WiFi Banned in French Schools

Excellent news here that I hope our UK Government sits up and takes notice of: the French have demanded much safer Ethernet connections in schools rather than WiFi

‘until it is proven safe for human consumption’.

Absolutely right. They say they have done it to protect schoolchildren and their teachers.

Read more on this - including the difficulty schools are having indemnifying themselves against claims of harm done by WiFi (which I would assume there are bound to be in the future) and the way our Government refuses to support the schools.

I will only have Ethernet in my house. It is safer, faster and more reliable anyway. What have you got…??

I’ve Seen Everything Now…

I had to share this with you for a laugh today. Look away if you are squeamish like me!

A smorgasbord of 18 midwifery-themed cakes ranging from a scarlet-coloured placenta cake to a foetus shaped cake with a marzipan detachable foetus were among the many cakes made by midwives to celebrate International Day of the Midwife on May 5th.

To help raise funds for the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) asked its 42,000 members to embrace their creative side and get baking to give birth to midwifery-inspired cakes. And the RCM was overwhelmed by the quirky creativity of its members.

The winning cake, or marzipan cake topper, had 761 “likes” on the RCM’s Facebook page was by Alison Searle, a lead midwife at University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust. She originally made it for a midwife colleague going on maternity leave. Featuring two marzipan figures of a pregnant woman in labour on an orange birth ball, her partner sat at her feet inhaling gas. (I tried to link to this pic for you but it refused!)

The Royal College of Midwives Chief Executive Cathy Warwick said: “I was amazed by the culinary creativity of the midwives in baking such hugely imaginative midwifery-themed cakes. As I have been visiting maternity units around the country, I have been bombarded by comments from midwives about the IDM cakes. I was truly touched and overwhelmed by how our members came together and got baking to raise money for their fellow midwives across the globe.”  

The second most popular cake featured the emerging head of a baby  about to be delivered, by Vicki Falls, of Scotland, which received 727 “likes.”

Clever though they are, is it me or is that just too much?! Then again, you should see some of the others. If you dare, click here.

Purehealth Shop Site Down

Just a quick message to advise that the Purehealthshop.co.uk site is having a poorly currently and is down. I have reported it to the server company and they are trying to sort it out asap. Sorry for any inconvenience.

If you wish to order tests, ebooks, factsheets etc, just email me micki@purehealthclinic.co.uk and I can send a Paypal button to you by email instead.

Thanks for your patience – and to Carolyn who alerted me!

Flippin’ technology – great when it works, maddening when it doesn’t!

Want To Continue To Get Herbal Medicines? Read This and Act Please!

   The Alliance of Natural Health has sent an appeal this weekend to ask for our help. The Government had promised to allow trained, professional herbalists to be able to continue to prescribe individualised herbal medicines as they have for many years. However, the rumour is that the Government is going to U-Turn (again). This would mean that your ability to get and use herbal medicines, given by qualified people, would be very limited.

According to statistics, ANH say that up to 8 million people in the UK rely on, use regularly or have used the services of herbal medicine practitioners.

To read more about the problem, read here. Click here for a ready-prepared letter you can send to your local MP.

Herbal Medicine, as given by qualified, well-trained professionals, has an excellent and very long pedigree and herbal medicines have been used for way longer than the current pharmaceutical medicine model. It beggars belief that our ability to choose which medicine we use for our own bodies is yet again under threat. Please help by standing up for your right to choose, even if you don’t currently use a herbal medicine practitioner: who says you might not need to in future?!

Don’t Sleep With Your Mobile!

Fascinating post this weekend from Michelle at FoodsMatter on a simple experiment to test how cress grows in a room with mobile phone levels of radiation compared to in a room with none:

Cress succumbs to mobile phone radiation

After 12 days, here is the cress in the no mobile room:

and here’s the cress in the mobile room:

Not good. The worst part of Michelles’ post is noting that some of the cress seeds had actually mutated; it was not just that they hadn’t grown.

Obviously, we’ll be intrigued to see if the Karolinska Institute gets the same results. Meantime, as I have said many times, do not have wireless, digital or mobile equipment in your rooms, especially chargers, wireless routers and DECT phone holders; site them in hallways and well away from you. For computers, use Ethernet technology, which is faster and more stable anyway than WiFi.

Angelina Jolie: Right or Wrong To Have A Preventative Mastectomy?

I presume you have seen the story on the news that Angelina Jolie elected to have both breasts removed as a cancer prevention tactic because her mother died early of cancer. I found it quite shocking, did you?

I still don’t quite know what I think about it. It’s not exactly new since women have been having elective surgery for a good few years now; it’s just that Angelina is so high profile, I do wonder what message that is going to send out. Not that that has any bearing on her choices: it is entirely up to her what she does with her own body, but the media coverage is bound to have an effect. Will it make it seem like a viable choice to more women, or shock more than it encourages? Time will tell. It should spark some debate anyway, and that is always a good thing in medicine.

In Angelina’s shoes, what would I have done? I have no idea and I hope I never have to think about it that deeply. It saddens me to think that many women – and men – do have to face that decision every day.

