Were it not for the loudly-ticking Brexit clock drowning out almost everything else as the UK Government scrabbles urgently for some sort of consensus on the terms of our divorce from the EU, one of the biggest stories of the last few weeks might have been the parlous state of the NHS.
If you missed it, the current health secretary, Matt Hancock, has hitched a ride on just about any platform he can to share the apparently good news that between him and his predecessor, Jeremy Hunt, the health service will receive an additional £20bn in funding over the next five years.
This, he is quick to remind us, is the largest and longest funding commitment ever made to the NHS and to hear him talk you might have been forgiven for being under the impression that all the service’s woes have been eradicated at a single stroke.
Among the things that the various Clinical Commissioning Groups that run the NHS locally will be able to spend money on are improved technology that will allow the many different computers and software programmes to communicate with each other and, in a move announced very recently, rapid response teams which will be tasked with improving routine care programmes to the elderly to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions.
This is all very laudable, of course. Hospitals are inherently dangerous places for elderly people who are more vulnerable than most to the kinds of superbugs like MRSA that thrive in buildings full of people who are sick. And there’s no doubt a creaking IT system costs the NHS far more than it saves.
But in the end, isn’t this all just tokenism – and thinly-disguised tokenism at that?
Looking through the most recent of the various funding awards made by the Government to the NHS, most will be spent on people and machines.
To an extent, that makes some sense: the service has long been short-staffed and more doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals will speed up a system that labours under punitively long and slow waiting lists, whilst better IT will shorten the delays in one part of the NHS receiving patient records from another.
But the extra £20bn over five years – which, I should add, is around £130bn short of what the service’s executive management believe is necessary to meet demand in that period – is no more than an eye-wateringly expensive sticking plaster for a gaping wound that will get progressively worse rather than better.
In natural health and medicine there is, of course, a solution that could actively help the NHS to hive off some of the burden. Much of the approach taken by natural health practitioners like us at The Natural Doctor® focuses on reducing health risk, monitoring risk and then managing potential issues before they become a drain on the NHS.
Yet the Government seems unwilling to enlist non-clinical support, refusing to underwrite the cost of natural treatments or even raise awareness of the myriad services that exist in the natural health sector.
That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the health benefits that these services can bring. As we head into Christmas, this is the perfect opportunity to treat yourself to better health through natural treatments, remedies and monitoring.
Here are just some of the benefits that might make your Christmas list over the next few weeks:
- Breast thermography screening: mammography is only offered to women over the age of 50. It is not preventative and it will only ever be able to confirm the presence or absence of cancer – and even then it has a questionable track record when it comes to accuracy with misdiagnosis and overdiagnosis both well-documented problems. By contrast, screening tools like ThermoCheck® breast thermography is suitable for women of all ages and measures breast tissue temperature to identify health risk, including breast cancer, up to a decade before a mammogram would spot a tumour.
- Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy: with many women questioning the risks associated with conventional synthetic HRT, BHRT replicates the body’s natural hormones using compounds that have exactly the same chemical and molecular structure. The result is effective treatment of menopausal symptoms without the risk often attributed to HRT
- Hair restoration: over-the-counter products that claim to treat or reverse hair loss either don’t work or have unpleasant side effects. Our BioGroHair® treatment has been shown to reverse hair loss and promote regrowth in as few as 8 weeks. It’s a treatment that shows hair loss isn’t something you just have to live with.
- PULs Cardiovascular Risk Assessment: heart health costs the NHS billions of pounds every year. Our heart monitoring service can assess your risk of heart disease, allowing you and your GP to make the changes necessary to reduce risk and prevent life-altering conditions.
- Low libido: low sex drive affects thousands of men and women every year and is often attributed to hormone deficiency. Our BioO® treatment is a supplement formulated with entirely natural ingredients and improves sex drive and function. It’s available without prescription.
Naturally good health isn’t the sole preserve of the NHS, so why not start 2019 as you mean to go on – by taking charge of your health and ensuring you’re in the best possible shape to enjoy life.
Contact us to find out more about The Natural Doctor® and to book a consultation.
