If you care about your health, and value your right to choose homoeopathy here is what you need to know – and how you can help.

The Medicines Act is being simplified, which is a good thing because much duplication is being removed. However, as a result there are some key elements which could adversely affect everyone’s access to homoeopathic medicines if the all of the proposals go through.

If the current proposals by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) are endorsed by Government this is what would happen:

You would no longer able to get homoeopathic medicines by phone or online

To get any unlicensed homoeopathic medicine a face-to-face consultation would be required at a registered pharmacy.  There are literally thousands of unlicensed homoeopathic remedies and these make up the majority of homoeopathic prescriptions, while there are only 50 licensed homoeopathic medicines.  This will also mean you cannot legally buy unlicensed homoeopathic medicines online or over the phone as you currently do.

Homoeopaths would not be able to dispense or prescribe medicines to you

Homoeopathic practitioners would not be able to dispense unlicensed homoeopathic medicines to their patients. This is because homoeopaths are not recognised by this law as being supplementary prescribers and it will be illegal for homoeopathic pharmacies to supply them with the essential (unlicensed) medicines required for their patients.

You would have to get your homoeopathic medicines personally at a handful of licensed homoeopathic pharmacies in Britain

Hundreds of thousands of people who currently have prescriptions filled for unlicensed homoeopathic medicines will be unable to obtain their urgent medicines.  The estimated 6 million users of homoeopathy in Britain cannot be expected to be supplied medicines face-to-face by less than five licensed premises.

What you can do to stop this from happening

The Society of Homeopaths is asking everyone to write to their MP, or better still go and see your MP – especially if your MP sits on the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments or is involved with Health or Pharmacy.

All that needs to be done is for a small change to be made to Section 10 of the proposed new Medicines Act which will allow greater freedom to dispense remedies to practitioners and could also overcome the face-to-face issue which is unworkable.

It is anticipated that the new Medicines Act will be put before the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments for approval in late May/early June for implementation in July, taking action now is critical!

Write to your MP

Here are some helpful tips to get you started.

First of all you can identify the name of your MP by clicking here. You can also find out which MPs sit on which committees by clicking here.

If you are emailing make sure you put ‘Medicines Act consolidation 2012’ in the subject line, or if you are sending a letter you can head it ‘RE: Medicines Act consolidation 2012’.

There are some key points you should try to make. It is not necessary or recommended to include all the text suggested below.  It is more important that you personalise your letter with your own views and experiences.

• I’m deeply concerned that a draft proposal set out by the MHRA as part of its consolidation and review of the Medicines Act 1968 could have a significant impact on my ability as a patient to access homoeopathic medicines in the UK.

• In its current form section 10 of the proposal would only allow unlicensed homoeopathic medicines to be bought directly from a pharmacist face-to-face, in effect outlawing the purchase of these medicines over the telephone or via online ordering. This would mean I would be deprived of the medicines that I have found to be so beneficial to my health.

• There are only five homoeopathic pharmacies in the UK, so most homoeopathic medicines are ordered from these specialist pharmacies either by phone or via the Internet. The enforcement of section 10 in its current form will have serious consequences for the six million people in the UK who choose to use this form of complementary medicine.

• If not revised the proposal would also have serious consequences for more than 2,000 homoeopathic practitioners, many of whom would find it impossible to treat patients like myself because they can no longer obtain the appropriate homoeopathic  medicine.

• I understand that it is central to government health policy to increase patient choice. Section 10 will eliminate choice for people like me who want to be treated with homoeopathy.

• I would like to call on your support in getting the Health Minister to make a small change to the proposed language of the revised Medicines Act to ensure that I have continued access to a full range of homoeopathic medicines and that my right to choose homoeopathic treatment is maintained.

It doesn’t need to take you very long – in fact, try to keep the letter short (a page or less), and emphasise any points that are relevant to the particular MP – but your support is so crucial in helping to keep homoeopathic medicines freely available to everyone.

The findings, published in BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, show that naturopathy may have several positive effects on people with type-2 diabetes, which affects 346 million people world wide.

