Innholdsfortegnelse for April/May 2021 i What Doctors Don't Tell You Australia/NZ

While the Covid-19 vaccine rollout grows apace around the globe, both of us are continuously astonished to see that no government or health authority has ever bothered to discuss the most basic of questions about this disease. For instance, why is it that certain populations, like American and British people, have more deaths from Covid than others? What factors differentiate someone who gets Covid and experiences a mild form of the illness from someone who gets a severe form of the disease and dies? Thus far, doctors only point to a few characteristics that predispose people to serious Covid: age, health conditions like heart disease, diabetes or vascular disease, and being a person of color. And they leave it at that, as though it is a strange accident of birth.…

Taking up a Mediterranean diet could be all it takes to stop localized prostate cancer from spreading. Eating more fruits, vegetables, fish and pulses like beans, peas and lentils will manage the cancer and stop it growing or spreading. As a result, invasive surgery will probably not be necessary, say researchers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The researchers tested the diet on 410 men diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer whose markers for disease progression, including their PSA score, were measured every six months. The average age of the group was 64; 82 percent of the men were white, and 8 percent black. Some of the men didn’t follow the diet very carefully, but those who did saw a 10 percent drop in their cancer’s growth for…

Eating an avocado every day is one of the best ways of keeping your gut healthy—and that has a big impact on your immune system and overall health and wellbeing. Eating the fruit at least once a day ensures there is a good diversity of bacteria in your gut microbiome, the body’s “second brain” that controls our health. The fats in avocados also help the gut break down fiber and produce metabolites that support gut health, say researchers from the University of Illinois. They gave an avocado a day to around 80 adults as part of their meals, and gave the same food to another group but without the avocado. All the participants were overweight or obese. Those who ate the avocados had healthier and more diverse gut microbiomes, and…

Traditional remedies are as effective as any drug for treating tropical diseases in Africa, a new study has found. Remedies that have been used for centuries in Ghana have a very high success rate against chronic infections such as river blindness (onchocerciasis) and elephantiasis (lymphatic filariasis), both caused by parasitic worm infections. Drugs are becoming less effective against these diseases because of overuse and drug resistance, say researchers from the University of Ghana. They tested 15 traditional medicines and found that several killed all the male worms and more than 60 percent of the females. Eight of the remedies also killed parasites that caused other diseases. PLoS Negl Trop Dis, 2020; 14: e0008919…

More than 5,000 doctors and 20 medical institutes have launched a campaign to get vitamin C accepted as a primary treatment for Covid-19. The campaign, Vitamin C for Covid (www.vitaminc4covid.com), follows the publication of a major review of 100 trials that concluded the vitamin can save the lives of people badly infected by the virus and reduce the symptoms of milder infections. Vitamin C is “safer than water, inexpensive and widely available,” said nutritionist Patrick Holford, who headed up the research project. “The appropriate use of vitamin C as early as possible in infection, and in high intravenous doses in ICUs [intensive care units], would potentially be a game-changer.” High-dose vitamin C therapy is already being used in China, and 50 million one-gram doses were shipped into Wuhan, the epicenter…

Vitamin D is one of our key allies to protect us against Covid-19 infection—but its effectiveness could be dictated by the health of our gut. This missing link in metabolizing the vitamin could explain why so many studies have delivered contradictory results, including the largest ever, which tracked more than 25,000 participants and concluded the vitamin had no positive impact on heart disease, cancer or even bone health. But it could be because the participants’ gut microbiome—the bacteria living in our digestive tracts—wasn’t healthy, say researchers from the University of California at San Diego. A healthy gut is needed to activate the vitamin, say researchers, who analyzed stool and blood samples of 567 men who were in good health and had an average age of 84. Their analysis revealed a…

Those of us who remain cheerful and enthusiastic are less likely to suffer memory loss as we age, a new research study has discovered. Not dwelling on bad memories and experiences seems to be the key or, as the old song puts it, accentuating the positive. In a series of tests on 991 older people, researchers at Northwestern University discovered that those who remained positive suffered less memory decline than those who were more negative or pessimistic. Although all the participants suffered some decline, it was far less steep among those with a more positive outlook over the nine years of the study. Psychol Sci, 2020; 31: 1386–95…

