After qualifying at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, I worked in general medicine for a few years. I loved it, apart from getting up at night which I hated with a vengeance. Then I moved into general practice. It soon became obvious that many of my patient’s problems were not helped by conventional medicine. A few patients insisted that there must be an answer to their problems and I, as a doctor, should know these answers. They were annoying but I am now grudgingly grateful to them. They forced me to look for answers. These eventually came, slowly, unpredictably and often too late for them. But later others benefitted. What I learned eventually became a series of patient leaflets, which are available on my website.
Soon after entering general practice I discovered BSEM. At the time, the main area of interest of the society was food intolerances. However, what struck me was these practitioners were always looking for answers and many were achieving remarkable results. The atmosphere in these conferences was quite different from mainstream ones; they generated a sense of energy and excitement. I also explored other alternative approaches (homeopathy, hypnotherapy, NLP, EFT, Electro-crystal therapy) and like with BSEM these conferences had a buzz about them.
All was well until I heard they were building an incinerator near to where I was living. I knew nothing about these but suspected these were a very bad idea. I found myself on a steep learning curve and eventually co-wrote a booklet on the topic (now on BSEM website). I soon realised that incinerators were just the tip of a large iceberg and toxicity was a massive global problem, contributing to so many of today’s diseases (notably cancer and auto immune disease). Worryingly toxicity goes almost completely unrecognised, and hence untreated, by conventional medicine. Both doctors and patients are hampered by the fact that mainstream medicine lacks any standard test capable of diagnosing toxicity.
I became fascinated by the many people who recovered from major diseases against the odds. I felt their hard-won discoveries had something to teach us all, something that could change the way we look at health. This eventually led to my book “Curing the Incurable”.
So what can I say about BSEM? It has grown from a fairly narrow field to one much broader and one with a message which has astonishingly wide-ranging implications for society.
If all doctors understood the central importance of food (Hippocrates did give them a little hint) we would have a chance of tackling the huge burden of chronic disease which is now becoming unaffordable by even the richest nations of the world. BSEM has had a pioneering role in teaching about food and nutrition. This is important as doctors get virtually no education in nutrition at medical school.
Health has reached a crisis point and many would say the NHS is broken. The problems we face are immense and growing. Intensive agriculture is taking us to the edge of a precipice: the UN warns that we may have only have sixty more years left before we have no topsoil (that means no more food). The food industry has swamped the world with cheap junk food creating a health disaster of colossal proportions: an extraordinary rise in obesity and diabetes (400% in UK in 40 years but far worse overseas, in countries like China). This has put huge pressures on health services worldwide.
During my years in general practice, I witnessed a staggering increase in prescribing; tripling in fifteen years, at huge expense. This had no discernible effect on the rise in chronic disease. Pharmaceutical companies have routinely been fined millions and sometimes billions of dollars for falsifying research and putting lives at risk. Sadly, most drug trials have become an exercise in getting the results the drug company wants, deceiving doctors and hugely distorting medicine. Much has been written about how the industry has sidelined and blocked non-patentable and yet effective remedies (most notably for cancer). There must be a better way forward.
We also face a global burden of toxicity from largely untested chemicals (and electro-magnetic pollution) and we are seeing big increases in cancer, degenerative and auto-immune disease, and a disturbing rise in brain disorders and mental health issues in our children. Governments claim they want to fix our health service but continue to subsidise junk food and turn a blind eye to the causes of ill-health.
BSEM have been at the forefront; warning about these many dangers. However, on a more mundane level BSEM is about finding more answers for patients, and unravelling the ever more complex problems patients now have, and helping the increasing number of people that mainstream medicine has given up on.
I am extremely grateful to BSEM for helping me find more effective ways of treating patients, for all the brilliant conferences and for maintaining my enthusiasm for medicine, decade after decade. My hope is you find BSEM helps you as much as it has helped me.