In this small observational study 40 people with diabetes received counseling on diet, exercise, and glucose monitoring from four naturopathic physicians (NDs) in addition to conventional diabetes care from their medical doctors, including prescription medications. Many of the participants also received stress-management care and dietary supplements.

Researchers then compared these individuals with 329 patients receiving only conventional diabetes care. In six months and about four naturopathic treatment visits, participants demonstrated improved self-care, more consistent monitoring of glucose, and improved moods.

In addition, testing showed that hemoglobin A1c rates (a measure of blood-sugar control) were nearly a full percentage point lower in those who received naturopathic care. This compares with a drop of only 0.5% over the same time period for 329 clinically similar patients receiving only conventional diabetes care.

An antidote to expensive treatment

Finding more effective ways of treating type-2 diabetes is important say US researchers at Group Health Research Institute and Bastyr University Research Institute because it is one of the top-10 causes of death in Americans and is costly to treat: $1 out of every $10 spent on health care in the United States is used to fight type-2 diabetes, at a cost of $178 billion every year.

But, of course, diabetes is a global problem and many countries spend similarly large amounts of money treating the condition.

For example, in the UK It is estimated that 10% of the NHS budget is spent just on diabetes. Treating it costs an estimated £1m an hour or £16,666 a minute, according to diabetes.co.uk. In total, £9 billion a year is spent on treating diabetes and its complications.

Treating this condition effectively through more natural –and less expensive – naturopathic principles could free up resources needed for other areas of healthcare.

Two studies involving a total of 346 patients showed that hypnotherapy alleviated symptoms in 40% of those affected − and that the improvement is long-term.

Around 15% of people in the developed world are thought to suffer from IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). Symptoms include abdominal pain and alteration of bowel habits, as well as abdominal distension and bloating.

Those with milder symptoms can be helped through lifestyle advice and some medical treatments, but those with severe symptoms currently lack an effective treatment option.

But say researchers at The Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden,  their findings demonstrate that hypnotherapy provides lasting relief, even for severe symptoms.

Can be used in ordinary healthcare

The treatment of IBS using hypnotherapy has been studied before, but only at highly specialised “hypnotherapy centres.” Researcher Magnus Simrén and his colleagues at The Sahlgrenska Academy have conducted two studies to evaluate a form of treatment that could be used in ordinary healthcare.

In the first study,  published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, 138 patients with IBS received hypnotherapy treatment for one hour a week over 12 weeks. The study showed that 40% demonstrated a satisfactory reduction in symptoms, compared with 1% in the untreated control group.

“The treatment involves the patient learning to control their symptoms through deep relaxation and individually adapted hypnotic suggestions. The idea is for the patient to then use this technique in their everyday life,” says Simrén.

Long-lasting effect 

The positive effect was sustained for the entire year for which the study ran and led to an improvement in the quality of life experienced by the treatment group.

In the other study, which was published Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology, 208 patients who had previously received hypnotherapy were examined. The results showed that 85% of those who had been helped by hypnosis still felt the benefits of the treatment up to seven years later – and that the majority still actively use the technique in their everyday lives.

“In this group, use of the healthcare system as a result of stomach and bowel symptoms had also reduced by 70%,” says Simrén.  “Overall, our studies show that hypnotherapy is an effective method of treating IBS, even when provided outside of specialist ‘hypnotherapy centres’.

Using hypnosis, say the researchers, could reduce both the consumption of healthcare and the cost to society, and that hypnosis therefore belongs in the arsenal of treatments for IBS.

“We found that the health and wellbeing profile of people who had meditated for at least two years was significantly higher in the majority of health and wellbeing categories when compared to the Australian population,” said Dr Ramesh Manocha, and colleagues at Sydney Medical School.

“Most markedly there was a robust relationship between the frequency of experiencing mental silence and better mental health. This definition is based on it being the form of meditation practised for centuries.”

The national study is a world-first health quality-of-life survey of long-term meditators. Unusually, it used the same measurement instruments as the one used by the federal government’s National Health and Wellbeing Survey.