Project Fear is the phrase often used to describe the calculated effort, started in early 2020 and led strategically by behavioral psychologists, to convert a heterogenous, free-thinking public into a homogenous, submissive flock that will do as it’s told. If this means witnessing and accepting the collapse of the economic structures that you have relied on for your family’s survival or the sabotage of your child’s education, so be it. A prerequisite for exploiting our biological response to fear is to systematically remove pre-existing fundamental rights such as freedom of movement, freedom of speech, the right to respect for private and family life, and the right to peaceful protest. When you look back on our recent history and consider how many decades of thousands of people’s lives were devoted to…

The 20 feet of convoluted tubing linking your stomach to the outside world is commonly known as the gut, and until recently its functions were believed to be simple: finish off the messy business of food digestion, extract as many nutrients as possible and expel the remainder as waste. The gut is also known to be populated by bacteria, all of which were once thought to be harmful. But no more. Many gut bacteria are now recognized as vital for one’s health—not just locally but, perhaps surprisingly, throughout the whole body. These microscopic inhabitants of our midriffs are increasingly being linked to a whole raft of diseases—even dementia. Leaky gut The new buzzword is microbiome, coined to describe the colony of literally trillions of bacteria that are the semipermanent residents…

Troubles had just begun for the vaccine meant to save the world from the pandemic, however. Five days later, a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) epidemiologist named Thomas Clark was presenting internal data on the thousands of people who got Pfizer’s much-ballyhooed Covid-19 vaccine and had reported“health impact events.” Among the first 215,362 Americans to roll up their sleeves for the shot, 5,052 developed adverse effects defined as“unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from a doctor or healthcare professional.”1 That amounts to a staggering 2.3 percent of injections, or one in 43 people that experience a significant short-term health impact. Health authorities in the UK reported two serious anaphylactic shock reactions requiring emergency medical treatment among the first 5,000 vaccinated hospital staff…

Harold Gielow had his first allergic reaction when he was in his 20s, while on active duty aboard a US naval ship in 1983. Had he or the Navy known he had allergies, he would have been precluded from fine operations. But he’d never experienced any symptoms before, and he didn’t know what was making him react suddenly. Over the years he had skin reactions to various glue substances, for example, but nothing serious until a few years ago, when he had a severe anaphylactic reaction to preparatory medicines for colonoscopy. “I started itching all over; I had urticarial hives inside and out. My blood pressure dropped rapidly, and then I passed out,” says the 63-year-old retired United States Marine Corps lieutenant colonel. “It all happened in 60 seconds.” He…

Although there are dozens of different kinds of mushrooms that have beneficial medical properties, here are eight of the most well-known and best studied. (Note: Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding are generally advised against taking any of the following mushrooms.) REISHI MUSHROOMS (Ganoderma lucidum) are a type of wood-degrading fungus. Reishi has been recognized as a medicinal mushroom for over 2,000 years. In traditional Chinese medicine it is used to treat conditions as wide-ranging as chronic bronchitis, hyperlipidemia (an abnormally high level of fats in the blood), high blood pressure, fatigue, headache, irritability, hepatitis, low white blood cell counts and cancer. Reishi mushrooms contain more than 150 triterpenoids, a class of chemical compounds shown to help lower blood pressure and improve circulation. They are also high in polysaccharides, a…

In addition to treatment from a trained practitioner, there are a number of self-help exercises that can help with lymphatic drainage. Try the following in sequence; just make sure you don’t do anything that causes pain. Upper thoracic rotation exercise This gentle rotation is designed not to stretch muscles and joints, but gradually and subtly to increase movement of the upper back. The movement should be as rhythmic and relaxed as possible. •Sitting down, facing ahead, place your hands around both sides of your neck with thumbs nearest your shoulders, elbows facing forward and down. •Slowly rotate the upper body first to the right (from the waist up) keeping your head and neck facing the same direction as your upper body. Only rotate or twist about 45° in total. •Now…

In the natural world, animals self-medicate with a variety of plant material to help them survive. But as our companion animals are reliant on us for most of their needs, here’s a selection of healing plant remedies for you to have on hand in your kitchen to help your cat or dog. These remedies have been tried and tested for more than two decades on our own pets, at rescue centers all over the world and in our own private practices. When it comes to more serious medical conditions, these simple plant remedies are not a substitute for veterinary treatment, but remember that conventional and holistic treatment go hand in hand—both are vital for the health and wellbeing of your pet. Chickweed ( Stellaria media ) Parts used:…

