rest of his life researching the question and his work is still as valid today as it was then. I have published a podcast on this, Episode 7 entitled “Health is Based on Family and Community” Seventy years on we find the medical profession is now trying to encourage this approach with “Social Prescribing” Well, returning to the question of “What is the origin of disease?” "Connection" by Michael Lingard may be obtained from Amazon HERE We have been taught that most diseases have specific causes, usually just involving one or two, they could be a virus, smoking, a gene or other such factor. This has become more and more confusing for the public as researchers discover links between more and more factors and particular diseases. So perhaps the answer is far more complex than we have been led to believe? What if, instead of concentrating our research and study in the field of pathology, we chose to shift our attention to more research and study in the field of ethology, or the study of health? A few years ago I published a small book entitled “Connection – Towards a better understanding of health in medicine” that made the case for the fact that health is connected to practically everything and that health could be regarded as the normal state of affairs. The forward in my book drew on the wisdom of Leonardo da Vinci who combined reductionism and holism in all his work. We need to study the finer parts of any problem (this is the task of reductionism) to help our understanding but we also need to see how the whole system works (this is the task of holism). Medicine has placed too much emphasis on reductionism to the detriment of understanding the whole, or holism. So if we are to understand where any particular disease comes from we need to take a far broader inspection of the sufferer’s life history to the emergence of their disease. Just as health depends on many factors including: our physical structural integrity and functioning, our food and fluid consumption, our quality of breathing, our levels of stress, our family and community support, the environmental factors of pollution in our air and water, infections from bacteria or viruses, our genetic make-up, our physical exercise, our mental health, our work, and many more factors. So too, any disease condition will require some or all of those same factors to allow its development. The good news is that we all have control over the vast majority of those factors, sometimes we may need professional guidance and help and indeed there are such factors as toxins in our environment that are difficult to avoid. Even here, our bodies have the capacity, when health is optimized, to eliminate or nullify the effects of toxic substances. To summarize I would contend that the greatest protection against every disease known to man is HEALTH! This is not a crazy oxymoron as it might seem, a health-promoting lifestyle has been shown to offer remarkable resistance against all the major diseases. So perhaps we should all take the optimistic view that by making every effort to improve our health we will give ourselves the greatest protection against every disease and live a long healthy, fulfilling life.

What's The Cause of a Disease? Pathology or Ethology?

Pigs Bite Back or “Pig Karma”! There’s no doubt that bacon is one of our favourite foods, the English breakfast is traditionally based on bacon and eggs with various other foods added. The bacon roll is a hot favourite as a quick snack. Sausages wrapped in bacon are regarded as a real treat. Bacon has decidedly become part of our national diet, but to meet this demand from fifty plus million consumers the farming of pigs has had to go big. Now pig farming is no longer a idyllic country scene where the few pigs were kept in their comfy sty, fed the best food and looked after with the greatest care and attention till eventually, the day comes for their demise, when even this necessary end was achieved with a certain amount of respect and concern for the animal. Today pig farming is on an industrial scale and the animals are regarded more like objects to be processed efficiently and their final end must come as an immense relief to them since they are sentient animals that can experience enjoyment or pain like any other mammal. If pork in all its forms was an essential part of human diets, or if it conveyed some particular health benefit that no other food could give us or if we could not find sufficient nutrition from alternatives to pig or for that matter any animal foods, then there would be a sound case for the continued expanding production and consumption of this animal. But the reality is that none of those conditions apply; there are no nutritional benefits of pork over other foods, it is not an essential part of any person’s diet and it is a resource costly food to be produced in quantity. Pig farming today consumes excessive amounts of energy, land, water compared with other plant-based foods; a pound of pork requires over 500 gallons of water, 12 Kilowatt hours of energy, over 6 pounds of animal feed. A pound of pork produces the equivalent CO2 emissions to an average car driven 15 miles and the waste from pig factory farms, approximately 3000 pound a year per animal, is a serious hazard to health and causes pollution of waterways. So, all in all, it would seem our love of pork comes at a high price to the environment and natural resources but, hey, what the heck, we love it! Karma is simply defined as what goes round comes round! Maybe there is a “pig karma” since we now are told by the World Health Organization that our favourite food is killing us! Bacon, ham, and sausages rank alongside cigarettes as a major cause of cancer, the World Health Organisation has said, placing cured and processed meats in the same category as asbestos, alcohol, arsenic, and tobacco. The report from the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said there was enough evidence to rank processed meats as group 1 carcinogens because of a causal link with bowel cancer. Just like the tobacco story that took fifty years for the medical profession and governments to accept the evidence that “smoking kills” there will be many years of debate and counter-argument from the meat industry before our attitudes to eating meat and especially processed meats change our dietary habits. There is a term “precautionary measures” that applies here. Smokers didn’t need to wait fifty years to be told by the government that smoking is bad for your health printed on the packet, they could have chosen to play safe and quit when the first serious concerns were published. Likewise, since we do not need meat in our diet for optimal health, despite what the meat industry and their paid experts will tell you, why not quit it and play safe? That would be a precautionary measure that makes good sense for your long-term health and the planet’s sustainability for our children and grandchildren as well.