The national survey gives a numerical score to each facet of mental and physical health and because it has been applied as a national measure for the past 10 years in studies around the world involving millions of people. It allowed the researchers to accurately compare the health profile of the meditators surveyed with the general Australian population.

Beyond sitting quietly

More than 350 people from across Australia who have meditated for at least two years were assessed for the national study which has been published in the journal of Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

“We focused on the definition of meditation as mental silence and surveyed practitioners of Sahaja Yoga meditation who practise a form of meditation aimed at achieving this state rather than relaxation or mindfulness methods that are usually the focus of other forms,” Dr Manocha, a Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Psychiatry, said.

The meditators were asked how often they experienced ‘mental silence’ for more than a few minutes at any one time; 52% said that they experienced mental silence “several times per day or more” while 32% were experiencing it “once or twice per day”.

The area of greatest difference was in mental health, where long-term meditators, with a minimum of two years of regular practice, were more than 10% better off than the general population.

A strategy for prevention

The meditators were primarily non-smokers and non-drinkers, so to adjust for that potential bias the researchers also compared the meditators to those parts of the Australian population who did not drink or smoke, and achieved the same results.

According to Dr Manocha: “Our analysis showed very little relationship at all between how often the person who meditated physically sat down to meditate and mental health scores. However the relationship was clearly apparent in relation to how often they experienced the state of mental silence.

“The health advantage appears to be connected to this aspect more than any other feature of the meditation lifestyle. In other words it is quality over quantity.

“This is one of the first studies to assess the long term health impacts of meditation on health and wellbeing. When we take the evidence of this study, along with the results of our other clinical trials, it makes a strong case for the use of meditation as a primary prevention strategy, especially in mental health,” he added.

Scientists say the 360,000 tonnes of milk wasted in the UK each year creates greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 100,000 tonnes of CO2. The study by the University of Edinburgh says this is the same as is emitted by about 20,000 cars annually.

Some 99% of milk thrown away by British consumers is “avoidable waste” say the study team. Almost half of this waste is a result of too much being served, with the rest discarded for being sour or past its sell-by date.

Simply specifically nitrous oxide which is about 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide and is rising globally as a result of agricultural expansion.

But the researchers, writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, also suggest the food industry could reduce emissions by seeking more efficient ways to use nitrogen-based fertilisers. These suggestions may seem like small actions, but they are at least within the realm of the possible for most of us.

Cutting back on meat

The study also found that halving the amount of chicken consumed in the UK and other developed countries to levels eaten in Japan could cut greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking 10 million cars off the road.

Figures show that if average chicken consumption in developed countries fell from the current level of 26kg each per year to the Japanese average of about 12kg each by 2020, global emissions from poultry would fall below current levels, despite increased output from the developing world.

This would cut the predicted global output of nitrous oxide, a key greenhouse gas, from this source by almost 20%, based on current growth rates.

Demand for food, particularly meat, is expected to increase over the next few decades as the world’s population continues to grow and emerging countries consume more.

Beyond CO2

Agriculture is the biggest source of nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas that is emitted by soil and fertilisers. Producing meat produces more emissions than growing crops, as large amounts of cereals are grown to feed livestock.

According to Dr David Reay at Edinburgh University, who led the study: “Nitrous oxide is the major greenhouse gas from agriculture. It stands out as the gas you can really reduce in terms of emissions if you can cut down on agricultural waste and increase agricultural efficiency. Eating less meat and wasting less food can play a big part in helping to keep a lid on greenhouse gas emissions as the world’s population increases.”

Cutting back on meat is not only good for the environment − it has health benefits for us too. For some easy ideas and inspiration − even if you only want to cut back by just one day a week − check out the websites of groups like Meatfree Monday in the UK, the campaign run Paul McCartney and his family and Meatless Monday in the US, a project of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Researchers at the University of California at Irvine and from the US Army tested the impact of email overload on 13 people in a suburban office setting.

Heart rate monitors were attached to computer users, while software sensors detected how often they switched windows. People with email switched windows an average of 37 times per hour. Those without changed screens half as often – about 18 times in an hour.