Let’s face it, you’re complicated. Much as scientists like to put us on straight tracks that lead to measurable and inevitable endpoints, we curve, dip, bend and even go into reverse. If we’re unlucky enough to develop cancer, the disease doesn’t always follow its inexorable path from stage I to stage IV when it’s not successfully treated. Instead, it sometimes just goes away. This strange and very unscientific phenomenon, known as spontaneous remission, was first reported by doctors more than 130 years ago. Since then, nearly 4,000 cases of spontaneous remission from end-stage cancer have been reported in the medical literature. The Institute of Noetic Sciences, which carried out a review in 1993, thinks there are many more that have gone unreported, often because the patient disappears from medicine’s gaze.…

Dr Damien Downing, a specialist in allergy, environment and nutrition, is current president of the British Society for Ecological Medicine, on the editorial board of Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, Chief Medical Advisor of cancer charity Yes to Life (www.yestolife.org.uk), and author of numerous books including The Vitamin Cure for Allergies. Dr Harald Gaier is a UK-registered osteopath, homeopath, acupuncturist, naturopath and medical herbalist. Former director of medical research at The Hale Clinic and a committee member of the Prince of Wales’ Foundation for Integrated Health, Dr Gaier has authored numerous scientific papers and The Encyclopedia of Homeopathy. Dr Michel Odent, a French-trained surgeon and obstetrician, is a pioneer of the natural birth movement, emphasizing home and water birth. Founder of the Primal Health Research Centre in the UK, he has…

You don’t need to take medications to manage your heartburn. Making just five changes to your diet and lifestyle is enough to end your suffering. Heartburn—more properly known as gastroesophageal reflux, or GERD—affects 30 percent of all Americans, and it’s usually managed with over-the-counter remedies. But you can drop the drugs if you adopt these five changes: get to a normal weight, don’t smoke, do moderate to vigorous exercise every day for 30 minutes, restrict yourself to just two cups of coffee, tea or soda daily, and follow a “prudent“ diet. Lifestyle changes are the way to go, as heartburn meds come with a worrying host of side-effects, said lead researcher Andrew Chan. People who adopt the five changes see an average 37 percent drop in symptoms, and this can…

You may be drinking more than you bargained for when you have that cup of takeaway coffee in the morning. The paper cup could be leaching thousands of cancer-causing microplastics into the drink. Although takeaway cups are made of paper, their linings often include polyethylene, a type of plastic that reacts to hot liquids, and up to 25,000 micron-sized particles can be released into the coffee in the first 15 minutes. Other researchers have discovered that the microplastics can settle in human organs and could cause cancer. Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology found that three out of every four paper cups they tested were lined with a hydrophobic film that is mainly made up of polyethylene, but which also included heavy metals. The film quickly started to deteriorate…

People who suffer depression when they are children or teenagers have a much higher risk of suffering a wide range of chronic illnesses when they are adults. Although substance abuse can partly explain the connection, other undefined factors are also at play, say researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. In all, depression in the early years raises the chances of developing up to 66 chronic health problems and increases the risk of a premature death. The researchers tracked the health of around 1.5 million Swedish boys and girls, 37,000 of whom were diagnosed with depression between the ages of 5 and 19. The depressed children were much more likely to suffer from a range of chronic health problems, including sleep disorders, type 2 diabetes, viral hepatitis, and kidney and…

People with high levels of one specific protein get an early warning about Lyme disease infection, and so are much more likely to get it treated successfully. Although everyone has the protein PGLYRP1 (peptidoglycan recognition protein 1), some of us have higher levels of it, and laboratory tests discovered the protein acts as an early-warning system against B. burgdorferi, the bacteria from ticks that cause Lyme disease. Mice with low levels of the protein had more Lyme infection, and were also showing signs of immune system dysfunction, suggesting the protein can marshal an immune response. Researchers at Yale University say the discovery could open up a new line of therapy against Lyme disease, and finding ways to increase levels of the PGLYRP1 protein could help fight infection. PLOS Pathogen, 2020;…

Smoking cannabis can halve the severity of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms. OCD sufferers reported that their compulsive behavior fell by 60 percent and unwanted thoughts by 49 percent within four hours of smoking cannabis. Cannabis with higher concentrations of CBD, or cannabidiol, was even more effective, say researchers from Washington State University. The good effects are short-lived, however, but the results do point to a longer-lasting solution, say the researchers. They tracked the use of cannabis by 87 volunteers with OCD, who logged more than 1,800 sessions over the 31 months of the trial. The good effects also lessened the more the study participants smoked cannabis, suggesting they were building up a tolerance. J Affect Disord, 2020; 279: 158–63…

