What Really Works: The Insider’s Guide to Complementary Health

University College London Medical School

It may have been around since 1966, but Enzyme Potentiated Desensitisation (EPD) remains a closely guarded secret outside allergy circles. Similar, in principle at least, to homeopathy, EPD works with the idea of treating like with like. Minute doses of allergens are given together with an enzyme called beta glucuronidase, which works in the body to increase and modify the effects of the allergen.

Beta glucuronidase is present in all parts of the human body, where it is released into the tissues during inflammation or an allergic response – in greater amounts than that given with EPD. With this technique, the dosage used is less than that contained in 1cc of blood from a healthy person, making it entirely safe.

There are two ways for EPD to be administered. With the cup method, a small area of the forearm is scarified to remove the waterproof layer of the skin, and the desensitising fluid is then held over this area, by means of a plastic cup, for 24 hours. The slow absorption of this dose makes this method extremely safe. Also, the immune system is much more responsive to doses through the skin than those given via injection. That said, the second EPD method is by injection. This is more reliable but may not be quite as safe.

Desensitising mixtures are now available for a wide range of allergens including pollens, dust, pets, moulds, candida, fumes, fragrances, foods and food additives. With EPD, many common allergens cross-desensitise in groups, which is good news for sufferers, many of whom are allergic to more allergens than they may have identified.

Over the last 30 years, EPD has been employed successfully to treat asthma, rhinitis, nasal polyps, eczema, urticaria, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, migraine, rheumatoid arthritis, petit mal epilepsy, chemical sensitivity, food allergies and intolerance, as well as the secondary allergies that complicate post-viral syndromes including Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and ME.

There is still no desensitising agent to treat allergies to insect bites or stings, contact dermatitis or drug-related allergies. Inoculating against the vast and ever-increasing number of chemicals used in the production of food has also proved difficult but common allergies, such as hayfever, can be treated with just one dose given about four months before the usual onset of symptoms.

Housedust mite allergy, the most common cause of eczema in adults, for example, can be treated with just two doses given over an interval of 2–3 months. It can take up to eight doses to establish a response, after which the frequency of treatment can be reduced. More than 50% of EPD patients have been able to stop any treatment at all for long periods – the longest recorded period without booster doses before a relapse was 21 years.

The response to EPD is four-fold. There may be an immediate response, or the full benefits may be slow to take. A reaction time of three weeks, during which there is either a ‘cure’ or the production of symptoms, is common. The main action usually starts after this, and lasts for 3–4 months. This is thanks to the immune system’s allergen-fighting lymphocyte cells which have been created by the dose.

Some patients will have a very late response, from between 18 months and two-and-a-half years, starting from between 7 and 9 doses from the start of treatment.

A ‘postpone action’ has been recorded where between 6 and 15 months after the last treatment, the patient appears miraculously cured. Such patients have often given up on EPD, which does not work in any event for 20% of sufferers, and then attribute their miracle cure not to that last dose but to some other treatment.

EPD was developed by a British medical doctor, Dr Leonard McEwen, who has stuck to protocol. Follow-up studies and clinical trials all suggest this technique has much greater long-term success than any other method of immunotherapy. Word of it’s success has spread and there are now clinics and doctors in the US and Italy offering this simple but effective procedure which deserves greater recognition.

Altitude Sickness

If you are planning a high altitude trecking holiday, this may be your most serious health risk.

In it’s most dangerous form, altitude sickness is known as pulmonary oedema. This is the name for what happens when there is a build-up of fluid on the lungs and, make no mistake, it constitutes a serious medical emergency. The symptoms include shortness of breath and disorientation; those most at risk are smokers and anyone with an existing heart problem.

The secret to avoiding this problem is to acclimatise slowly, says the London-based naturopath and traveller, Max Tomlinson, who has travelled widely in South America and so speaks from experience. Do not rush your trek up the mountain, but enjoy this excuse to take your time and take in the glorious scenery, he suggests. If at any point you feel dizzy or short of breath, make your way back down to a lower altitude.

Tomlinson suggests that your holistic travel kit should include, as a precaution, two homoeopathic preparations, Aconite 6c and Arsenicum album 6c. Aconite 6c is used to treat the sudden onset of symptoms, including breathlessness, and Arsenicum album 6c should be taken if there is a delay between developing the first symptoms and getting medical treatment. You can take both at the same time and should take one dose, four times a day for up to a maximum of four doses.

Because there is less oxygen available at higher altitudes, you also need to make sure your iron levels are normal before you travel. Tomlinson recommends you take a liquid supplement called Floradix for a month, starting 14 days before you leave. Gingko biloba has been shown in clinical trials to boost the amount of oxygen and other nutrients reaching the brain, and thereis now good evidence that this too will help. Again, start 14 days before your departure date and take 20 drops of an organic tincture of the herb, three times a day.