Multitasking is bad for the heart

Importantly, those who checked their emails more frequently were physiologically in what the researcher called a steady “high alert” state, with more constant heart rates. Those removed from email for five days experienced more natural, variable heart rates. Variable heart rate is a sign of good heart health.

The study was funded by the Army and the National Science Foundation. Participants were computer-dependent civilian employees at the Army’s Natick Soldier Systems Center outside Boston. Those with no email reported feeling better able to do their jobs and stay on task, with fewer stressful and time-wasting interruptions.

Speaking at the at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Computer-Human Interaction Conference in Austin, Texas, co-author of the study, UCI informatics professor Gloria Mark noted, “We found that when you remove email from workers’ lives, they multitask less and experience less stress”.  A five day break from email stress saw the heart rates of the participants return nor a normal state of variability.

Mark said the results suggested that “Email vacations on the job may be a good idea” and that the findings could be useful for boosting productivity. The only downside to an email vacation, she said, was that it was linked with feeling ‘somewhat isolated.”

The illusion of control

The problem of email stress has been noted in other studies. In 2007 a University of Glasgow study concluded that regularly checking emails was a kind of office worker’s plague associated that distorted our sense of being in control.

Amongst the 177 individuals in academic and creative jobs surveyed,  34% felt ‘stressed’ by the sheer number of emails and obligation to respond quickly. A further 28% were ‘driven’ because they saw them as a source of pressure. Just 38% felt ‘relaxed’ enough about emails to not reply until a day or even a week later.

Using monitoring software this study also found office workers typically switched applications to view their emails as many as 30-40 times an hour, for anything from a few seconds to a minute. While half the participants said they checked more than once an hour and 35% said they did so every 15 minutes.

Smartphones make it worse

Earlier this year UK researchers found that checking smartphones for e-mails and messages – outside of work – is linked with higher stress levels. In this study the most stressed people of all were those who were convinced the phone had vibrated or rung, alerting them to an incoming message, when it hadn’t (called “phantom alerts”).

Speaking at a British Psychological Society conference, author of the study Richard Balding said it was a serious problem for employee health and productivity:

“Smart phone use is increasing at a rapid rate and we are likely to see an associated increase in stress from social networking. Organisations will not flourish if their employees are stressed, irrespective of the source of stress, so it is in their interest to encourage their employees to switch their phones off; cut the number of work emails sent out of hours, reduce people’s temptation to check their devices.”

So what can you do?

Many aspects of work can be bad for your health including long hours sitting down and the long commute that some people have to get there in the first place. You don’t have to be a slave to email as well, and there are a few practical steps you can take to lessen email stress. Consider these tips:

1 If you get lot of junk mail – now is the time to unsubscribe.

2 Turn off the New Mail Alert pop-up or sound alert.

3 Reduce the frequency with which you check or update the inbox (set your computer to update every 20-30 minutes instead of 5 minutes, for example).

4 Use your preview function – to scan through email and decide what needs responding to and what doesn’t.

5 Get organised. Use folders to file and prioritise incoming mail and actions you need to take.

6 Don’t assume you have to respond to every email, respond immediately or even have the last word in an email thread.

7 Use filters and rules that come with your email software to mark things like subscriptions and newsletters as read as soon as they come in or to move them to specific folders to deal with later.

8 Talk to your co-workers. How often do end up sending an email to someone sitting a few yards away from you?

9 Turn your smart phone off at mealtimes, and weekends, at the gym, when shopping and on holidays… (you get the idea!).

In a study published in the journal Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity researchers from the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania  describe how a small group of overweight or obese people who consumed a fraction of an ounce of ground green coffee beans each day lost about 10% of their body weight.

“Based on our results, taking multiple capsules of green coffee extract a day – while eating a low-fat, healthful diet and exercising regularly – appears to be a safe, effective, inexpensive way to lose weight,” said lead author Joe Vinson, PhD.

The small study involved 16 overweight or obese people aged 22-26 years who took capsules of the extract or capsules containing a placebo for a total of 22 weeks.