Even if you don’t have any symptoms, you could still have Covid-19 and be a ‘silent,’ and potentially deadly, spreader of the disease. The specter of the asymptomatic carrier—the frightening idea that nobody is safe—has become one of the key drivers of lockdown and social distancing policies. When the SARS-CoV-2 virus was first detected, health agencies were told up to 80 percent of infected people could be asymptomatic, although that estimate has now fallen to around a third. But independent researchers have discovered two big problems with the asymptomatic carrier phenomenon: even the more conservative estimate of cases is still far too high, and your chances of getting the disease from a silent spreader are much lower than from someone with obvious symptoms such as coughing and sneezing. Researchers at…

egardless of how you feel about the threat posed by the new coronavirus, or the human response to it, these last 11 months have been an ordeal. Barring the few who have benefited massively from the pandemic, nearly all the rest of us have been impacted negatively—sometimes catastrophically so. But there is always a silver lining somewhere. If we focus only on the negativity, we will pay an unnecessarily heavy price in anxiety, depression, apathy and disempowerment. So I want to touch on what I feel are some of the most important things we’ve learned about the world we are so drastically, and often unwittingly, reshaping. One silver lining has been the belated but by now widespread recognition of the importance of nutrients, especially vitamin D, C and zinc, to…

Everyone’s microbiome is unique, but the key strategy is to create a permanently rich and diverse personal population of gut bacteria. Avoid: AntibioticsSugarProcessed foodsSugary and energy drinksArtificial sweeteners Choose: Full-fat live yogurt and probiotics Fermented foods (kefir, sauerkraut,  etc.) Polyphenolrich foods (chocolate, red wine, berries, etc.) High-fiber foods (kale, beans, cabbage, etc.) A wide variety of plant foods Quality protein sources, including meat Quality fats, including animal fats REFERENCES 1 Front Immunol, 2017; 8: 598 2 J Clin Invest, 2015; 125: 926–38 3 Exp Neurobiol, 2020 doi: 10.5607/en20047 4 J Pediatr Gastroenterol Nutr, 2002; 34 Suppl 1: S14–7 5 Minerva Gastroenterol Dietol, 2018; 64: 333–50 6 Cell, 2016; 167: 1469–80.e12 7 Mol Neurobiol, 2019; 56: 1841–51; Brain, 2020; 143:3077–88 8 Exp Gerontol, 2019; 115: 122–31 9 Sci Rep, 2016; 6,…

Healthy adult: 800 IU (Recommended Daily Allowance, RDA) Adult with vitamin D deficiency: 6,000 IU a day* Adult who is deficient and obese or with malabsorption problems: 10,000 IU a day* Disease prevention: 2,000 IU a day *Until blood serum levels are above 30 ng/mL Sunshine health benefits • Reduces risk of osteoporosis, fracture and falls• Reduces risk of life-threatening cancer• Reduces risk of early death• Eases symptoms of severe depression• Reduces risk of type 1 and 2 diabetes• Protects against Covid-19 Signs of deficiency • Children may have difficulty walking or need to sit for long periods—an early sign of rickets• Chronic aches and pain in the muscles• In severe cases, children will have bowing in the legs• In adults, bone pain, detected by pressing on the sternum or…

Across the globe, children receive far more vaccinations than their parents and grandparents did. For example, in the US, children currently receive up to 79 vaccine doses against 16 diseases by age 18. In comparison, children in 1983 received just 11 shots against eight diseases. Remarkably, no large-scale study has ever compared the health outcomes of children who receive all of the currently recommended childhood vaccinations against those who receive none, which leaves an important question unanswered about the health impact of vaccines on children generally: are vaccinated children, protected from common childhood infections, healthier overall? In November 2020, pediatrician Paul Thomas and independent researcher James Lyons-Weiler published their landmark study attempting to answer this question.1 “Vaccine-free children reached milestones sooner, didn’t get as sick as often, got over illness…