There is also good anecdotal evidence for a homoeopathic remedy called Coca, which comes from the leaves of the cocaine plant. This will fall into place when you learn that those living in the region you plan to visit chew the same leaves for altitude sickness. The theory is that the active ingredient boosts the circulation of blood and oxygen to the brain.

Amalgam Fillings

More than a decade after scientists first began to question the sense of using mercury amalgam fillings, people with metal in their mouths are still not sure whether to leave their fillings in place or have them taken out. The simple answer is – unless you have an underlying sickness which may be linked with mercury poisoning – leave them in place until you need to have them replaced and then, whatever you do, don’t let your dentist put such a toxic metal back in your mouth.

The silver fillings which have divided dentists for more than 15 years are not silver at all but are an amalgam made up of 52% mercury (older fillings contained as much as 75% mercury) with the remainder copper, tin, silver and zinc. Mercury, which the dentist must treat as toxic waste outside your mouth, is the second most toxic metal on the planet after plutonium and yet governments around the world – with the exception of Sweden and Austria – still deem it safe for fillings.

In Germany, amalgam fillings are only used for the molars, which are the back grinding teeth but in the UK, for example, the National Health Service will not pay for the more expensive white composite fillings, which means that although the figures for amalgam fillings have halved since 1986, British dentists are still putting 15 million metal fillings in the mouths of adults and children every year.

For a long time, the party line in both the UK and the US was that once the amalgam was in the mouth, the mercury became inert or locked in, and so was safe. Numerous researchers have shown this to be untrue, and practitioners do now accept that mercury vapour is indeed released into the body from these fillings. The current argument is that this seepage happens in such negligible amounts that the risk to your health is insignificant, although an estimated 3% of adults will be hypersensitive to this and will have an adverse reaction. Ironically, cleaning your teeth or chewing a ‘whitening’ gum actually makes the problem worse because it accelerates the rate at which vapour is released by a factor of five. Hot drinks increase the vapour concentration too.

Harley Street dentist and president of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, Dr Anthony Newbury, reckons he was the first UK-based dentist to introduce the idea of a mercury-free practice in 1979, after attending a lecture in the US where mercury seepage from fillings was linked, controversially, to chronic muscle and joint problems, fatigue and jaw complaints. He is a major presence on the international lecture circuit and says fellow dentists still accuse him of talking baloney.

‘My response to the suggestion that the mercury vapour comes off in such small amounts that it is harmless is to say try changing it for cyanide, which is less toxic, and see how long you’ll last. In science, even a nanogram is significant.’

Health problems which holistic practitioners believe may be linked with mercury toxicity include chronic fatigue, headaches, allergies and sinusitis, sore or bleeding gums, lack of concentration, memory lapses, irritability and depression – all conditions which could, of course, be linked with other causes.

It is also notoriously difficult to test mercury levels in the body because as it seeps from the fillings it oxidises into a form which then tightly binds with protein residues in the tissues, making levels difficult to gauge.

The Mercury Challenge test overcomes this problem through chelation. You swallow a chelating solution which will bind with the mercury before it can latch on to the protein. Your urine is sampled before drinking this solution and then again, three hours later, when it will be flushing out of your system.

I had my own mercury fillings taken out after reading that scientists at the University of Kentucky found the brains of those who had died from Alzheimer’s Disease contained roughly twice as much mercury as the brains of those who had died at the same age from other conditions. They concluded these levels were far too high to have come solely from diet, and suggested that the mercury in their fillings was a more plausible explanation. Despite the fact I was paying for this, my then dentist grumbled his way through the procedure and, to my knowledge, did not follow the strict protocol which the British Society for Mercury-free dentistry recommends for the removal of amalgams, so be warned.

Holistic dentists say you can do more harm than good if you remove mercury fillings without proper protective procedures – which include using a rubber ‘dam’ to prevent the patient from swallowing any debris, including mercury, during the extraction, a nose piece with rubber hosing so the patient is breathing in air away from the mercury vapour that is being released, and damp gauze pads to protect the eyes.

A reported 95% of patients who do have their amalgam fillings out tell health practitioners they feel better. Of course, this is a self-selecting group, many of whom have suffered chronic complaints for years and who, sceptics will argue, are now blaming mercury toxicity as their latest fad.

I like the analogy one mercury-free dentist gave me: ‘You could think of it like a battery effect sitting at the base of the brain, and when all the metal is out the brain is no longer bombarded by all those signals. It’s a bit like switching the stereo off so you can hear yourself think clearly.’

Dentists and their assistants should also protect themselves – according to a report in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine, dentists have higher concentrations of mercury in the body and twice the number of brain tumours. Female dentists and assistants are three-and-a-half times more likely to suffer sterility, stillbirth and miscarriage.