Comparing doses

The study participants alternated between a low dose and a higher dose of the extract and a placebo with a two week ‘wash-out’ period in between each phase of the trial when participants simply ate normally.

The wash out period serves as a reset for each individual and this type of ‘cross-over’ study has advantages because each person serves as his or her own “control,” improving the chances of getting an accurate result.

The low dose consisted of 700 mg of the coffee extract, and the high dose was 1,050 mg. All of the participants were monitored for their overall diet (calories, food eaten, etc.) and exercise over the study period. Their calories, carbohydrates, fats and protein intake did not change during the study, nor did their exercise regimen change.

10% decrease in weight

Participants lost an average of 17 pounds during the 22 weeks of the study. There was an average of a 10.5% decrease in overall body weight and a 16% decrease in body fat.

Vinson noted that the higher dose seemed to be the most effective and said that weight loss might have been significantly faster, except that participants received the placebo and the lower dose of green coffee extract for part of the study period.

The study was funded by Applied Food Sciences, which makes the green coffee antioxidant supplement. However previous studies have also shown that green coffee can aid weight loss.

This study was the first to use higher amounts of the coffee extract and the first to compare the response to various doses.

Beyond caffeine

Based on those studies, Vinson believes that the effects of green coffee bean extract is is not due to its caffeine content; caffeine actually accounts for a very small percentage of the coffee bean’s make-up.

Instead, it is likely due to a substance called chlorogenic acid that is present in unroasted coffee beans.

Chlorogenic acid breaks down when coffee beans are roasted (usually at a temperature of 464-482 degrees Fahrenheit). Roasting gives coffee beans their distinctive colour, aroma and flavour. Green coffee beans, in contrast, have a more herby aroma and a slightly bitter taste.

In what may be a ground-breaking decision, the Italian Court of Rimini has ruled that causation between an MMR vaccine and the resulting autism in a young child “has been established.”

The unnamed child received the vaccine in March of 2004 and on returning home immediately developed adverse symptoms. During the next year the child regressed, receiving the autism diagnosis one year later and is now 100% disabled by the disease.

The Italian court ruled that the child “has been damaged by irreversible complications due to vaccination (prophylaxis trivalent MMR)” and ordered the Ministry of Health to compensate the child with a 15 year annuity and to reimburse the parents of their court cost.

The judgement can be found in full  here and the original news report in Italian appears here. A rough Google translation appears here.

The case is expected to go to appeal as authorities are concerned it may set a legal precedent.

Not the first judgement against the vaccine

This, however, is the second recent judgement to come to this conclusion. Earlier this year a US court also ruled that the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine can cause autism.

In a ruling that kept very quiet in the press, the US Court of Federal Claims has conceded that the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, which was in vaccines until 2002, caused autism in the case of one child.

The ruling was just one of 4,900 cases currently being considered for compensation payments. Health officials are concerned that it could open the floodgates for even more claims.

The ruling, made by US Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler, was made last November, and was one of three test cases into the MMR-autism link that was being considered by a three-member panel, which Keisler chaired.

The case involved a child who received nine vaccinations in July 2000, when she was 18 months old. Two of these contained thimerosal.  Within days, the girl, who had previously been healthy, began to exhibit loss of language skills, no eye contact, loss of response to verbal direction, insomnia, incessant screaming, and arching.

A diagnosis of autism was confirmed seven months later.

In its defence, the US government claimed the girl had a pre-existing mitochondrial disorder that was aggravated by the vaccine. However in his conclusion, Keisler said that “compensation is appropriate”.

Too much heat, not enough light

Both findings would appear to support the controversial findings of Dr Andrew Wakefield who, in 1998 published an article in the Lancet suggesting a link between the vaccine and autism.  Official reaction to the paper was of such force and such outrage that the Lancet withdrew the paper on the grounds that it was scientifically unsound.

Wakefield has been in a battle for his professional reputation ever since and the question of the proposed link between the MMR vaccine and autism has been largely sidelined (though not solved) by bitter and very public professional rows that have done little to bring clarity to concerned parents.

Read more here.

Canadian researchers looked at 17 randomised controlled trials with 2121 participants between the ages of 1 and 65 years to determine how effective and safe zinc was in treating the common cold.