For more than 30 years, medicinal mushrooms have been approved for cancer treatment in Japan and China, both as a sole treatment and combined with radiation and chemotherapy. Many bioactive components in mushrooms have anticancer effects, including the polyphenol (plant nutrient) hispolon and the protein lectin. Polysaccharides (carbohydrates made of sugar molecules) are the best known and most potent mushroom-derived substances, with antitumor and immune-modulating properties. They include lentinan, krestin, and Hericium polysaccharide A and B (HPA and HPB).1 “Mushrooms are rich in polysaccharides, which help bolster and maintain the structure of your cells, which is essential in having a healthy immune system,” says Taz Bhatia, MD, integrative medical doctor, acupuncturist and certified nutrition specialist. “These same ingredients also appear to complement conventional cancer treatments by increasing the effectiveness of…

Treating a patient for back pain in 1989 led osteopath and neuroscientist Raymond N. Perrin to the concept that there was a structural basis to myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). He has since spent three decades sifting through the scientific evidence on the condition and developing an effective technique based on lymphatic drainage—The Perrin Technique—for treating sufferers. Here are his central findings. The Perrin Technique: the facts Fact 1: Fluid flow Fluid flows around the brain and continues up and down the spinal cord. This is known as cerebrospinal fluid and has many functions, including being a protective buffer to the central nervous system and supplying nutrients to the brain. But one function that has received significant scientific attention only recently is the role it plays in the drainage of…

The doctor is right, and when he’s wrong, he is still right, and if it’s eventually determined he was wrong all along, he’ll be right again soon enough. Many a patient has come up against this wall of medicine’s dogmatic certainty, and the crying shame is that it is the patient who is so often right in these situations. After all, any patient who challenges the recommended treatment has probably done her homework and thoroughly researched the condition and the best innovative new treatments. Treatments that are safer, and more effective, than that being proposed by the doctor. For his part, the doctor is toeing the line of recommended best practice, as laid down by his governing body. To do otherwise could leave him open to a charge of malpractice;…

Alternative views Thank you so much for the tireless work you are doing to inform people and get the truth out there. I have benefitted so much from your magazine. For example, the light treatment. Initially I scoffed at the idea that light or colour could have any impact on our health, but by now I have treated tinnitus, injuries, swellings, etc. with color light therapy. I had already been reading up on Raymond Royal Rife when your article on microcurrents (mid-2020) was published. Now I own a frequency generator! There is so much out there to help us retain a healthy life, but you won’t find that on Google or in mainstream media. If you are looking for more subjects, I have found Dr Hulda Clark’s work very interesting.…

Glucosamine supplements aren’t just good for arthritis—they can help you live longer and are as good for you as regular exercise. Taking one supplement a day for a year reduces your risk of dying from heart disease by 65 percent and premature death from any illness by 39 percent. That’s in the scale of health benefits you’d expect to see from someone who regularly exercises in the gym, say researchers from West Virginia University who examined the health records of 16,686 people over the age of 40. But don’t give up exercise for a glucosamine / chondroitin supplement. “That’s not what we suggest, said Dana King, one of the researchers. “Keep exercising, but the thought that taking a pill would also be beneficial is intriguing.” Nonetheless, the impact of taking…

Mussels, oysters and scallops contain more microplastics than any other seafood. The mollusks have nearly five times the levels of the pollutants found in fish. Microplastics leach from plastic waste dumped in oceans and rivers, and small amounts have been discovered accumulating in our organs, including the brain, although scientists aren’t yet clear what harm they can cause. The mollusks contain, on average, 10.5 microplastics per gram (MP/g), while crustaceans such as shrimp and crab have 8.6 MP/g, and fish contain around 2.9 MP/g. Mollusks caught off the coasts of Asia have the highest levels of microplastics, probably because the waters are the most heavily polluted by plastics. Researchers from Hull York Medical School analyzed more than 50 previously published studies to estimate the amount of microplastics we ingest when…

A widely used steroid drug doubles the risk for heart disease, even at low doses, a major new study has discovered. Taking a daily dose of less than 5 mg of prednisolone, a glucocorticoid, nearly doubles the risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) after just one year—and those taking the 25-mg dose face a six-fold increased risk. The drug is prescribed to reduce inflammation to treat rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), as well as allergies and skin conditions. Its marketing names include Orapred, PediaPred and Millipred. Smokers and people who are obese are at special risk, say researchers from Leeds University, who analyzed the medical records of 87,794 patients with one of several different types of inflammatory disease. They say that the ‘safe’ dose for prednisolone may have to…