Pigs Bite Back or "Pig Karma"!

You Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease! The most common cause of death in the West is a heart attack; in America over 40% of deaths are caused by a heart attack more than any other disease or injury including cancer. In the UK over 26% of deaths are from heart disease, around 160,000 every year, the second major cause of premature death after cancer. Every 24-hour is some 3000 Americans will have a heart attack roughly the same number that died in the September 11th terrorist attack in 2001. Heart disease used to be a condition of old age, today it is increasingly found among young people and even children. A study of 300 male soldiers in their 20’s who had died in action had their hearts examined and it was found that 77% had evidence of gross heart disease. What is heart disease? Most heart disease is associated with a narrowing of arteries supplying blood to the heart due to the slow production of fatty plaque. At some point this hidden problem goes critical and for blockage on vital artery ensues causing the heart attack. We now know what are the main causes of a heart attack. Risk factors include the following: High cholesterol level in the blood. (Statins are not the answer) Stress High blood pressure Smoking Lack of physical exercise Overweight or obesity Of all these factors the most reliable predictor of heart disease is elevated cholesterol levels in the blood. Elevated blood cholesterol is linked to consumption of animal-based foods. Smoking and high blood pressure are also related to stress in people’s lives and as stress has a profound effect on our health this should always be addressed and managed. Breath training is a proven way of managing the adverse effects of stress, you can check out this on my website “thebreathconnection.com.” Thousands of scientific papers been published concerning the dietary impact on heart disease and perhaps the major relationship that is almost universally agreed as a predictor of heart disease is the cholesterol levels in the body. An eminent American surgeon Dr. Esselstyne was concerned about the poor treatment of cancer and heart disease as there was little effort at prevention but most research work focused on treatment. He began a major study looking at the effect of reducing fat and cholesterol intake of his patients. This meant almost eliminating all animal products, refined oils, dairy produce, fish and foul. Of the group of patients that are adhered to this dietary change, the average cholesterol levels fell from 246 mg/dL at the start to below 132 mg/dL. Over the 11 years of the study, only one participant had a coronary event and this was a patient who had strayed from the diet for two years; after this incident, he returned to the plant-based diet and ceased to have any symptoms or further events. More detailed information from many leading doctors can be found on my website “thefoodconnection.org.uk” Meanwhile start by shifting your diet towards a whole food plant-based diet, eating less meat, fish, processed foods, dairy food, oils and fats and refined foods like white flour or white sugar. You can check your progress with the “4LeafSurvey” screening test either on my website or directly online at “4leafsurvey.com”

You Can Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease!

A New “Wonder Drug” or Just Food For Thought? If there was a new drug you could take that promised you would; live a long healthy life, look and feel younger, have more energy, lose weight, if overweight, lower your blood cholesterol, prevent or even reverse heart disease, lower your risk of prostate, breast or other cancers, preserve your eyesight in your later years, prevent or reverse diabetes, avoid surgery in many instances, vastly decrease the need for other pharmaceutical drugs, keep your bones strong, avoid impotence, avoid a stroke, prevent kidney stones, alleviate constipation, lower your blood pressure, avoid Alzheimer’s Disease, beat arthritis, and much more…..? And that this new drug would not cost you a fortune, but would save you thousands of pounds over your lifetime. And that there would be no adverse side-effects, so common for most drugs. Would you be willing to take part in a research trial of such a drug? Well, sadly there is no such drug on the market if there was it would be an instant best seller and make the drug company a fortune. There are many drugs that can help one or two of these conditions but at a cost of the usual undesirable side-effects. However, there’s no need to be disappointed because all the evidence of over forty years of research and the study of the lifestyles of hundreds of millions of people across the world suggests we may not need a drug at all, but we simply need to change the food we eat along with a few other simple lifestyle changes to achieve most of these same results. Yes, it would seem that with the right diet could achieve most of the benefits outlined at the start by most of us barring any major environmental or other unavoidable health risks. That diet would be a “whole plant diet”, not requiring numerous food supplements, pills, herbals calorie counting, extra shopping costs or expensive professional consultations. The evidence for this is very strong. If you want to learn more visit or if you want to make an immediate start enroll on the “TotalHealthMatters Lifestyle Training Course” visit for details.

A New" Wonder Drug "or Just, Food For Thought?

This series of podcasts will take you on a journey of discovery, the discovery of the origins of health, a discovery of all the many ways you can practically guarantee a long healthy life without the ever-increasing intake of pills and potions. You will learn one of the greatest secrets in medicine today; that health is the norm for all of us. You will learn about all the many health myths that still confuse us all, even our doctors. These podcasts are based on over thirty-five years of healthcare practice that have drawn on the wisdom of many past great minds that have studied the nature and origin of health.

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Your Health in Your Hands!

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