All trials were double-blinded and used placebos as well as oral zinc preparations. The authors found that, compared with placebos, zinc significantly reduced the duration of cold symptoms. High doses of ionic zinc (which contains micronised particles of zinc, usually taken as a liquid) were more effective than lower doses at shortening the duration of cold symptoms.

There was say the researchers, some evidence that people taking zinc were less likely to have symptoms after one week, although there was no difference in symptoms between the two groups at three days.

While zinc appeared to reduce the duration of symptoms in adults, in this studythere was no apparent effect in children.

A long history of use

The common cold places a heavy burden on society, accounting for approximately 40% of time taken off work and millions of days of school missed by children each year. The idea that zinc might be effective against the common cold came from a study carried out in 1984, which showed that zinc lozenges could reduce how long symptoms lasted.

Previous studies have shown conflicting effects of zinc in reducing cold symptom severity and the duration of symptoms. Though the weight of the evidence suggests that zinc lozenges are a useful tool in managing the common cold, though scientists always fall short of recommending it was a treatment because they are unclear about exactly how it works (though the same could be said about a number of widely used drugs prescribed regularly by doctors!).

Support from other studies

In the current review, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), the authors used a different form of analysis to look at the data. This led them to conclude that zinc had only a weak effect – a conclusion at odd with several previous studies.

For instance, in 2011 a Finnish review found that they could reduce the duration of colds by up to 40%. Earlier in 2011 a review by the prestigious Cochrane Collaboration also concluded that zinc syrup, lozenges or tablets taken within a day of the onset of cold symptoms reduce the severity and length of illness. At seven days, more of the patients who took zinc had cleared their symptoms compared to those who took placebos.

Furthermore in the Cochrane review, children who took zinc syrup or lozenges for five months or longer caught fewer colds and took less time off school. Zinc also reduced antibiotic use in children, which is important because overuse has implications for antibiotic resistance.

In addition the potential side effects of oral zinc were highlighted in the Canadian study. These included leaving a bad taste in the mouth and nausea but no conclusions were drawn as to whether these responses were related to dosage.

Future trials, say the authors, should be designed to help understand the balance between the maximum tolerable doses of bioavailable zinc with consideration toward potential dose-related adverse effects.

The substance, called caffeic acid phenethyl ester or CAPE, is made from propolis, the resin honeybees use to patch holes in their hives. Propolis has been known and used for centuries as a natural remedy for teeth and skin, as well as a defence against viruses and bacteria.

The researchers at University of Chicago Medicine studied CAPE in the test tube and in animal models and the results are published today in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.

Used on cancer cell lines even at low concentrations, CAPE successfully slowed the proliferation of cultured cells isolated from human prostate tumours.

When the researchers then fed CAPE to mice that had early stages of the human form of prostate cancer, it proved effective at slowing the growth of the disease.

Six weeks into the treatment the compound decreased tumour volume growth rate by 50%, but when CAPE treatment was stopped, tumour growth resumed its prior rate. The results suggested that CAPE stopped cell division rather than killing cancerous cells.

The CAPE mice also didn’t lose any weight during the treatment, which researchers said indicated that the compound was not overly toxic.The researchers said the compound appeared to stop the growth of the cancer cells by masking their ability to use a system of signals to detect nutrition. If cells don’t sense the presence of the food they need, such as glucose, they will stop growing.

Yet another reason to save our bees

As an animal study it’s results are not directly applicable to humans, but  the results are so encouraging that the researchers say human trials are warranted.

Neal’s Yard Remedies, is of course a vocal campaigner when it come to saving our bees. Our Bee Lovely campaign is helping fund groups like  Buglife, Landlife  and Pesticide Action Network UK   who help educate us all about how vital bees are to our world and how devastating pesticides like neonics are.

Clearly there is still so much we don’t understand about how much bees contribute to the welfare of humans. Let’s make sure we continue to contribute to the welfare of our bees by fighting to save them from toxic pesticides.

Sign the Bee Lovely and Help Save the Bees petition here.