Forget the general public. Vaccine hesitancy is highest among doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers, with more than half saying they don’t want to be given one of the new Covid-19 vaccines. They fear long-term side-effects from vaccines that have been tested for less than a year, and some nurses are concerned that the vaccines will stop them from conceiving when they want to start a family. Surveys of healthcare workers in the US and across Europe reveal that vaccine hesitancy levels are as high as 76 percent, according to one poll of 2,000 senior care home staff in France. In Germany, half the nurses and around 25 percent of the doctors surveyed said they won’t have the Covid jab, while one German state has reported that only a third…

Children who have never been vaccinated are around 50 percent less likely to develop autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a new study has found. Rates of autism are around 0.84 percent among unvaccinated children—compared to 1.69 percent in the general population—and the incidence of ADHD is also roughly half that of the national average in the US. In fact, no unvaccinated child developed ADHD in the study that tracked 3,324 children who were cared for at Integrative Pediatrics, a private clinic in Portland, Oregon. Of these, 2,763 children had been given between one and 40 different vaccinations, and their health was compared to the 561 children who didn’t have any vaccinations. The children were born between 2008 and 2019. Researchers from the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge…

Big rise in cases of liver failure from ‘safe’ acetaminophen Acetaminophen (paracetamol) is the world’s top painkiller—and it’s considered to be a safe remedy, available in pharmacies without a doctor’s prescription. But exceed the recommended dose, and it becomes a dangerous poison, causing liver failure and even death, say health regulators in Switzerland, which has seen a 40 percent rise in cases of poisoning after more powerful doses of the drug started to be sold in pharmacies. The sudden increase happened in the first three years after 1,000 mg (1 g) doses became available over the counter. People have been taking too many of the tablets every day, and probably exceeding the maximum daily dose of 4 g. “It is not effective for all patients or against all forms of…

In all the fear and news obsession about coronavirus this past year, there is one rarely asked question that has loomed like an unsanitised elephant in the room: why is it that some people (most children and young people, for example) wouldn’t even notice if they were infected with this “deadly” virus, while most others experience Covid infection as a typical cold or flu and only a small minority, mostly the frail, elderly and those weakened already by another disease, experience a crushing battle that ends in the graveyard? What makes some so resilient and others so vulnerable? The answer was provided by a group of scientists and doctors in a paper published toward the end of 2020 which stated simply: “A degraded/dysfunctional immune system appears to be the main…

A group of researchers from Vancouver are promoting a natural nitric oxide nasal spray that kills 99.9 percent of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 within two minutes. Dr Gilly Regev, an Israeli physician who cofounded SaNOtize Research and Development Corp. based in Vancouver, Canada, told Jewish News, “If you use it daily, I really believe you won’t be affected by Covid-19. We have shown in the clinical trials that the people who used it did not get infected.” The SaNOtize Nitric Oxide Nasal Spray (NONS) kills covid virus on contact in the upper airways and prevents it from taking hold traveling to the lungs. Earlier studies showed it prevented infection with Covid, and UK clinical trials began this week. NONS is currently in phase II clinical trials in Canada (sanotize.com).…

Risotto, lasagna, soups, stews, omelets, soufflés, stir fries, mushroom burgers, mushroom pizzas and melts… or how about a caramel-flavored porcini brûlée topped with honey-sage ice cream and Tonka bean meringue? Mushrooms are superb additions to almost any meal in almost any form except raw. Raw mushrooms have tough cell walls, mainly made out of chitin, a fibrous substance consisting of polysaccharides, that makes them fundamentally indigestible without first cooking. Mushrooms contain a lot of B vitamins and vitamin D in the form of ergosterol, and some mushrooms, such as reishi, have up to 25 percent usable protein. They are also a great source of phosphorus, potassium, selenium, zinc, copper, magnesium and other minerals, as well as a very good source of fiber. Granted, even if properly cooked, serving sizes have…

I developed ME after a nasty bout of glandular fever [Epstein–Barr virus, also called mononucleosis] at age six. I was eventually diagnosed at 11 years old, and my condition got progressively worse over the next seven years. By the time I reached my eighteenth birthday, I was extremely unwell. I was wheelchair-bound, unable to stand for more than a few seconds, light sensitive, noise sensitive, very nauseous and in constant severe pain and fatigue. After so many years of being severely ill my body was giving up, and at 18, so was I. I had to rely on my parents as carers, couldn’t leave the house and had no quality of life. My mum did some research on the Perrin Technique and agreed it was worth a try. Until this…