My over-riding worry about it is that she made the decision based on the presence of the BRAC genes. Most experts now agree that it is not the presence of genes related to various illnesses that is the problem; it is what triggers them.

Just because you have the genes, it does not mean you will get the disease. We know that most of the triggers are emotional, infectious, viral, environmental etc so you would have to agree that leading a preventative lifestyle would potentially be a good way of avoiding triggering any genetic illness you were predisposed to. And that is precisely what the detractors of preventative mastectomies say: you could have prevented it, this is a step too far etc etc. They might be right, but whose to say that the worry of getting cancer might not end up being a contributory cause of cancer in the end anyway? An interesting point.

Professionally, I have been able to offer gene and BRAC testing for quite some time, but have chosen not to for loads of different reasons, not least because I don’t think we yet fully understand genetic illness. And, have you thought what that knowledge might do to you emotionally or even to your life assurance premiums!

In my opinion, we are a LONG way off understanding our genes and the way they are expressed, although we are learning at an exponential rate. Genes have so-called polymorphisms, for a start. This means that there are loads of different ‘types’ if you like of the BRAC gene and some have been found to be protective against cancer and others not so protective. I assume Angelina’s doctors could distinguish between the types she had in order to be able to give her a percentage risk.

Anyway, enough of my musings. Here is an interesting piece on it from GreenMedInfo for you:

Did Angelina Jolie Make A Mistake By Acting On The ‘Breast Cancer Gene’ Theory?

Also, here is their Breast Cancer Guide with loads of links to researched articles in case this is something you want to read up on.

Did she do the right thing, then? In the end, it is nobody’s business but her own. But it will be interesting to see what happens as a result of all the media stories.

I am bound to see other articles on this subject and I will pass on links to any I think you might find useful, as always. Meantime, I wish Angelina and her family speedy healing and a life less worried.

New Active #B12 and #Anaemia Tests

As you can tell, I am catching up with stuff I haven’t been able to do with my Adrenal Plan writing hat on!

Hot on the heels of the new NeuroHormone tests, I have also changed the Vitamin B12 and Anaemia tests, which I know again that some of you have been waiting for me to do!

Why have I changed them?

Well, I have been coming across quite a few people who test fine on serum B12, but who quite clearly have B12 deficiency symptoms and who go on to improve on a B12 supplement trial.

Of course, I had to look into it. And, as Providence or someone or other would have it, TDL labs was also doing the same thing and had just introduced a new Active B12 test. Basically, like the red blood cell mineral tests, this looks for the metabolic levels of B12 rather than what is just in your blood. Here is some info on that for you (bit techy, but you get the point):

What is Active B-12?
Three carrier proteins are involved in the transport of Vitamin B12 around the body – Intrinsic Factor (IF), transcobalamin (TC) and haptocorrin (HC).

When transcobalamin and haptocorrin bind Vitamin B12 the resulting complexes are known as holotranscobalamin (HoloTC) and holohaptocorrin (HoloHC).

 Holotranscobalamin represents only 10-30% of the Vitamin B12 circulating in the blood but is the ONLY form of Vitamin B12 that is taken up and used by cells of the body, hence it’s other name… ACTIVE-B12.

 Only transcobalamin transports Vitamin B12 from its site of absorption in the ileum to tissues and cells. The vitamin is then internalised as the Active-B12 (vitamin B12 bound to transcobalamin) complex via a specific receptor-mediated uptake. This process delivers Vitamin B12 into the cells of the body and provides the vitamin as an essential co-enzyme for vital cellular functions such as DNA synthesis..

The remaining 70-90% of circulating Vitamin B12 is bound to haptocorrin, the function of which is unknown.

Because up to 90% of circulating Vitamin B12 is bound tohaptocorrin and is therefore biologically unavailable for most cells, the traditional Total B12 test can give a misleading representation of the patient’s Vitamin B12status. Active-B12, the part of Vitamin B12 bound to transcobalamin (TC), is the portion that delivers Vitamin B12 to the tissues of the body.

Also, Active-B12 has a shorter circulating half-life compared to holohaptocorrin so the earliest change that occurs on entering negative vitamin B12 balance is very likely to be a decrease in Active-B12 concentration

So, a no-brainer then to change to measuring active B12. You can see the new Vitamin B12 test here for more info.

I also wanted to extend the anaemia test to include the new active B12, but also red cell folate instead, again, of the usual serum type, and a few other indices too, including ESR for inflammation since high levels in the body can lead to misleading iron results. It’s all very technical, y’know; I don’t just make this stuff up

Anyway, I think the new anaemia test is much improved on the last one but I can still do the previous Genova one if you need to do comparisons, so just ask. I’ve taken it off the shop site so I don’t confuse with having two anaemia tests.

OK, see the new Active B12 test here and the new Anaemia test with active B12 and red cell folate here.

Blimey, doing those hormone, neurotransmitters, adrenal, cortisol, B12 and anaemia test changes has taken me all day and I am shattered now! Hope they help you; am rather pleased with myself