If you do have your fillings removed you should also take nutritional advice, says Dr Jack Levenson, founder of the British Society for Mercury-free Dentistry. Charcoal tablets, for example, will help ‘mop up’ any mercury that does find it’s way into your stomach. If you plan to have your amalgam fillings out, start taking 2–5g of charcoal tablets for two days before the procedure and for a week afterwards. You also need extra vitamin C to boost your immune system, and selenium (a potent antioxidant) which works to detoxify mercury.

The Canadian researchers who first began to investigate the health hazards of mercury in the mouth started their trials by looking at what happened to the mercury from fillings in the mouths of sheep. They found that, within 30 days, mercury had accumulated to such an extent in the kidneys that their function was reduced by 50%. (The same test using a white plastic filling had no effect on kidney function.)

Critics ridiculed these studies, pointing out that sheep have different chewing patterns from humans. The Canadian researchers did the same experiments with monkeys and found, again, that mercury did accumulate in the body, but this time in higher doses in the jaw, the colon and the large intestine. The monkeys also had smaller (but still enormous) amounts of mercury in their kidneys than the sheep.

Dental amalgams remain the most controversial of all dental issues, but a growing number of practitioners admit they find it increasingly hard to argue with the opening statement of a book called The Mercury in Your Mouth which claims: ‘Chronic mercury toxicity from “silver” mercury amalgam dental fillings is the most important, unrecognised health problem of our time.’

Antibiotics – Alternatives: Colloidal Silver

While most antibiotics disinfect only about half a dozen germs, silver has been reported to disinfect well over 600 different strains. Even better, infections which can become resistant to antiobiotics cannot develop the same defence against silver, making it an excellent alternative to antibiotics.

A colloid is a substance that consists of ultra-fine particles suspended in a different medium; in the case of colloidal silver, this medium is water. The particles are so small – 0.001 to 0.0001 of a micron in diameter – that colloidal silver is completely safe to use both internally and externally. I was first prescribed it for a persistent Candida infection after a long hospitalisation, and there is no question that it worked.

Before the advent of antibiotics, colloidal silver was given in just about every way modern drugs are administered, but it fell out of fashion when practitioners started to prescribe hundreds of times the correct dosage – which led, in some cases, to a grey skin discolouration. Slowly, it has been finding it’s way back, and although nobody knows exactly how it works, the most accepted theory is that it targets and then disables the enzymes which many forms of bacteria, fungi and viruses need for their own metabolism and survival.

In recent laboratory tests, scientists found that colloidal silver was effective against many of the more insidious organisms including Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella typhi and Candida globata. Jane Waters, holistic skin specialist, co-founder of The Alternative Centre (see Resources) and a researcher into complementary health, points out that in India, where people understand that silver acts as a natural antibiotic, it is still traditional to keep water in silver jugs.

Colloidal silver, she says, is excellent for treating skin problems such as athlete’s foot, ringworm, impetigo and boils, but the purity of the product you use is important. Find one that has no binding agents, stabilisers or added proteins.

If you’re not sure, ask before you buy. A quality manufacturer will have nothing to hide, and a good retailer should be able to source the purest colloidal silver available.

Arthritis

Almost half the population over the age of 65 will suffer some form of arthritis – an umbrella term for some 200 different debilitating joint and muscular problems. The two most common forms are rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. Both are on the increase, and both are increasingly recognised as the result of chemical lifestyles coupled with poor nutritional choices.

Since the 1940s, for example, the use of chemicals in the production of food has increased 10-fold, yet only about 1% of the produce in the supermarkets will have been tested for contaminants, including pesticide residue. When such chemicals do get into the body, they break down or combine with other molecules to form damaging metabolites. These, and other waste products, are carried in the bloodstream but dumped in the muscles and joints where they can crystallise, causing inflammation and the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. (See Dietary Cleansing on page 135 for a nutritional solution that works. It is strict but it gets results.)

Osteoarthritis is caused by the wear and tear of connective tissue, particularly cartilage, around the joints. This tissue normally retains water to act as a shock absorber, but once damaged it can no longer do this and instead, leaves the bones exposed, resulting in pain, stiffness and swellings. Early signs of arthritis include muscular aches and pains, stiffness in the joints and swelling.

There is no single cure for any of the different types of arthritis. What works for one person may do nothing for another but avoiding chemicals in your food by switching to an organic diet can help, as will managing the symptoms with a programme of moderate exercise, anti-inflammatory herbs and foods and collagen-building supplements. Lots of people take fish oils (which provide omega-3 fatty acids) to help alleviate stiffness. If you take this option, make sure your fish oils come from an unpolluted source. If you are not sure, check with your health practitioner.