A natural philosophy, By Dr.Eccles

Prevention is better than cure.

It’s an old truism and one that we live by here at The Natural Doctor_®. In fact, our entire philosophy is built on the core belief that many of the health challenges that face people in our fast-moving, modern world could be avoided if we all just slowed down long enough to think about how we manage our own wellbeing.

In essence, we are a living organism made up of billions of parts. We’re remarkable in every way and when you stop to consider and acknowledge just how remarkable we are, you begin to realise that the billions of parts that make us who we are also represent a billion opportunities for something to stop working as it should.

And as we age, so those opportunities and risks multiply. It’s no coincidence, after all, that people in later life are, statistically speaking, less healthy than those who are younger. It’s a natural matter of simple biology. Organisms decay as they age. Functions become less efficient. We become more susceptible.

We’re now living much longer than our forefathers did. Official statistics show that the average life expectancy of someone living in the UK is now 81 – a full ten years longer than someone could expect to live just 60 years ago.

Developments in clinical medicine are part of the reason. But those developments, which have focused in large part on curative treatment, have brought with them a heavy price.

We may be living longer, but research from the Kings Fund shows a rising trend in the number of people managing multiple conditions. According to the report, by next year the number of people with three or more conditions is expected to have risen from 1.9m to 2.9m in ten years – that’s 1 in every 600 people every year for the last decade.

Other factors also play a part in those stats, of course – affluence, education and geography among them. But the simple fact remains that while clinical research continues to look primarily at curative treatments for existing conditions – in other words, just treating the ‘now’ – we’ll simply end up with a population that’s living longer in poorer health.

At The Natural Doctor_® prevention is at the heart of everything we do because our aim is to strengthen the body against disease and ageing in the most natural, non-invasive and safe ways possible and using pioneering treatments, many of which have been designed as a result of my years of experience in conventional and natural medical practice and pharmacology.

We fundamentally believe that natural treatments we offer for the conditions we work with provide the best possible prevention because, unlike many of the synthetic treatments used by clinical doctors and medical practitioners, they are developed to be aligned with the body’s natural processes.

A good example of this is hormone replacement therapy. The mainstream clinical approach to this uses synthetic hormones in an attempt to balance and regulate the body’s declining hormone levels.

A number of studies into the use of traditional Hormone Replacement Therapy, including the Women’s Health Initiative Study (WHI), have raised questions about its associated risks and benefits, with the result that more and more doctors and women have increasingly looked at alternative, more natural treatments.

But conventional clinical treatment isn’t the only solution to restoring the body’s hormonal balance and conquering the unpleasant symptoms that are associated with the menopause – hot flushes, mood swings and night sweats, for example.

The compounds we use have exactly the same chemical and molecular structure as the hormones produced by the body and so carry scientifically proven reduced risks.

We take the same natural, preventative approach to breast health, anti-ageing, heart health, fertility and libido treatment.

The computer-assisted ThermoCheck_® thermography breast health screening process that I developed uses computer-assisted thermal imaging to screen for irregularities in breast tissue temperature which can be an early sign of a potential cancer risk.

Not only is it non-invasive and radiation-free, when done correctly it is 95% accurate and can identify a risk of cancer up to ten years before a mammogram would be able to pick up a tumour. This is obviously important for all sorts of reasons.

Knowing there’s a risk means you can take steps to normalise breast heat changes and reduce the chances of ever contracting the disease, and if used adjunctively with mammography studies show we could have 61% better survival rates from breast cancer. Another advantage is that ThermoCheck_® thermography carries no radiation risk and is suitable for women of all ages.

Crucially, it also a very early warning system – unlike a mammogram which will only tell you whether you have or haven’t already got a lump (and often doesn’t get that right either).

The Natural Doctor_® isn’t about simply treating a problem you already have; it’s about an ethos of prevention across everything we do. My research over many years has led me to lecture on a variety of topics ranging from how food can have medicinal effects to natural cancer patient support and from breast health to prostate health and nutrition’s role in anti-ageing.

The legacy of clinical medicine helping us to live longer but in poorer health makes for a bleak future. We believe Nature’s molecules hold some of the answers to living a longer life in better health.